In the past few weeks I’ve been mostly off the grid; only recently have I started taking baby steps to rejoin my favorite online communities. After my last post, I began to mentally prepare for a trip to see family in central New York State. It had been almost a year since my sister Shirley died. While I was looking forward to seeing her family, I also knew it would be painful. So I gave myself two weeks to plan and pack.
Adding to my anxiety was an invitation to speak at a Celebration of Life for my cousin Elaine who had died a month before my sister. Her daughter Lia, her only child and her primary caregiver when she became ill, asked me to speak. I couldn’t say no. A few months before Elaine died, Lia gave me the opportunity to share memories with her through email. Elaine and I have an interesting history. She is why I moved to California. For a few years, she was my employer, and it was at her candle factory that I had an accident that upended my life. (You can read about the accident here.) It’s a memory that haunts me, but it wasn’t what I wanted to share with Elaine.
For the event, I revised what I did share with Lia and Elaine. I printed it out, in large type, fully prepared to read it calmly. When we got to New York, I was distracted by family issues and didn’t think about the event until the morning of. And then I thought I would simply fall apart.
They held the celebration in the visitor’s center of the Auriesville Shrine, the gift store on one side of the low round building, a cluster of tables and chairs on the other, facing a bank of windows that looked out onto the Mohawk River.
It was a true celebration of Elaine’s life with her sisters, her daughter, and our cousins taking turns sharing memories, often through tears. There was singing and music and a slide show highlighting moments of Elaine’s life.
When it was my turn to speak, I tried to be relaxed, greeting the crowd with “Hey, everybody.” But with the first two words of my speech, I started crying. I thought I wouldn’t be able to read it at all. But I got through it. It was important for me to do this for Elaine and for Lia. Here’s what I had to say:
Elaine and I have so much history together and yet so little compared to others. I don’t remember Elaine from before I was 15 and she came to NY from California for a visit.
My memory is not good, and others’ are likely better than mine, but this is how I remember it:
We were all at my sister Shirley’s farm, having some big family get-together.
At some point in the evening, Elaine sat outside with us “kids” in a circle and told us stories about her life in California.
I remember feeling in awe of her, this warm, smiling woman who had managed to escape small-town life and survive.
She was living in California, a place as exotic in my imagination as France or Spain would be in real life.
She must have had the candle factory starting up because I said something to her about working there. She invited anyone and everyone to come work there.
After a few years, I took her up on it and our history began.
While those years in the beginning were rough for both me and Elaine—she was trying to keep her business afloat, I was trying to keep myself afloat—because of it all … because of Elaine, I eventually met the love of my life, my best friend for life, the man I’ve been with now for almost 40 years.
What a gift Elaine gave me when she said, “Sure, come on out to California.” She helped set my life in motion. She set me on the path I needed to go on.
And what a gift she gave the world in the form of her beautiful, brilliant daughter Lia.
That’s what I’ll always remember about Elaine, the gifts she gave.
When I came back to my home in Florida, I found out that a piece I submitted to Visual Verse had been accepted and published. You can read it here: Still Life. Of course, it’s about cats. Here are my muses:
Marie at 1 Write Way 