Virginia

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!