86. A Simple Request
We’re jumping headfirst into a review of Blog 51, Releasing Memories:
It has been a bittersweet experience for Mom to look at photos from my youth, and from big days of celebration: my graduation from high school, my wedding day, and the trips home from the hospital with my new babes in arm. The deeper she went into treasure boxes, the more she unearthed from her life, the one that preceded me.
On a recent visit, she handed me an envelope. It was weathered by time, had a postmark dated January 31, 1946 from Nova Scotia, and was addressed to: Allan & Shirley Thomas, #10 Hobson Avenue, Worcester, Mass, U.S.A. It contained three letters, one dated November and another dated January, both written by my mother’s grandfather, and one note without a date written by my mother’s grandmother. I’m sharing the letter from November.
The letter included in that blog began: Hello Tiddlywinks, How are you getting along, by this time suppose you are big as ever and go to school every day. The writer went on to tell about a rainstorm in Barrington, and about a pooch named Mickey ‘stretched out good’ after rabbit hunting, and ending his correspondence with, ‘Well guess must stop. Love to all, Grampy
I know I can’t be the only person who finds it thrilling to come upon a greeting card or a letter written by someone long since gone from this world. When we find such treasure, chances are it was written by someone in our family, or sent to someone in our family. Writings are more than interesting links to the past — they are pieces of history — snippets about who walked before us. They are mementos tucked away in a box and put high on a closet shelf, or nestled into the corner of a trunk in a basement. They are threads that bind us to those we may have never known, but whom we carry deep within. The letters my mother found are windows through which we can peek at the past, her past, my past.
Dear little Shirley Mae
Well how is my girl baby by now? You wrote a lovely note to grammy. How are you doing in school well I hope. I hear you are getting to be a big girl and don’t believe I will know you with your high heels on. Do you remember the stories grammy used to tell you…I miss you all so much I don’t have any place to go now. Do you play with your dolls any more? Do you play the piano. It won’t take you so long to get home this year. Do you get letters from the girls in Barrington. You can write a nice letter dear. Grammies little girl baby or are you too big now to be called that. Am wondering what you are doing today. It is cold and windy here. Did you like your dolls quilt it wasn’t very good I know. Well dear I can’t think of much to write but will be glad when I can talk to you. I will always love you and Allie as long as I live and will remember you both when you was babies. Well I can’t think of no more for this time. Will close with loads of love to Grammies girl baby. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
A couple observations: there was very little punctuation throughout the letter. I added end of sentence marks for clarity; spelling was perfect; and the content was clearly a rambling of thoughts that popped into the writer’s head though there was an overriding theme, one of a woman expressing her loneliness, longing and love.
And then there was this.
Reynolds Croft
Jany 30/46
Hello Tiddlywinks
How are you? By this time I hope you have got over your flu and ok again. I suppose while the self appointed Big Boss has laid by you had to take charge. Suppose you go to school every day. I bet you can keep up with any of them in your class. I was up to Barrington last week. That old cat came out in the barn where I was splitting wood. She is a sight. I suppose you had lots of skating and plenty snow up there. Not a bit of snow to be seen on the ground here but it looks today as if some kind of a storm is coming either snow or rain. And Cec was down Sunday only stayed a little while. It was late when they got here and they wanted to get back before dark. I hope you got your calendar ok. It looked just like you when you used to be trying to knit. I don’t think you ever learned to knit. Well you never had anyone to show you only The Boss was always in the air. Well I suppose you are anxious for the time to come so you can get down to Barrington Pass. I guess we will be glad to see you. Well guess must stop for now. Love to all Grampy
A couple observations: the letter was more businesslike, had better grammar; the content was more orderly and focused on things men cared about: weather, chores, future plans; and the best part was the little dig to The Boss, my grandmother, Meme.
Seventy-six years later.
The art of letter writing hasn’t changed over the years — people have. My generation doesn’t do it often enough, and the younger generations rely on the immediacy of communication and may never know what it’s like to send or receive a handwritten letter, something they can hold, and fold along creased lines, and insert into an envelope for safe keeping, perhaps one scented with lavender or lilac.
