“On the last day of
The last year of the last life,
What shall matter most?”
That was written by a 45 year old woman whose funeral I attended yesterday. She died suddenly and unexpectedly, leaving behind two stunned parents, sisters, a husband and four kids who are just old enough to miss their mom the most.
She was in apparently perfect health, suffered a massive stroke and died.
Anne was not a friend of mine. She lived the first four years of her life across the street from me on Queen Avenue, just up from the band stand and boat dock at Lake Harriet. I was the babysitter.
Anne was the middle child in a family of three little girls. She was my younger sister Katie’s first best friend. I sat for them for several years on Queen and was very sad, along with my parents and those siblings who were the same age as the girls, when they sold their house and moved to the wilds of Mahtomedi. My brother Andy, who is the same age as Anne’s older sister--they walked to kindergarten together, every day. This got Andy teased mercilessly, as no five year old wants to be accused of having a girlfriend. Andy has four older brothers. Teasing was the air he breathed. Anyway, Andy told me he felt sorry for them when they moved away. Why would anyone leave Lake Harriet for White Bear?
Uh…because they could, that’s why.
My own sorrow at losing my primo babysitting gig was alleviated when they asked if I’d be interested in being their weekend nanny the following summer.
Let’s see; I could get a waitressing job like all my friends or I could schlep out to White Bear Lake and live in a gorgeous beachfront home with my own room where my duties would be to play with and make lunch for the same little girls I’d been playing with and making lunch for since I was 11. This was not a difficult decision.
I even took lifeguard classes at school so I’d be confident of my abilities to protect the kids on their back yard beach. There was a small single sail boat at my disposal when the parents were at home. I did that job for two years. It was great.
Anne and Katie remained friends for a while. Katie came out to the lake with me on the occasional weekend. As so often happens in life, high school, college and young adulthood sent them down their separate paths. Social media made it easy for them to reconnect as adults and they stayed in touch.
Among her many accomplishments, Anne was a poet. She published a haiku online every morning.
Several of them were printed in the funeral program, including the one I started with.
I’ve only written one haiku in my life.
“Josie slipped on ice
Did not know the word ‘coccyx’,
Called it her ‘butt stick’.”
Not very musical, I know.
The haiku is not a form that resonates naturally with me. Anne’s are wonderful! Like this one, called Book Addiction:
“One is not enough.
The need is never ending.
More shelves required.”
That’s the story of my life!
The funeral took place in a beautiful church in one of the prettiest neighborhoods in Minnesota. It was a warm, cloudless spring day and the boulevard in front of the church was filled with blooming crab apple trees. As though nature herself were trying to console the bereaved family, assuring them that Anne is good, life is great and all will be well in the end.
I woke with these in my head:
Life is never fair.
Talent, brains and happiness
In one tiny self.
Cut short suddenly
Stories stop in the middle
Death is never fair.
And:
Set my sail westward
I seek a new horizon,
I have learned to fly.
She and her sisters will always be little kids in my memory, wearing damp bathing suits and running along the beach.
The same night I heard she died, I got an email from brother Bob: a new member of the family had just arrived: Ginger Rose. And so it goes…