It was the perfect summer day, and they were, in my eyes, the perfect family. A long table was set up in basic but pretty style, and the children, all grown and in their 20’s and 30’s, gathered round as we pulled into the driveway. JoAnn, Kim and Kira had just spent the weekend with me in upstate New York, lounging by the pool and I had just driven them back to Cape Cod, where JoAnn’s family was gathering outside for dinner. We tumbled out of the car, stretched, and were immediately taken in by the family.
The matriarch, Barbara, flitted to and fro, welcoming us in friendly and embracing, if no-nonsense, fashion, and I instantly adored her. Mother-figure to all, she moved economically through the yard. I watched her keenly, trying to decipher which parts of her went to JoAnn, and which parts came from JoAnn’s father. They seemed like such an idyllic family, but maybe everyone’s family seems that way to everyone not in it.
On this magnificent summer afternoon, as the sun slanted down and the breeze of the Cape roamed peacefully over the yard, I felt like I was part of something, even if on the outskirts, and it felt good to belong, however peripherally. It was something only Mrs. MacKinnon could create, and as we sat there talking with her children, she looked content and happy with the job she had completed. They were a good bunch of people. There’s something very telling in that, something very wonderful to witness. It was something I would forever seek out in all my friendships and relationships, and it’s something that she taught me starting on that sunny summer day. Love was what mattered. Hard, tough, consuming, painful, difficult, impossibly-won love. It showed in the lines already etched in her smile, in the beautiful crinkled skin around her mischievous eyes. They twinkled and sparkled when she got to the end of a story or the delicious punch-line of a joke. They implored and challenged when she taught a lesson. They were soft and watery when she was holding it all in. If the eyes are a window to the soul, hers revealed a woman of remarkable resilience, a woman who had been through some hellish times, and a woman who earned the right to ease into a chair and survey her family buzzing happily around her.
I would see her periodically when I would visit JoAnn, and she was a joy to behold every time. My eternal quest for mother figures led me back to her side whenever we found ourselves at a party together. We would end up sitting in a pair of chairs or on a couch, sipping tea and chatting about the past and the present, and over the years I’d remember key stories that she would hasten to bring out in fuller and richer detail. I loved listening to her talk. I would sit there for long stretches, rapt and searching for all the wisdom she had to offer.
She loved and understood JoAnn in a way that was both tender and tough. She protected her when she needed it, and made her fend for herself when she needed it more. It always made JoAnn better, and stronger, and the love between them was a testament to how good families stuck together. It was the same with all her children, and they each in turn loved her. She was the heart of the family when they lost their father.
Somehow she remained strong, relying on her faith to see her through, and it always did. There was something magnificent and almost Zen-like in her spiritual beliefs. They were bound to the religion in which she was raised, but she transcended such strictness with a resigned air as if she knew all the secrets of the world and there was nothing left to surprise her. I admired such surety. I implored her to teach me to be so calm, to be so certain, to be so at peace, and to trust that everything would unfold exactly as it should. Both JoAnn and I had too many doubts, we had too many worries, and she was sometimes at odds with her Mom, but never in an angry way, never in a way that threatened the love between mother and daughter.
I remember visiting JoAnn when she had moved back home for a bit. She stayed over the garage and gave me one of the kids’ bedrooms in the main house while her Mom slept downstairs where she had moved her bedroom. JoAnn and I stayed out late and when we returned to the house I crept quietly up to my room, awakening early the next day to make it back home for something. I quietly padded downstairs and at the kitchen table was a cup of tea, hot and already steeping, along with a biscuit and a photocopy of a story from the scripture. While I sipped the tea and crunched in the biscuit, I really wanted no part of a bible story, especially at 6 in the morning. As I sat there, she came in and said she thought I might like to read it. She wasn’t forceful or even mildly coercive, so in deference to her home and her hosting, I read the story and we had a good talk about it. I like to think that it meant something to her, to listen to her and talk about something that was important to her, but really it meant more to me. I learned a lot in that little morning, a lesson I would take with me for life, and I think back often to that brief time at her kitchen table, when the rest of the world was still asleep.
It was at her son Wally’s wedding when Andy met her for the first time. She whispered some witty Irish remark as she shook his hand in the receiving line, and he was smitten from that moment onward. She had a similar spunk to his own beloved mother, the same life-worn well-earned prudence. At the wedding she was beaming with joy, as much as her New England mettle would allow. It was good to see her celebrate, surrounded again by family old and new.
The last time I saw her was at one of JoAnn’s fall parties. It had rained all day but was clearing just in time for the festivities. Tressie brought her over and we sat beside each other on the couch in JoAnn’s living room as the guests began to assemble. Never one for a big crowd, I was much happier sitting there and sharing a cup of tea, listening to old and new stories, sussing out lessons and other words for wisdom, still seeking out that mother figure, still needing that bit of nurturing that came so naturally to some.
We still need that. And we will miss it. It’s an emptiness that will never be filled, but in the memories and love she provided, something lives on. She would not be sad or upset to have transitioned into the next phase of wherever she may be headed. She embraced the end of her time as much as she embraced all of us lucky enough to come under her care.
For the moment, though, there is only the sadness of loss, the sense that this world glows a little dimmer now that such a light has gone out. JoAnn has a long winter ahead of her and we will do our best to be there for her when everything settles down, when the long dark days of the icy season threaten to overwhelm with that sense of barrenness. Yet her mother would not want us to dwell in such sorrow, she would want JoAnn to keep going, to walk on and enjoy the life she helped to make – the life she taught JoAnn to cherish and love, even when it gets lonely and feels so desolate. We will carry her memories with us, every time we see a sunset or the vibrance of those Cape Cod hydrangeas. Somewhere she is back with her husband, urging us to keep going like she did, no matter how hard. She carved out a bit of grace in a world that’s not always kind. We’re going to miss her.
