Reconciliation. A revisit and an update.

My family web is a shrunken thing now. Sister Sharon died in April of this year, so unexpectedly that I still keep thinking sometimes in the middle of the night that I'll call her in the morning, so that I can ask her this or that about the “old days”.

In any event. Happy Birthday, Jackie. I trust you've found Sharon again.

These times reflect a darker ambience, a sensation that life as we think we know it seems about to change for the worse. I'd like to blithely say that denial is my successful weapon of choice, but I'd be lying. I've changed a bit of my daily non-routine routine (some call it “chaos”) and find I'm usually sleeping longer at night, I'm more evasive of verbal conflict and arguments, I procrastinate more things that I subconsciously think are going to be unpleasant than I usually would.

Sunshine come on back another day
I promise you I'll be singing
This old world, she's gonna turn around
Brand new bells'll be ringing

This weekend, I changed course and I dug into the boxes of papers and photos that I've had stored in my house since my mother's death in 2002. I have not, up until now, been able to achieve any level of ease in dealing with sorting and organization of these items. It's always dicey when you analyze your own actions, because sometimes the layers you peel back only make things more confused.  I believe that I'm now mentally searching for a way to deal with some of that psychological clutter that I've let my brain wheel in an overloaded invisible wagon behind me. Mentally putting my house in order? Or just bailing out the boat a bit of the bilge so that I can float lighter through each day? I don't know. (note to self: still need to get through the box.) 

Some who have family have real physical family members, people they spend time with on a regular basis. Some people have families who live in a vacuum – they may talk about them, but there is no physical connection there, nor many real ties of everyday or at least consistent communication and caring. Some have families who are mostly figures shaped into the tapestry of the past, people long gone and stored in the minds of those left behind only through individual memory or personal myth.

Most of my family is fading into my own personal lockbox of memories. The reasons behind this are due to generational stretches between my siblings and I and my mother's generation and my own – I was a late in life child for my parents.  The one figure who will always be more mystery to me than reality is my oldest half-sister Jacquie. And as I was digging through a box of mixed photos and papers, I came across an envelope containing what must have been the last letter she received and somehow, the last letter she sent before her death in June of 1973.

Jacquie's own history is a curiously peculiar one, spanning the Depression, WWII, poverty, the divorce and remarriage of my mother at a time when most good women didn't leave their husbands, the Fifties and beatniks, the early 60's and music, the late 60's and civil rights, and the emergence of an increased acceptance of women in athletics and other areas of civil equality.  She was born 70 years ago in the midst of the Depression in the dusty, arid Yakima valley in Central Washington to a young mother who had already realized that she had made a poor choice in spouses. There are images of those years that belie the truly difficult life the family struggled under, images that capture the time in grays and blacks and whites and sepia tones and that airbrush the crushing poverty with a Tobacco Road romanticism. Scenes that mask the desperate scent of no money, no jobs, no hope.

I could write and rewrite this text all day in an attempt to color this story with the anecdotal back-story told by my mother and other sister and I still wouldn't be successful in portraying the sense of daily fear and fatigue and anxiety that I know my mother carried with her as she raised my sisters. There was emotional damage inflicted by the uncertainty of living with battling parents in a world where gigantic nations clashed and the threat of Japanese bombing – external and international terrors – was very real.  There was deprivation of resources and a lack of mobility that was paralyzing. Where do you go when you are a woman with small children, no advanced education and there are few jobs? Who do you turn to when your own family has rejected your choices and then turn their backs when you need support?  

Jacquie was a sensitive soul, a spirit as bright and shiny as the inside of a newly opened daffodil, and such spirits are ripest for depression. They also become spirits who turn inward and avoid whatever conflict finds them if at all possible. My sisters fought with each other over everything when they were kids. Far beyond the typical sister conflict I see in my own kids. My other sister has the Welsh and Irish temperament so visible in my mom and has the ability to throw out anger in verbal and emotional rockets so powerful that most around her duck and cover.  Jacquie was the opposite. Shut down, shut down, remain calm. She would fight back in defense and sometimes in a more covert and cunning way so that my other sister would pick up the firepower of blame from my mom.  This dynamic, too, is typical among siblings, but there was intensity to these two that went too deep that some emotional wounds never healed well into adulthood.  

So very different as personalities they were, that by the time my sisters were in their teens, my mother had had enough of the constant hitting and bickering, scratching and clawing, things breaking, tears and anger. One day, she marched into the bedroom they shared, this would have been in the early 1950's, and demanded that they tie their wrists together with a rope stretched between and that they beat each other up until they were finished for all time. At first they didn't believe her. Then they knew she meant it. Then she followed through with the threat. Know that it was at a time when there was no such thing as family counseling, teen mediation, child psychology – at least in rural towns of the 1950's.

