Death Sucks... the stories from our grasp

Lenore Compton Maxwell August 10, 1921 - February 5, 2009

She was the last sentient, salient speaker of my parent’s generation left in my circle of kin. She was 87 and dying of liver cancer three years ago. Her husband, my Uncle Bob, died 30 years ago. What did I want to know before she died? What stories could possibly have soothed my incessant enquirer? What keys do I really think she had to understanding my father and mother and brother before I was born?

What I really wanted to say was this: 

Auntie, stick around and tell me all I want to know!! They’re all gone but you. Mom’s still alive but cannot speak, damn that stroke back in 2003!

Dad’s gone since 1965, Bob since 1978. Brother Mel has been inebriated or otherwise absent since 1952.

Everything is in divine right order for Uncle Larry, mom’s brother and he would never dare to rumple the surface of his Lake Placid of emotions. His wife, my aunt Mickey, lost her mind over the decades, little bit by little bit as her teeth dropped out one by one, so did her ability to think, remember or make any sense.

So, how’re we going to sneak in some conversations here, dear, while you still move teacup from saucer to lips; while you still rub your forefinger against your thumb absent -mindedly as you think and remember? Your mind is so sharp.

Could my insatiable curiosity be quelled by one of your recollections without taxing you too much? Do I really WANT to know all that happened between Bobby and Howard? (My mom and dad.) 

All I know is I want to give it a go, while there’s still life in me and in you, dear Auntie. 

See you Sunday.

Love,

Melinda

Since I wrote this in 2009, Aunt Nora died. Aunt Mickey died three weeks ago and last Wednesday, my mother Barbara Freeman Stern Maxwell Kovner died. I’ll have to make up the stories from here on. Although... at Aunt Mickey’s memorial luncheon Saturday an old family friend who loved my mom and remembered “Bobby’s Burger Bar” on Sepulveda in Manhattan Beach went on and on about the Maxwell-Stern family instead of talking about Mickey. Bless Bill Hughes’ gift of the gab and sharp memory. It was a joy to hear the old stories from SOMEBODY who was there before I was.

Barbara will be a topic for me to write on for some time to come. Her passing was peaceful. She was surrounded by love. I miss her terribly and, at the same time, am relieved that she is past suffering; past the huge frustration of being locked-in by her stroke. She is free at last. It’s up to us, her kin,  to sort out what happens next...