endings and beginnings

I should have known that 2008 would have one more shot to sling.  I was just cleaning up from our delayed holiday dinner when a call came that a my mother's best friend, very dear to all of us, was dying.  I put Mom in the car and we rushed first to the hospital and then to her home where she wanted to die.  Fran was a nun when I first met her as a teenager and after she left the convent, she didn't marry.  She was like the favorite aunt and no family gathering was complete without her.  That evening, while she was still lucid we all, including our children and their spouses, were able to get there in time to tell her how much she meant to us.  That happens so rarely and was her final gift to us.  Years ago, people used to speak of "making a good death".  This is the first time I've ever seen it happen outside of fiction.

However, while we were gathered at Fran's house, my mother learned that another friend had died the weekend before, while we were snowed in.  A third friend had gone just before Christmas.  These four women, all in their eighties, had known each other between twenty and fifty years respectively.  They'd seen each other through loss and joy and all of life's passages.  I realized that the writer in me was taking over, perhaps to combat grief, but still spinning a story.   I saw them all as young women coming of age during World War II, wearing bobby sox and snoods.  With all the books written about the men left who fought in the war, I'm wondering who has written about these amazing women.

 I realize that my mother no longer has a close friend of her own age to share things with.  I don't know how well I would handle being the last leaf on the tree.  Right now, she seems to be happiest with her great-grandchildren, three so far and one on the way.  There are beginnings every day.  I think that part of our job is to record the endings, the passages, the stories passed down to us, to see to it that no one is swept away by time.  I suppose that's one reason I write history, but even those whose work in contemporary are creating something that will tell generations to come how we felt and how we coped with life's universal dilemmas.

OK, enough philosophical musing.  I wish all of you a good 2009. 

Sharan

Comments

[Carola]

Sharan, I remember my mother talking about how all her friends--and relatives her age-- were gradually going. I'm sorry your mother lost so many so quickly.

I've long wanted to write a novel based on my mother's and godmother's stories of their experiences in London during the Blitz. Some day...

[Dani]

I think lifewriting can be very comforting in such times. Story Circle Network has some great resources for those wanting to work on their memoirs.

http://www.storycircle.org

[Sharan Newman]

Thank you both. I think that the experience of women in the forties and fifties is something ripe for writing about before they are gone. But also, I don't think kids today realize how tough these women were. They only see the image on Nickelodeon of happy moms. I don't know enough about the 20th century but someone should try it.