A Candle for Constance

Sometimes, all we are left with are the words. Old cards and letters, notes. A hand written will and testament, one would hope, if it was a family member. Nowadays, when we lose someone we love, there are the emails.

I don't mean to be morbid, but I was sure my dear friend Connie had emailed me a couple of photographs from Franklin, Nebraska. Snow. Trees. Nebraska-like scenes from her move to what had felt to her like the middle of nowhere, to be closer to family as she approached her late 80s.

I couldn't find any photo attachments, but I did find her last email to me, sent two years ago, before a series of set-backs that eventually led to her passing away a few months ago.

"Thank you so much for the lovely flowers - a pleasant surprise," she'd written. "I received a multitude of cards and many phone calls, a really nice birthday for an old lady - 87, can you believe it!!

"I have mixed feelings about moving back.  The weather in winter here is bad - last year I couldn't poke my nose out for about two months.  A friend took me to lunch for my birthday and since there is only one place in town, we had to go 27 miles to go somewhere different.  We had to go 80 miles to Best Buy for the memory etc. for my computer.  On the way though, we saw a shoe store that had my size and I got two pair of New Balance shoes that fit.

"I really miss the places to walk in Petaluma.  Though the people here are wonderful when I see them.  I play bridge on Tuesday and church on Sunday.  The rest of the time I'm alone.  I help at Kids Club now on Wednesday for about an hour and a half.  It's not all bad, Frances, it is just not 'home'. Thanks again for the flowers - they brighten up the room!!"

Re-reading Connie's emails eased the sadness I'd felt this Monday morning after receiving a phone call from the oldest of her four 60-something sons. I'd tried to call Connie for her birthday, September 11th of all days of the year. We had celebrated her 80th birthday in the activity room at Petaluma's Senior Appartments the day before the fateful 9/11. Three of her four sons had assembled around their matriarch for a rare, family gathering. They'd had to hire rental cars to travel back home, across the stunned United States.

Connie's line was no longer available. I'd hoped this meant that she was being taken care of in a nursing home, some 50 miles from nowhere maybe, but still in the realms of the here and now. I sent a card to her last address and wrote that I was looking forward to hearing from her.

The call came a couple of weeks later, after sufficient time for my card to have traveled its way to Nebraska and on to Jim's home in Colorado.

Connie would have been 89 this fall. How she loved this time of year. Not too warm, not too windy. Born in 1921 in Toledo, Ohio, her mother had abandoned her to grandparents, having run away with a Vaudevillain chain that trailed through the country in the '30s. I'd like to think Connie's ma might have been one of Fred Evans' famous 12 'dimpled dancing darlings', as her daughter was a lifelong lover of ballroom dancing, always on the look out for the perfect pair of heels.

Born the same year as Scottish actress Deborah Kerr, actor/director Peter Ustinov and Britain's Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, Connie was a class act. A single mom in the '50s and '60s, she'd raised her four sons single handedly before making a move to California, first to San Diego, and later, in her sixties, to Petaluma.

She came into my life by way of a good, old fashioned 'Help Wanted' ad in the Argus Courier Newspaper. I'd been looking for a reliable part-time childminder for my first born son, a toddler with a keen independent streak who'd run rings around an inexperienced sitter.

Connie fit the bill like no one else. And over the years, she became a surrogate grandmother to me, great-grandma to own my three boys. Always available, always with a sense of humor (essential when employed in the realm of the multiple young male) and there in a profoundly comforting way in a life so far from my own childhood home and extended family.

She'd liked to talk on the phone about books and politics and real estate. She'd hankered after coming back home to Petaluma. I couldn't find one single photo of Connie in my files, she'd had that way about her. Part of the fabric of our lives and yet content to take a back seat in the limelight of the memory books. This post is dedicated to Constance Weaver. Connie, I hope it's not windy up there.

 

Comments

[meloni]

Oh how lovely. And how important we all know she must have been for a busy mom with three busy boys. Tears and good thoughts for Constance.

[Lesley]

I never knew her second name was Weaver. That's my Mom's maiden name. Connie was a lovely lady. I am very sad to hear of her passing. It's been quite the year for tears... God Bless.

[Frances]

indeed it has xx

[Lindsey]

Ah, I didn't even meet her, but that makes me very very sad. How happy she would have been to have been loved so much by many people, though xx

[Frank Simpson]

The best "photo" is the one in your mind...

[Frances]

I have some great images of Connie in my mind, you are so right, Frank. The best one was one of the last ones, a few years ago, when she blithely climbed to the top of the bleachers at Carter Field in the sunshine on a spring evening, during her last visit to Petaluma to watch my son Luc play baseball.