“You captured him, honey!” I exclaimed, and she had.
It felt so good to be doing something other than buying champagne or making pigs-in-blankets.
This year, for the first time ever, I was in no mood for New Year’s Eve.
I didn’t want to sing Auld Lang Syne.
I simply couldn’t bear to think of everyone I had lost in 2014, and how my world will be diminished by their absence.
Some of the losses were timely, even expected, others cruelly premature. Yet all of these people had given so much to me, and I wasn’t ready to let go.
My home is scattered with photos of my lovely mother-in-law, Pat Denker, from her early childhood on a Nebraska farm to her final years at Walnut Creek Nursing Center in Kettering.
I missed her so much – and not only the vibrant, stylish world traveler I had first met, or the doting “Momo” who lavished so much love and attention on my kids.
I missed the woman who, despite her long battle with dementia, maintained her sweet, social disposition, wheeling around the nursing home like an official goodwill ambassador, blowing kisses and wishing the residents good night. She died Nov. 28 at 85.
And there are others I am missing. Too many.
We lost Kristi Sacksteder Frazier, our former babysitter — a beautiful young mother who fought breast cancer with everything she had to be there for her husband and two young children.
On my bedside table is a “Reader’s Journal” written by my longtime friend Laura Heiser, with whom I’ve been carrying on a passionate conversation about books since our college years at Miami University. She was my “book fairy” who would mail a recent favorite without explanation in a manila envelope.
I pictured us as old women on the porch, still carrying on about books. But Laura, a dedicated lawyer, retired to North Carolina last year, only to be stricken with pancreatic cancer seven months later. She died July 24, four days after her 57th birthday. She wanted no gifts for her birthday, only for me to read passages from her favorite book, “To Kill A Mockingbird.”
I couldn’t help thinking of Dr. John Minardi, father of my beloved lifelong friend Carolyn Petrick, while watching “The Theory of Everything” and “The Imitation Game” – two movies about brilliant, tortured scientists. Jack was probably the most brilliant person I ever knew, but unlike Alan Turing and Stephen Hawking, he led a rich, fulfilling personal life.
Despite his natural shyness Jack wooed, and won, a lovely young nurse, Joan Ferris, and together they raised eight children, even taking in a few stray kids like myself.
Jack died from cancer Nov. 17, at 85. In the eyes of the world, legacy might be his distinguished career as a University of Dayton professor, or his research for UD.
He held 13 patents, but he held something else far dearer: Eight children, 49 grandchildren, 11 great-grandchildren (and counting). Each and every one a very distinct individual, but with a strong foundation of faith, family, and integrity. And love, that most of all.
As I approached the New Year, I found myself holding conversations with people who aren’t here any more. I can’t delete their voicemails or even their numbers from my contact list.
I wanted desperately to call my honorary little brother, Brian Zimmer, who, as the best friend of my sister Beth, practically grew up in my home. When you’re 10 years old, it’s not easy to find a kid who will talk about God, the afterlife, the meaning of existence, and in Brian I found a soulmate.
Brian grew up to become an amazing poet, and he never stopped being a seeker. When I became too preoccupied with the day-to-day demands of existence and child-rearing, I knew I could count on Brian’s wicked wit and questing heart. I always could count on him to shake me out of complacency, to make me think about life on a deeper level.
But we lost him, too, Nov. 5, at the age of 56.
Maybe I approached New Year’s Eve with such dread because I thought it meant saying a final goodbye to those “old acquaintances” who would no longer be in my life.
How do you move beyond such grief to an appreciation of all the ways that your loved ones are still with you?
Brian’s sister, Brenda Gibson of Kettering, knows a lot about learning to live beyond loss, having lost her beloved husband, Gene, only two years earlier. “Gratitude is the only way I have been able to move on after losing Gene and now, Brian,” she said. “And it’s a work in progress. Gratitude for the love I shared with each of them as husband and brother. Gratitude for the ways they changed my life and changed me. I am certainly a different person because of their love. And lastly, gratitude that I was given the opportunity to love such beautiful, special men. In some ways, the grief is a gift because it’s a reminder of how much I loved that it can hurt so much.”
She’s right, of course. This New Year, I should remember the way my life has been forever blessed by Kristi’s courage and fierce mother love. By Pat’s loving heart and by Jack’s gentle genius. By Laura’s kindness and literary astuteness. By Brian’s wicked wit and questing heart.
Instead of focusing on the way my world is diminished by their absence, I should focus on the ways I have been blessed by their presence.
I should link arms with my loved ones and sing “Auld Lang Syne.”
Contact this columnist at maryjomccarty@gmail.com
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