Carolyn
was a beautiful young woman whose life was touched by remarkable waves of
fortune and tragedy. Blessed with brains and good looks, she contracted
polio in early adolescence and forever carried herself with a limp that
disturbed the symmetry that marks a lovely woman. Married at a young age
to a wonderful man with education and promise, she gave him four bright and
beautiful daughters in quick succession. But Carolyn’s physical history and personal
demons rushed her to an early grave in her forties, the victim of poor health and worse habits,
too soon gone from us who miss her still.
I remember her at age sixteen,
during the summer she spent working as a doctor’s receptionist. In the
1950’s, every woman in a medical office wore a white uniform. Invited by
my mother to lunch with us at our home, Carolyn swept through our front door, a
vision in white, an angel incarnate. I
was eleven years old and if it matters, this was the first time I fell in love.
I may have been an easy mark,
but I wasn’t the first little man to fall for a starched white dress and a
winning smile. What a change they made to
the girl who had a year before chased me through her house, ready to scratch my
eyes out when I made an unkind comment about her pimples. She caught me, and beat me up before her
mother could intervene, thereby earning my eternal enmity and my fervent wish
that she would collide with a train the next time her father gave her a driving
lesson. But the white dress and a radiant
smile caused what a modern might call a paradigm shift of my feelings. A poet would call it something better.
A few more years brought her
wedding. I could not know the fate
awaiting her on that cold sunny morning inside the small church as the organ
began to thunder out the Bridal Chorus. The music swelled out across
the congregation and rolled up against the walls, rattling the thin stained
glass windows. Her father turned to her with his huge smile, squeezed her
hand and led them down the aisle to where I waited with the man she would marry.
On that morning, Carolyn carried with her the promise of a full life with
children and grandchildren, accomplishment and eventually happy memories to
spare, when far off in the future she might die peacefully of old age. Now
at age 21 she came down the aisle to her beloved, the man who had swept her off her feet. I waited with him at the altar. I was the altar boy, an arrangement I had
been able to make the day before, hoping to pleasantly surprise the
couple. Although they would later deny
it, I think neither recognized me, so nervous were they during the ceremony.
Shortly after Carolyn and her
husband began to build a family, I started my own adult life. We lost track of one another, except for news
passed back and forth by the older generation about all us kids, our comings
and goings, and odds and ends of lives begun and some cut short. But our Irish family was secretive, and
especially so about problems. I never
knew what Carolyn was dealing with. And
she never knew of my trials.
When I visited home, my
father would have photos of Carolyn and her babies, snapshots with her husband,
in the yard, at the beach.
The pictures showed Carolyn
growing to be a mature woman, the mother of four girls. But I could see changes in her eyes,
too. I’d be lying to say I sensed
trouble, I just noticed she was different.
The camera may have caught a reflection of her suffering.
And then came her funeral, at
which I learned very little. My Irish
uncles and even my father were reticent to speak of her torments. My most vivid memory of that day was of four
young daughters standing near the casket, a lost look about them.
Decades would pass before I
saw Carolyn’s family again, this time at the funeral of her brother. He had been a man of special gifts, and yet I
know she worried about him and with her husband’s help had been protective of
him.
I walked into his wake that
evening and as I made my way forward through the crowd of visitors, there sat
Carolyn near the casket of her brother, seemingly still watching over him. I stopped and took a breath, waiting for the
vision to evaporate, but it refused to do so.
In a moment, I realized it
must be a daughter, and in fact it was the eldest, very much a look-a-like,
although prettier than her mother.
I was almost ready to believe
that Carolyn had come back to sit with her brother, and maybe to annoy us. I half expected her to look up at me and
again announce that I was an ugly child, as she had done a half century before. But there was a serenity about the woman that
was palpable. I began to convince myself
that in some way or another I was approaching Carolyn.
I went up to her and could
not stop myself from asking, “Is everything all right now?” No doubt thinking it a silly question to be
asked, the daughter replied, “I am just fine.”
I believed the woman when she answered. I also believed her mother had
answered me too. Her eyes spoke to me.
And I believe that somewhere
Carolyn’s soul has the will to live again.
And somewhere it breathes again.
Somewhere she runs across a field of grass and sits by a stream. She holds all of creation in her eyes, and her
soul is at peace.
David Griffin copyright 2010
Windswept Press
Murrells Inlet,
South Carolina
www.windsweptpress.com
