“She was so lovely when your dad passed,” my mom says, not letting go of my hand. “What a classy lady.”
And she was. Coming to the shiva all three nights, each night bearing a different delicious offering: baked macaroni and cheese and a pot of slow-simmered greens, a huge casserole of chicken and rice, a massive three-layer chocolate cake. Soul food, to be sure.
She came to the funeral with her husband, a sweet man straight out of central casting for South Side Irish Chicago. She towered over him by at least three inches, and he was as barrel-chested and thick as she was lithe. His hair was a salt-and-pepper Brillo pad and his eyes a piercing blue, and he stayed at her side with the bearing of a man who was born a farmer and chosen consort to a queen. He looked at her with powerful love and a clear sense of his own good fortune.
She held me in a tight embrace, stroking my hair as I wept for at least five minutes, never letting go, never stopping the humming murmur in my ear telling me that my dad was out of pain and in his glory surrounded by the ancestors and friends who had been waiting to receive him. I have never been a religious person—my faith is in science and butter and people who have earned my trust—but Mrs. O’Connor was a woman of deep conviction and when she said it, I suddenly had a wave of profound peace wash over me and I knew that my dad was okay, and that we would be okay too.
But more importantly? Two weeks after he was gone, she stopped by on a random Wednesday evening with a pot of beef stew, a bowl of liberally buttered egg noodles, a pan of lemon bars dusted in thick powdered sugar, and two bottles of zinfandel. The three of us ate and drank and caught up, and never once talked about my dad or the loss. She just came and fed us and was good company. I went to the kitchen after dinner to make coffee, and when I heard murmuring in the dining room, I peeked around the corner. Mrs. O’Connor had both of my mom’s little hands clasped in her long ones, and both of them had their heads bowed, foreheads nearly touching. Mrs. O’Connor was saying something I couldn’t hear, and my mom had tears running down her cheeks. I let them be; I loaded the dishwasher and cleaned Mrs. O’Connor’s serving pieces to ensure that they had ample quiet time together. When she left, she hugged us both very tightly and told us we were warrior goddesses and that she would check on us again soon.
Later, I asked my mom about it and she said that they were praying together, that Mrs. O’Connor had offered prayers for my dad in his peace, and for my mom and me. She said that it was so comforting, not overtly religious as much as it was a prayer to the universe that we all move forward with as much ease as possible. She came by again about a month later with another dinner, and she dropped off a sweet potato pound cake a few weeks after that, and then for rest of the year, she would check in with us every other month or so, to see how we were faring. It always seemed to magically coincide with a difficult time: a holiday, Valentine’s Day, one of our birthdays, or Mom and Dad’s wedding anniversary. On the first anniversary of his death, my mom and I each got a note in the mail saying that she was thinking of us.
It had meant so much to us both how quietly present she had been, not just in the immediate chaos of loss when all friends and family are on deck, but for that extended time when everyone goes back to their lives and forgets that the ones left behind grieve through that first year in a roller coaster of emotions.
For a while I would check in with Mrs. O’Connor fairly regularly, but when I started with the Farbers, the first year flew by in a whirlwind of figuring everything out and building those new relationships. I remembered to send her a batch of the Brazilian caramel fudge balls I was gifting people that year for the holidays, and I got a lovely note back. That was the last time I saw her or reached out. There is not a decent or justifiable excuse in the world.
The idea that she had been so amazing to us, to me, ever since I was a kid, and I let it just fall through my fingers out of laziness makes me so deeply ashamed. The thought of her suffering, of her poor lovely husband suffering, and that I didn’t know and wasn’t able to make her soup or send him cookies, or support either of them in any way, the very idea of it makes the tears finally come hot and fast and my mom pulls on my hand and moves me out of the chair and onto the love seat between them, where they can both rub my back and comfort me.
? ? ?
Good God, woman, what happened to your face?” Marcy says as she comes through my front door and thrusts a pastry box at me, leaning down to give Simca a dog biscuit. My little fluff monster takes the treat delicately in her mouth and trots down the hall to eat it in her dog bed in the kitchen, her wide tush swaying side to side with the gait of her stubby little legs. “You’re welcome, Simca,” Marcy says, and the dog stops in her tracks, turns around briefly, and then heads back up the hall. “Cheeky bitch,” Marcy says.
Marcy was my best friend in culinary school. I was top of our class in all the savory courses and she took top honors in all the pastry and bread work. Marcy is also small, not quite tiny, but maybe five-three, and slim as a whip. Considering the amount of baked goods she consumes on a daily basis, she must have a helluva metabolism. She’s as fair as I am dark, with strawberry blond hair that she keeps shoulder length, often with streaks of hot pink or teal blue running through it. Pale jade green eyes with nearly invisible blond lashes, and masses of freckles. We love to dress up together for Halloween. One year we were Fiona and Donkey from Shrek; the next, Xena and Gabrielle. Last year we went all out and were Brienne of Tarth and Tyrion Lannister. We both hate the whole “sexy/slutty” Halloween costume thing and prefer to make a hilarious tableau. Plus, she, like me, is solidly single and not really looking. So we spend Halloween with Lawrence and his friends, who love a good costume and don’t intend to get drunkenly lucky. At least not with us.