These boys enjoy the sun as Yankel Cat lay under the ceiling fan in the bedroom.
Yes is was two weeks ago today that we had snow and if the worm had turned that was the turning. Two weeks ago I was covering my tender tomato and pepper plants with a sheet to protect them from a frost. Two weeks ago today I meandered to breakfast wearing a heavy jacket. Two weeks ago today seems like an eternity ago.
Today it was in the 80s and the sky was azure. I felt a certain optimism. Yet there was sadness in the air. There was a memorial service for a former library friend. Her son and neighbors arranged an outdoor memorial service in her backyard; a yard filled with plants of every sort. A kind of wild garden, an absolute epitome of the women herself. And, as an aside, an old friend from the library showed up from Connecticut and actually hugged me. It was bittersweet seeing her again. I had been a total asshole when she worked at the library while she finished her MLS. I am reminded of the Paul Simon song "Still Crazy After All These Years". She seemed so glad to seem me I just had to smile. We talked about the old times ad had a glass of cheer...still crazy....
It was a wonderful memorial for the master of the backhanded compliment. She was an immigrant, a stranger in a not so strange land. She was a person who valued bluntness. And was she ever. She worked alongside my pal Jerry and the two of them were quite a pair: he murdering the English language and she bluntly exposing the truth. My favorite of her compliments was to a friend, actually Sophie, and she said to her "most heavy women could not wear a outfit like that but on you it looks good". She was a good German woman, a child in Nazi Germany and emigrated after the war. Durrkopp was her maiden name and her father, as she told it, raised horses for the Nazis. They were spared some of the atrocities of war because of this. She emigrated after the war and married. The couple them came to MSU where, according to her, she killed her husband by making him quit smoking whereupon he took up chewing gum and choke on said chewing gum and died. And she would bluntly tell this story time and again.
The last time I had a chance to speak to her was at Jerry's wake, not to be confused with his memorial tree service. She was 89 at the time and made a point to tell everyone this. I worried about her driving as she never got over the fact that there was no Autobahn in the States yet she drove as if she were on it. She made it to a few of the Library's social after that but really stopped coming after she turned 90 or so. She grew addled and ended up in an extended care facility and died shortly thereafter. Her neighbors today spoke of caring for her in her own house until she became so addled it was no longer practical. She was 93 when she died. Her neighbor Rita, with whom she spoke nightly, quoted a line from Emily Dickinson, which I shall parse here:
Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,
And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.
I've heard it in the chillest land
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.
There will always be a part of me that will miss her: her bluntness, her love of orchids, her love of nature, her love of her dogs, her love of learning new things and her lead foot on the gas. It was a beautiful day for a memorial and a fitting tribute to my friend.
I enjoy your writing.
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