In Memoriam A.R.P., 1920 - 1993
Nov. 24th, 2004 01:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stoutfellowI don't really know much about her early life. I know that her growing years were divided among East Texas, upstate New York, and New England, that she loved Emily Dickinson's poetry, and that she idolized Katharine Hepburn, taking her as a role model. She never went to college, but she loved to read - she was a librarian at one point - and enjoyed word games, such as crosswords. She was a proud and determined woman, with a rowdy sense of humor and a sometimes chancy temper.
After Pearl Harbor, her boyfriend joined the Army. Before leaving, he proposed to her. She refused, saying, "Come back to me and ask again." In the waning days of the war, he did so, and they were married. Over the next few years they had three children, a boy and two girls. When the Korean War broke out, he rejoined the military, which he was to make his career, and she was left to raise the children alone for a couple of years. After he returned, they had a third daughter, and a few years later, a fifth and last child - me.
She encouraged all of us to read; when I showed signs of being as voracious a reader as she was, she doubled her efforts. When I was four or five years old, she made child-sized crosswords for me to work. She told me stories of gods and heroes, Greek and Norse alike. (I don't remember finding out the truth about Santa Claus, but the day she told me the Greek gods had never existed, I was devastated. Years later, I reminded her of this event; she was contrite over not recognizing the impact of her words.) When I grew old enough to go to the library on my own, she let me pick up books for her as well. Mostly I got her mysteries - she loved those - but sometimes she'd read some of my science fiction and fantasy as well. (She was mortified when one of her co-workers caught her reading Operation Chaos.)
I was in graduate school in Chicago, in the early '80s, when disaster struck. A blood vessel ruptured in the left side of her brain; she was left paralyzed on the right, and - far worse - her language centers were badly damaged. Her speech afterwards was halting; she often had to struggle, sometimes unsuccessfully, for the right word. She eventually taught herself to write left-handed, a childish scrawl, and to read again, at least at the level of the newspaper and Reader's Digest.
At first I think she was more ashamed of her plight than anything else, but as the years passed it turned to anger. Sometimes she smiled, occasionally even laughed, but I don't think she was ever happy again.
She died in September 1993. At the memorial service, the pastor read a poem by her beloved Dickinson, and then we scattered her ashes in the Pacific.
We learn in the Retreating
How vast an one
Was recently among us -
A Perished Sun
Endear in the departure
How doubly more
Than all the Golden presence
It was - before -
(Emily Dickinson, c. 1866)
Today would have been her eighty-fourth birthday.
After Pearl Harbor, her boyfriend joined the Army. Before leaving, he proposed to her. She refused, saying, "Come back to me and ask again." In the waning days of the war, he did so, and they were married. Over the next few years they had three children, a boy and two girls. When the Korean War broke out, he rejoined the military, which he was to make his career, and she was left to raise the children alone for a couple of years. After he returned, they had a third daughter, and a few years later, a fifth and last child - me.
She encouraged all of us to read; when I showed signs of being as voracious a reader as she was, she doubled her efforts. When I was four or five years old, she made child-sized crosswords for me to work. She told me stories of gods and heroes, Greek and Norse alike. (I don't remember finding out the truth about Santa Claus, but the day she told me the Greek gods had never existed, I was devastated. Years later, I reminded her of this event; she was contrite over not recognizing the impact of her words.) When I grew old enough to go to the library on my own, she let me pick up books for her as well. Mostly I got her mysteries - she loved those - but sometimes she'd read some of my science fiction and fantasy as well. (She was mortified when one of her co-workers caught her reading Operation Chaos.)
I was in graduate school in Chicago, in the early '80s, when disaster struck. A blood vessel ruptured in the left side of her brain; she was left paralyzed on the right, and - far worse - her language centers were badly damaged. Her speech afterwards was halting; she often had to struggle, sometimes unsuccessfully, for the right word. She eventually taught herself to write left-handed, a childish scrawl, and to read again, at least at the level of the newspaper and Reader's Digest.
At first I think she was more ashamed of her plight than anything else, but as the years passed it turned to anger. Sometimes she smiled, occasionally even laughed, but I don't think she was ever happy again.
She died in September 1993. At the memorial service, the pastor read a poem by her beloved Dickinson, and then we scattered her ashes in the Pacific.
We learn in the Retreating
How vast an one
Was recently among us -
A Perished Sun
Endear in the departure
How doubly more
Than all the Golden presence
It was - before -
(Emily Dickinson, c. 1866)
Today would have been her eighty-fourth birthday.