And so this is what they did. Left and right wrists were bound loosely together but tight enough to be secure; fist flews into faces, fingernails scratched arms, kicks were landed on unguarded shins, clothes were torn, and hair was pulled out. My mother looked on as semi-neutral monitor and would not let them stop until she saw that both were so exhausted that they couldn't go on with the battle. They were both good-sized girls, overweight though muscular, and it took quite awhile from all accounts.

My mother eventually allowed the sisters to walk away, depleted from the fight, with painful, swollen black-eyes and black and yellowing bruises, angry scratches and torn clothes. It succeeded in changing the day-to-day dynamic of their interaction and accomplished a measure of peace in the house. I'll never be certain that the inevitable result was the result my mother foresaw or intended.  She often talked of this time, I suppose in a cautionary way, as a commentary on what constant bickering can force a parent to do.  I think she was proud that her strategy had succeeded, at least superficially, and brought that desired quiet. There was also an edge to her story when she would relate it.  She had an unconfessed knowledge that her method had precipitated a schism between the sisters that would refuse to mend. She was also, subliminally, aware that not only this one solitary “Match of the Titans” event, but all the uncertain years and parenting choices leading up to it as well had compounded a problem that would not be “fixed” by one big blowout campaign.

By the time Jacquie left for college in 1954, she and Sharon were not even speaking except when absolutely necessary. Jacquie rarely returned home, except in the event of family crisis, such as when my brother was hit by a car in 1961. Ever after that, at family events, if one sister showed up to a holiday, the other sister would purposefully not be there. Jacquie rarely showed up. My mother tried to maintain contact with her and we received bits and pieces of news over the years of what she was doing and where she had been. She never moved out of Oregon, so was never very far from home. But mentally and emotionally, she might as well have moved to another planet.

She attended University of Oregon, graduating with a teaching degree in Art and Physical Education in 1958, the same year that I was born.  She became a teacher, a semi-professional bowler as she was a good athlete “for a big girl”, as my mother would sometimes condescendingly say in that maternal and irritating way of hers, and she also painted and entered art shows with her work. I know she had a ring of close friends – most of whom I rarely saw or even heard about. She could be a flirt and was often close to many men friends, but I suspect rarely was she in a relationship and never one that really mattered to her. Or more accurately, she never mattered enough to men, I think.  

Sunshine go away today
I don't feel much like dancing
Some man's gone, he's tried to run my life
Don't know what he's asking

These were still the days when a woman, unmarried by the time they reach their thirties, were called “old maids” and I often heard my mother refer to Jacquie when she spoke of her to others, as her old maid daughter. If Jacquie knew, she would have been deeply hurt, as she was a lonely soul and was always looking for the “right guy” though never overtly. She was active and social and she had a sparkle to her that obscured very poor self-esteem; from what few writings I've read of hers, she was always, always deeply lonely. Alienated, one could say by choice, from her family, she had little direct and intimate connection to those who loved her.  I think she saw that familial love as a damaged thing; if she could not be accepted for who she was and how she appeared, and then the only safe thing was to stay away from further pain.  

He tells me I'd better get in line
Can't hear what he's saying
When I grow up I'm going to make it mine
But these aren't dues I been paying

She had little interaction with my other sister for many years – through the sixties and early seventies, to my knowledge; there was no real contact and certainly no sisterly heart-to-hearts.  The one major exception was when she was Maid of Honor at my sister's wedding in September of 1961. There was enough of a sibling connection to allow this familial celebration to be mutual. Beyond that, not much else.

Jacquie met and married a guy in late 1966, so unexpectedly that our family found out about the wedding three days before it occurred. I remember my parents frantically making arrangements to have the business secured enough that we could travel from our coastal SW Oregon town to Grants Pass, Oregon and attend the wedding. We met her new husband for the first time on their wedding day. It was not a fortuitous meeting.  On our way back home the next day, all my mother would say was, “he called me 'Ma'; no one calls me 'Ma'”. Her other biting comment was that Jacquie's new husband was just like “Riley” – my mother's first husband, a man who's name was rarely mentioned in our household. This event did not bode well.

Jacquie and Paul had one minor claim to fame. Jacquie was a track coach and she and Paul somehow were able to fund and take the first girl's track club, the Cinderbelles, to compete nationally out of the state of Oregon to an AAU national meet in Denver. I think it was in 1968 that this happened. Training with that team and going along on the trip to compete in her first AAU event was a young teenage runner by the name of Francie Larrieu, now Francie Larrieu-Smith, a Hall of Famer and four time Olympian.

