Someone So Alive
Jolie Barrows found herself staring. In the middle of delivering a eulogy in honor of her grandmother, she found herself staring at the subject of the eulogy, dressed in black, behind a black veil, at the back of the congregation at Faith United Methodist Church, and very much alive.
The heavy silence that had hung in the air awaiting the remainder of her memories instead began to host murmurs of the perplexed mourners. She could not bring herself to tell them her words were of a sudden premature, but she did not dare to open her mouth either for fear of blurting out the revelation of her grandmother’s apparent resurrection.
Jolie blinked and looked hard at the familiar figure. The shape was Grandma Josephine, the white coiffed hair under the veiled hat was her color and style. The palsy of the hand as it brought a handkerchief up to dab at tearful eyes was as familiar to Jolie as her own habit, borrowed from Grandma Josephine, of folding anything in hand that lent itself to folding. This woman was either mocking her or was her dead grandmother compulsively folding and unfolding the handkerchief between dabs.
No, you’re seeing things, Jolie admonished herself. You’re mourning her death and you want to see that she’s still alive, so you’re mistaking someone similar for her. That’s just one of her
friends. Now get on with the eulogy.
Jolie met the inquisitive minister’s look from the side of the pulpit with a nod as if to say everything was okay, that she’d pulled herself together. He calmly nodded back and stepped away again.
As she turned to face the congregation again, Jolie strained to concentrate on the words and to forget about the woman at the back of the congregation. “Grandma Josephine and I had a special kind of understanding between us that was born the day I was, she used to tell me. She’d
say that I would have lots of friends, best friends even, that would come and go through life, but that she would always be there.”
Jolie stopped again at these unexpectedly prophetic words. And the black hat at the back of the congregation was nodding in sure agreement, as if it were just the two of them in conversation without pews of people between them. And Jolie recognized this, too, as one of her own traits that went with her into college, where she would distract professors and speakers with her own emphatic approvals and disagreements with various presentations. She'd learned this unabashed expression of connection from Grandma Josephine. The gestures would come unabated from her grandmother at church, or in front of the television, or any public gathering being addressed, at any moment the message reflected her own thoughts or deviated acutely
from her beliefs. Grandma Josephine was a woman with opinions she was proud to broadcast.
"Grandma Josephine was right, she was always there, and as I grew out of adolescence and youth, and into adulthood I realized who the real best friend had always been and just what I owed her. She taught me what loyalty in friendship meant. She taught me pride and forgiveness. She taught me to believe in myself and to do for myself.” And the black hat nodded again with emphasis, as her hand went up under the veil, dabbed the folded handkerchief, and
dropped again.
Jolie snapped her eyes back to her own hands and the little cue cards she’d prepared with the eulogy, but they were no help in taking her mind off the ghost in the church. Grandma Josephine had taken time when Jolie’s parents were too busy to help her with her show-and-tell. “Organization,” she continued,” was her creed in dealing with life, and it is how I thought I could deal with her death. But I’m finding that a little difficult right now.” She’d written those words last night. They barked at her now from the palm of her shaking hand like someone else’s prophecy proved true. She felt reality shifting, now here in the church, now back in time at the mall Christmas shopping with Grandma Josephine.
“Nothing prepares you for the loss of someone you loved so much that your life is identified by your relationship with that person. A spouse, a mother, a father, a brother, a sister – for me, my grandmother. That is not a detraction to those other important people in my life. It is a testament to the woman she was.” Jolie cut the word short realizing as she spoke, that she was using the wrong tense. Or no, wait, the right tense. Just keep going, she urged herself. The
next card.
“What can help you to go forward from such a loss is to be mindful of what you have gained from your association with her, what you take of her with you. The good memories and experiences, the lessons learned from her, the comfort you received from her, and the privilege you had to have known her.”
The black hat at the back bobbed, the handkerchief slipped behind the veil once more. Jolie’s vision was wrenched from her cards to watch the apparition cajole her onward. But it was not an apparition. She was here brushing elbows with the man next to her, who seemed to excuse
himself to her and move lightly to give her more room to proclaim the righteousness of the speech. But the man, who looked to be the husband of one of Jolie’s mother’s friends, did not show any recognition of the lady.
Of course not, why would he? Jolie tried to reason. He probably had never met her and even if he did, that woman is not your grandmother. Grandma Josephine died. Next card, Jolie. Get a grip.
