From the
moment I met her, twenty-three years ago, she was always optimistic. It was
totally authentic; she didn’t “try” to be positive. She just naturally looked
at the sunny side of life. I thought of her as radiant. Sparkling. A being of
light.
It was
her innocence that made her charming. Especially as she got into her 80’s and
began to lose her hearing, she didn’t miss a thing. She kept right on jumping
into conversations and finding her place.
She had
no children. The doctors told her after her accident it would be dangerous for
her to get pregnant. The accident was freaky. All the men at the factory where
she worked were off fighting in WW II and she was asked to “play” Santa Claus
at the annual Christmas party. In those days artificial beards were made of a
highly flammable material. Someone lit a cigarette while she was getting ready
in the bathroom and she ended up with 2nd degree burns over ¾ of her body.
If she
was sad that she didn’t have children she never said so. I always felt from the
very beginning of our friendship that she took me under her wing as a surrogate
daughter. That was an unspoken part of our relationship. I lost my mother to
cancer when I was 28 and so having Virginia was a great blessing.
She was
always up for a new venture. I distinctly remember one time I decided to go to
a “no kill” cat shelter to surprise them with a cat. The shelter required the
new owners to answer some questions correctly—such as not allowing that cat to
be an outside animal. I called Virginia and tried to get her to understand what
I was doing and get her to answer the questions without fully disclosing that
it was about a cat. It helped that she couldn’t hear well especially on the
phone. So she answered the lady with a series of “yeses” and I brought them the
cat—a total surprise to her. That cat, Sabrina, gave them years of joy and
delight.
Virginia
had lost her job in the factory when she was still in her 40s and decided,
rather than look for another job, she would dust off her paints that she had
enjoyed in high school and become a professional artist. Her work was fun just
like her—mostly life-like animals painted on natural surfaces especially on
pieces of wood and bark. She was gifted at copying photographs and she sold a
lot of them. She loved to find old metal trays or milk cans and paint scenes on
them. She was able to support herself with her painting and kept painting right
up to the end of her life.
She loved
her tomatoes. Every spring there would be hundreds of little containers in her
kitchen windows in preparation and anticipation of the season ahead. After she
moved them outdoors she would talk about their progress at length. She would
can sauce, paste, juice and salsa. She had fresh tomatoes all winter until the
next spring when the whole process would start again.
One of
her lifetime passions was dancing. She loved the beat of the Big Bands. She
loved dressing to the 9’s and looking really “hot”. She loved wearing high
heels and swishy skirts. She and her husband started dancing together on their
first date and were at a loss when there
were fewer and fewer live bands that played “their” music. Dancing was a great
source of pure joy for Virginia.
Her
greatest inspiration for me was her love of letter writing. After I moved away,
10 years ago, I got my first taste of this dying art. Especially as her hearing
went, we could always communicate through our written words. As she aged we
wrote more and more often. I would always recognize her perfectly formed “hand”
when her letters arrived. Every other week we exchanged bits and pieces of our
lives through lengthy letters. It was so fun to use this form to slow down and
reflect on the week—picking out the high points and putting them into
irresistible stories that brought to life the most mundane. I even received a
letter in the mail after I had heard that she had died.
She was a
natural storyteller and loved to delve into the past with memories that
thrilled me. The many unusual adventures of her life took on Gothic porportions when she got going. She was a product of her time. Even though she lived her
younger life before women’s lib, not having children and working during the war
she definitely gave her the flavor of being an independent woman. This was
mixed with traditional marital values. She, for example, would never put
herself before her husband in anything. She, at the same time, didn’t forget
who she was in any given situation.
It was no
surprise when I heard that she had died. She had some health problems that she
never complained about and had gotten totally frail and vulnerable. She
admitted in her letters that she was suffering and that it was challenging to
endure. Mostly her concern was for her husband because he was being so stoic
and miserable about getting old and it was dragging Virginia down to be around his
pessimism. Still, up until the end—and they were married 70 years—she found
only loving things to say about their relationship. He was more forthcoming
about the hard work marriages took to endure. Virginia took it in stride.
I miss
Virginia. She died a month ago. She was 90 years old. Not living close to her
makes it more difficult for me now to find ways to remind myself that she is no
longer sitting in her little house writing me a letter or enjoying one of mine.
She was a delightful, steady friend that I loved with all my heart. What a
sparkling being of light she was!