I remember as a ten year old, going to a local meet somewhere in Coos Bay or Coquille, and assisting with the stopwatch on track. There were several future track stars there and my sister knew all of them. Steve Prefontaine caught a ride with us back to Marshfield High School, so the meet must have been in Coquille. There were always exotic and discordant parts to Jacquie because of the way she led her life, that none of us ever knew.
Piecing together these patches of memory brings little satisfaction or knowledge and yet it allows me to build a somewhat more complete picture of a woman I would have been honored to know better. A woman who very few now remember.

Sunshine go away today
I don't feel much like dancing
Some man's gone, he's tried to run my life
Don't know what he's asking

Through the next few years, several changes occurred in our family structure – deaths, financial changes, changes in jobs. My other sister suffered the death of her six year old in a car-bicycle accident in 1969, and then gave birth to her only daughter later that year.  These events served to begin a kind of healing in the relationship between the two siblings. By the early seventies, Jacquie's marriage had fallen apart, destroyed by her husband's extramarital affairs and his inability to maintain a job or some other typical relationship issue which we knew nothing about. By 1971, she grew tired of teaching and living in a community where everything she had done was still connected to Paul, and she made the decision to move to Eugene.

How much does it cost, I'll buy it
The time is all we've lost, I'll try it
But he can't even run his own life
I'll be damned if he'll run mine, Sunshine

Throughout 1972 and early 1973, Jacquie and Sharon grew close enough that letters were exchanged between the two and occasional phone calls. In 1971, Sharon gave birth to another son, who is Down's syndrome, and in late 1972, Jacquie traveled from Oregon to Seattle for the first time to visit the family over Christmas.  There was a general feeling that Jacquie was growing back to home and to family. Just the mere thought that her daughters were civil again, now in their thirties, but finally acting as sisters, was a source of relief and joy to my mother.  I know my mother felt that she had lost too much to lose another link of her family and the strengthening of their bond gave her a sense that things would be alright again.

Then on Mother's Day of 1973, my brother came over and told my mother that Jacquie was going to be calling from Eugene. By this time, we lived in Portland and we hadn't seen Jacquie since the New Year weekend when she had stopped by on her way home from Seattle.

My mother was confused as to why my brother would come over to tell us that Jacquie was calling, but before Larry could explain further, the phone rang. Jacquie informed us that she had just been operated on the past Wednesday, May 10, for malignant tumors in both groin and armpits and was in recovery at the hospital in Eugene.  She had lymphatic melanoma and it had spread to several lymph nodes. Five years previously, the year she went to the AAU track event, she had had a mole removed from her upper thigh which had not been thoroughly diagnosed or biopsied.  This was not uncommon in the 1960's, though there was knowledge that care had to be taken with suspicious moles that developed strangely, even at that time.  All those years, unprotected in the sun at track meets, no sunscreen and very fair skin. The affect of the sun and questionable medical procedures would prove fatal.

The prognosis wasn't good – around 6 months to perhaps a year. We traveled the two hours to Eugene and brought her home with us to convalesce.  In those days, she had only basic insurance through her job as part time office manager at a state government agency, which covered doctor's visits, not major surgery.  She had quit teaching years before and did not possess additional coverage – no one likely offered it in that time. The hospital covered the catastrophic charges of the surgery and the doctors and surgeons operated on an essentially pro bono basis.  The only charges that came out of pocket, my mother's pocket, were medication charges and medical equipment charges for around $250.

Jacquie spent two weeks with us, gaping holes in her upper thigh and wounds that didn't seem to heal under her arms. She insisted on returning to work in the last week of May and the first week of June 1973.

Working starts to make me wonder where
The fruits of what I do are going
He says in love and war all is fair
But he's got cards he ain't showing

In looking through papers last night, I came across the last letter she wrote to Sharon, on May 29, 1973. It reveals things I didn't know, of course, as a fourteen year old youngest sister.  She talks of her optimism. She indicates that Mother was the one to tell Sharon that Jacquie was terminally ill.  The letter speaks poignantly of reconciliation.

“This is a letter is probably a couple of weeks late but I really felt that Mom should tell you personally. It seems like I'm never happy unless I'm creating havoc in my family.

 

I want you to know that I'm relatively optimistic about the whole thing – I'm not ill. I get headaches but that is just from tension and I have my own little drug stash I get to get high on.  My doctor trained at Mayo Clinic and seems to know his stuff. I'm sure it is all in my head….

When I say I'm optimistic, I know lymphatic melanoma is not curable, but it will give me time to get to tell people I love how much they have meant to me. It won't make up for the neglect of all the years but I'm glad I've been given a chance. The doctor says I can do anything I want to – not even to take it easy.”