Long ago, a grandmother stopped what she was doing to write a ramble to a ‘little girl baby’ she missed deeply. The writer was full of wonder about what her granddaughter was doing, thinking, and feeling. She put out questions and hoped for answers. If life went differently and little Shirley Mae still resided on the tiny Canadian peninsula, the grandmother would have had her answers in real time, after all they were the ordinary ‘how was your day’ kind of questions. Perhaps letters about the mundanes of life don’t seem worthy of keeping, but these weren’t ordinary questions, they were longings for information by a woman pining for her family.
Long ago, a grandfather sat at a table, took paper and pen in hand, and pulled his thoughts together so he could share some time with Tiddlywinks, a little kid growing up in a country separated from his Nova Scotia home by the Bay of Fundy. Is it any wonder that the simple act of letter writing became a cherished part of my mother’s family?
It's easy to consider that Tiddlywinks felt the sting of loss and relocation, and harbored insecurities of unfamiliar things, and carried fear that unexpected change could unsettle her again. It’s also easy to accept that the adults, Edith and Arthur, suffered through loneliness born from separation. It’s all there, written on age-old paper in script that’s nearly illegible in places, and folded easily across deeply grooved lines, and safeguarded in an envelope with the final destination of, U.S.A. When that letter arrived at 10 Hobson Avenue, in 1946, it was read, probably many times; eventually finding its way into a storage trunk that found its way to the basement at 1 Inwood.
When Mom recently read her grandparents’ words, they ushered in bittersweet memories of loved ones lost long ago. They reminded her of the expected loss of her child, a death waiting just around the corner. Mom handed the letters to me one Sunday afternoon. In doing so, she gave me a piece of who I am: the daughter of Ruth Shirley, granddaughter of Ruth Hannah, great granddaughter of Edith and Arthur; people who loved deeply, and shared their love in letters.
Here’s something I wrote in Blog 70, 10 Hobson Avenue. It lays some speculation by me, and drives home the importance of writing to a loved one by Meme.
I always wondered how Tom Duquette came to have a relationship with the Widow Thomas. I mean long-distance dalliances weren’t an easy thing back then and if a couple tried to make a go of that type of relationship, then they were most likely an already established couple being separated for good cause. I could be wrong, but ‘coupling’ across an ocean during the early 1940s seems a bit problematic, what with that pesky War and all…I long ago decided the relationship between the very young widow and the very not so young man had to have been the byproduct of letter writing.
That’s the speculative part by Sheryll O’Brien.
This is the important part by Ruth Thomas Duquette.
My grandmother, the woman known as Meme, the woman who welcomed my family into her home, the woman I left alone that (October) night had a major cardiac event. When I arrived at the waiting room, she’d already been taken to the O.R. for some sort of procedure. Hours, many hours later, a doctor delivered these words to her anxiously awaiting family, “Her heart is like wet tissue paper, she will not survive.”
One by one we filed in and stood at her bedside and when the hospital staff told us to leave, we did. I remember dropping Marchrie off at her apartment and saying I needed to be by myself.
What I needed was to be with Meme.
I headed back to the hospital and begged a nurse to let me see her. I took residence next to her bed and did the dance between self-castigation and prayerful bartering. At one point, she opened her eyes, gave me a Meme smile and whispered, “Paper. Pen.”
Like a bat out of hell, I raced to the nurse’s station and got what Meme wanted. I grabbed the clipboard from the end of her bed, clipped a sheet of paper onto it, held it hip-high, put the pen into her hand and watched as she wrote a note to her son, Allan, and to her daughter, Ruth Shirley.
It was her final act.
I have never read those notes. I suspect they are tucked away in a box on a closet shelf or in the corner of a trunk in the basement at 1 Inwood. Over the years I’ve thought about Meme’s last earthly scribblings. I’ve wondered what words were important enough for her to leave for her son and daughter as she lay dying. I fully expected to find out one day when my siblings and I sat with our mother’s treasured keepsakes, learning things we never knew, and sharing conversations that held little tidbits that’d been told to us over the years. Since I am cutting ahead in the death line, maybe Mom will share Meme’s notes with me, though there is no pressure for her to do so.
For now, I will read and reread letters and notes I’ve received from Mom, Marjorie, and Donnie. Notes I received and haven’t ever spoken about. Here is part of something my mother wrote shortly after she learned my fate.
