Mourning, in Color

Growing up on Victorian novels, as I sort of did, in a household of women highly influenced by Victorian culture, I made the acquaintence of a lot of characters dressed in widow's weeds. The  custom of wearing mourning was long past, of course, in the 1950s, and even so, it would be nearly thirty more years before death would touch our immediate family and I would have any first-hand idea of how these people close to me would deal with it. My grandmother, never opposed to a dramatic gesture, startled us one Thanksgiving by setting a place for a recently-departed close family friend who had sometimes joined us for that holiday. Sitting down for the meal at the long table with its twenty places, we realized there was an extra chair, a place setting, and an upside-down wine glass for "Auntie Vera", who had recently died, alone, in her Manhattan apartment. She had been a childhood friend of my grandmother and her two sisters, and was the illegitimate daughter of the wealthiest man in the tiny central New York town they lived in after leaving the family farm. One day, the father had appeared with Vera - a baby - in his arms, handed her to his wife, and announced that they would be raising her with the family. In 1900 I suppose that could actually happen in real life, not merely in books. Aunt Vera never married. She lived in New York, where my grandparents visited her several time a year, and she'd also come up to see us once or twice each year, filling the house with her big laugh and red-haired personality, settling in for martinis and story-telling about her travels in Europe and elsewhere. She and my father especially liked each other; he had irreverent names for her that would set off the laughter, and I remember her visits fondly. I still have a doll with an elaborate embroidered costume that she brought me from an Eastern European country, and a small box of similar style that has always held my small hair clips and barrettes. The first time I was ever taken to New York was just before Christmas in 1957, when I was five. My grandparents, parents and I saw My Fair Lady on Broadway; went to a smorgasbord at the Piccadilly Hotel that held the biggest shrimp I had ever seen in my life; saw the skaters at Rockefeller Center and the dinosaur skeletons at the Museum of Natural History; and the magical, sparkling Christmas displays at Lord&Taylor. All of those memories, especially the last one, are connected in my mind with Aunt Vera.

 Her death was the first time those icy fingers reached into the secure world of my childhood family. My maternal grandmother's parents had died before I was born, though not a long time before, and they seemed to hover around the fringes of our life along with the family friends who had died in World War II, close to recent memory and still affecting the adults in some way I didn't understand, but outside my own world. They came to life in stories and in the photographs in elaborate gilded frames - Victorian again - on tables in the parlor. I asked questions about them; listened; puzzled; remembered the pieces as if I knew I'd need them someday.

I think I remember Aunt Vera's death and that subsequent Thanksgiving because there must have been something askew, something disturbing that I picked up on. I think it may have been my grandmother's unexpressed grief, and the general dismay about the loneliness of Vera's death: she had been found in her apartment after some days. There was the initial phone call, then more from lawyers and friends, and then this unprecedented Thanksgiving gesture which someone in the family must have criticized. And that's all I remember; Vera then joined the people in the portraits, except that I had my own memories to add this time.

(This will be the first in a series of blog posts about my family, which may or may not be posted one after the other.)

Comments

[zhoen]

The past is so near. My mother, as a child, knew of a family that held a damaged child in the attic, an open, dark secret.

Grief is such a singular experience, with unexpected contortions, especially when unexpressed.

Thank you for your Aunt Vera's story.

[dale]

You have such a sure hand with narrative, everything dropping into place in its time. The way grief makes its quiet entrance here is really gripping.

I don't mean to say it's artificial. It's obviously heartfelt. But you make our hearts feel it as yours did, & that takes art.

[Beth]

Thank you, Zhoen and Dale.

[marja-leena]

Like Dale says! Wonderful way to honour and record family, and it must be rather difficult too when you are still in mourning yourself. I'm sure it's also a way to ease the grief as well when one reflects on memories of loved ones. Thank you for sharing.

[Beth]

Marja-Leena, there's a lot I still don't feel like writing about, and may never want to write about, but I do find that thinking back on my family is helpful. I'm not sure why or where it's going, but I trust the writing process to help me sort that out!

[mary]

Beth - this is so good. And I agree that thinking back on the family is helpful.. I have certainly found it so.