Jacquie had just days. She was able to do some of the things she wanted and had never done, little things that touch a personal spot in the soul and polish the edges off of a woman's age.

“I told you that I got my ears pierced and I got my hair cut in full shag the other day, and it looks nice, too.  I have to wear a hat in the sun at all times now – can you believe the irony of having a convertible when I have to stay out of the sun?  Nobody in this family gets a tan this year – you hear?!”

Jacquie's only splurge on her divorce from her husband two years previous had been to buy a used 1965 orange Mustang convertible with a black canvas top. And, of course, these were the '70's and the shag cut was the thing to have; frosted highlights, too.  I recall thinking she looked quite snazzy in her stretch brown pants with bell bottoms, freshly pierced ears and frosted blond shag cut. And she owned a convertible! To a fourteen year old, Mother seemed ancient in her early fifties, but Jacquie still appeared young and fresh in her thirties. She was, of course, old enough to be my mother.

“Well, as soon as I control my headaches, I'm going to start on a round of 3 month affairs – right now I can see some difficulties in going out to dinner and asking to be seated as near the ladies' room as possible (my headaches make my stomach upset). I'm sure you appreciate the problems that could create with a prospective liaison.”

Life. Optimism. The future of us. Smooth the waters of the past, so that we can push out into the waves a bit further, for a little longer. Pull who we love and what we love close to us, around us like a warm blanket, which gives us comfort and lends a strength we may not see inside ourselves. Underpin our days with caring and contact and not isolation and fear.

“Anyway, I'm sleepy now so I'm going to close – I know I can't make your mind any easier but believe me, it's not something to be sad about.  I hope we've put some hard feelings behind us and we can go on fighting like we always have. I'm probably going to be ornerier than I've ever thought of being before.  Love to everybody.  Bye for now, honeys all.”

Jacquie passed away on June 10, 1973, exactly a month after her surgery. The surgery had likely separated cancer cells which traveled to her brain and the headaches were the indicator that this had occurred. The accelerated metastasis gave her far less time than the doctors indicated to her in post-op prognosis. Jacquie was 36 years old.

Hold this fragile idea of community and family as carefully as we can because it is a vulnerable thing that can be damaged if our rights are limited and our recourse to services and justice is denied.

How much does it cost, I'll buy it
The time is all we've lost, I'll try it
But he can't even run his own life
I'll be damned if he'll run mine, Sunshine

Reinforce this society so that it is a further extension of family and community. Shore up institutions and social foundations so that they can fulfill their true support roles as bastions against catastrophic events that can and do happen to all of us.

This is the march ahead of us. This is what being a Democrat means to me. We all have a bit of reconciliation ahead. It's even more apparent to me today that we can't wait.  We can't think we have more time than we really do.

In the envelope with both letters, there was a clipping. You know, I'm now not certain if this letter was ever sent to Sharon. And how do I ask? I will have to ask her somehow. It is a poem that apparently appeared in the Atlantic Monthly sometime in 1961 – that's the only information I could find about it on the internet.  Jacquie must have carried it with her all the time through those years and then sent it to Sharon. (September 28, 2007: I know now that Sharon saw the letter; I asked her about it near two weeks before she died in April. She was unclear how it wound up back in my mother's box. Some mysteries aren't all that important and have no relevance to anything, but I still wonder how a letter sent by Jackie wound  up back in Jackie's possession at the end.)

 

Love Song

By John R. Nash

This, that I carry like a butterfly,
prisoner in my cupped and outstretched hands,
is, of all things, small,
But great in its demands
and bears within itself a world of power.
I close my hand upon it like a wall.
For this there can be neither time nor season
And of all things upon the earth
It has the least to do with reason.
(I open my hand, finger from palm. Look!)
This holds within it life, death, and birth;
used wrong, there is no harm it cannot do.
Look long, look carefully;
this is for you.

 

I've opened my hand to roll out another personal story on our table of the internet. Don't you think that stories massage and feed and cement the connections between us? Connections that, if maintained and encouraged, forge stronger the political bonds of our community. We grow our personal history, we grow the history of our community, our nation. From that history, good or bad, comes the fertilizer for the body politic of the future.

Will we grow it as a weakened thing, shriveled in the face of world condemnation, divided and impotent against the infestation of factionalized pests? Or can we still make our nation, our history, our communities stronger for the generations ahead?

If we are so lucky as to be able to pass history on. If they are so lucky as to be able to listen. And learn. 

Happy birthday, Jackie.

I promise you I'll be singing
This old world, she's gonna turn around
Brand new bells'll be ringing