Nov. 25, 2021
Dear Sheryll,
Today is Thanksgiving and I’m thankful for our family and friends, but today I am most thankful for you, my Sheryll Anne. I was happy and thankful for you when you were born to me, thankful to be able to watch you grow up and become the wonderful wife, mother, and MammyGrams to precious Hadley…I’m thankful for you chasing your dream to become a very talented author…I love you my darling daughter Sheryll and I’m thankful for you…Love Mom…xxxooo
My mother wasn’t yet ready to use words like death, dying, cancer, or terminal in that Thanksgiving letter, though her tear-stained cheeks, and hollowed-out eyes testified to her sorrow when she handed me my Thanksgiving card with that folded note inside. A month later, when she took pen in hand at Christmas, things had changed, acceptance had pushed its way in and words she once avoided like the plague were present and accounted for; they were part of the recurring theme about a future being cut short, and a life already well-lived continuing on. I cannot share that letter because I can barely breathe through my tears when I read it, nor would you be able to read it through your own well of sorrow. I will say this, letters shouldn’t only be for those who have lost fathers, or been separated from their childhood homes. They shouldn’t only be for loved ones across miles of ocean, or for those generations long since past. Letters should be something we do for others and for ourselves.
So blogosphere friends, here’s a request.
Please take a few minutes and write a note or a letter to me — the woman who has written volumes for you to read. Despite the subject matter of my blog, I hope you have enjoyed reading about my life, and I’d like to know a little about yours. You needn’t write a blog, please keep it brief, just a couple paragraphs or a sentence or two. Write it on personalized stationery, or rip a page from a spiral bound notebook, or jot a few words on a napkin at a fast-food joint — I don’t care how your note comes, but I sure do hope they will come. My hours are long and sometimes lonely.
If you are so obliged to answer this request, I’ll include something one of you wrote in future blogs, so have some fun with this. I’ll even give you a prompt or two: Today I spent some time with _______, Today I spent some time doing _______. Or, if you want to know something about me and this journey that I haven’t thought to share, say so in a letter.
Who? What? When? Where? Why?
Since we are on the topic of writing, I’d like to tell you something, then ask you something. First the telling. When you begin a writing exercise, it’s best to look at those five words and try to answer each one in your written piece. Most certainly if you are a reporter, or a columnist, then you are always mindful of those words. I was the focus of the 5Ws in last week’s Harvey in Worcester Magazine. I really appreciate Janice’s attention to the who, what, when, and where of my life — its joys and its struggles were thoughtfully included in her tender piece. Mostly, her attention to the ‘why’ of this time in my life was wonderful. No surprise to any of you, my focus, or purpose is helping people learn about hospice.
I don’t know why I am driven to explain and inform, but I am. With full certainty, I know I would not be here without the medical attention and assistance of Nurse M. She is not only a skilled healthcare individual; and a soft place to land when new shit happens, like spinal weaknesses that have become more evident in recent days, but she digs deep and doesn’t avoid difficult and painful conversations. She knows it is a disservice to let me stay a step behind. She knows I need to be in lockstep with my decline; what can be done about it (if anything); how we can manage the fallout; and when we will need to move toward the next stage — whatever that may be.
Things were broached during a recent visit. I’m not ready to discuss them or make any decisions about them, but when I do, I’ll give you the 5Ws of my medical situation.
That’s my telling you something, now for the asking part. The other day, I opened AOL news and the very first headline announced this: Best steak restaurant in the country located in Worcester. I opened that article with a rapid click of my mouse. I scrolled to the very bottom of the very long piece because I knew that’s where the information would be — I was wrong — the name of the Worcester restaurant was not there. I let out the curse that’d taken residence on the tip of my tongue and scrolled to the top and did a slower review. Again, nothing. I scrolled to the effing top again and read the damned article. I still could not find the name of the restaurant.
Hannah came in during my fitful scrolling, “What are you doing?”
I told her. She knew nothing.
Tim came down during my fitful scrolling, “What are you doing?”
I told him. He knew nothing.
Jessie came home and I asked if she heard anything about restaurant news. She offered a shake of her head, and the pronouncement that it was cool, though.
So, if anyone knows the name of the damned restaurant please let me know!
You can FB me, or include it in your note. I really do hope you’ll drop me a line or two at: 183 Wildwood Avenue, Worcester, MA 01603. There’s a wooden box partially full of pretty Thinking of You cards waiting for your writings and the trunk they’ll be nestled into for future generations to find and read.
As the title of this blog says, it's A Simple Request.
Please note: future postings of my blog will be on Mondays and Fridays. I appreciate your readership. ~ Sheryll