“Grandma Josephine lives.” Jolie’s world went to miniature and the sound of a thousand bees entered and overwhelmed her mind. But the figure of Grandma Josephine would not leave her sight. “Grandma Josephine is here, in this church,” she felt she was crying this, but it came out a whisper, “-- to the extent -- that we -- hold her spirit -- close to our hearts. She will go home -- with each of us -- to the extent that -- we remember what she gave uuusssssss….”
Jolie swayed at the podium, and the minister stepped up to take her elbow and lead her to the first pew. Her legs gave way as she reached the seat. Have to keep my wits, she chanted to herself, have to keep my wits. That was not Josephine, that was not Josephine.
At the end of the service, when Jolie felt she could stand again, she searched for the woman at the back of the congregation but could not see her. Later, at the cemetery, the woman in black did not appear. And a shaken, speechless Jolie was taken home in the limousine.
Jolie spent the night and the next day trying desperately to bring some logical conclusion to the apparition. She asked her mother and her aunts who the veiled woman in black in the back of the church had been. She tried to describe her without sounding craxy, leaving out until nothing else rang a bell her resemblance to the deceased Josephine. No one had seen her and they could not ease her mind, repeating her own rationalization that she was “seeing” Josepine in a
nother person because she missed her or because she subconsciously expected to see her at ll family gatherings.
In the following days, Jolie could not let the picture of her grandmother attending her own funeral fade. She had not imagined it, and she was not crazy. It was determined that Josephine had died in her sleep at her apartment of an apparent heart attack. This was not surprising for
Josephine was known to have had a long history of smoke and drink. Neither a chain smoker nor an alcoholic, she was however one to enjoy life, to hell with the consequences. Jolie decided for no discernible reason that she wanted to pay a visit to the last person to see Grandma Josephine alive.
She was found by a friend and neighbor of hers, a widow named Mary Martin. Mary also lived alone in the apartment next to Josephine’s. She and her late husband had never had children, so Josephine became the closest thing she had to family. She, like Jolie, eagerly awaited Josephine’s return from travel, and envied Josephine’s capacity for life. She seemed extremely distraught over the loss of her friend and had retreated to her apartment and did not attend the
funeral or wake and did not communicate with Josephine’s family.
On her way to Grandma Josephine’s apartment, Jolie remembered her grandmother’s stubborn resistance to settling down. Josephine had been an outrageous personality, and one who children and grandchildren alike found increasingly difficult to control. As she aged, while her peers were becoming more and more housebound, Josephine was determined to become more and more the independent traveler. She had told Jolie once that when Jolie’s grandfather, God rest his soul, had died twenty years before of his own heart attack, brought on doubtless by his often agitating and bullheaded wife, she felt that the time had come for her to live her life. Not the life her late husband had expected of her. Not the life her children expected of her. But her life. She was going to travel and try new things and new foods, as much as her body would
allow.
Josephine’s four daughters and their husbands fought with Josephine on her annual itineraries which involved safaris to Africa, climbing in the Low Alps, sailing in the Caribbean, and reveling at Carnival in Rio. They said she was doing too much, that she was putting herself in
danger,especially by traveling alone. The idea of a woman in her sixties, and then her seventies, tackling outdoor adventures like a twenty-year-old was preposterous.
They told her she was being selfish, not thinking of the family and the grandchildren who wanted to see their grandmother. Josephine always countered with the same argument. She’d given all her years up to then to the family; she had only what was left for herself and she was going to make the most of it. The money from her late husband’s estate was more than enough to afford this lifestyle and a leave an inheritance for the family when she passed on.
Jolie never argued with her. She admired her grandmother’s spunk and tenacity. She wished her well and made her promise to send postcards from faraway places. Josephine often invited Jolie to come along, but Jolie’s own life, her education, her career, always prevented her from tagging along on all but the smallest trips. She’d taken a long weekend to go shopping in New York with Josephine in December, skating in Rockefeller Square and watching the Rockettes.
She’d seen the fall foliage in Vermont and New Hampshire on another road trip. She would miss those slices of life.
Jolie always knew to send her letters to Josephine’s small apartment if she was expected home soon, to the postmaster general in international locations to which Josephine indicated she’s be traveling. And Josephine always knew to look for them and always responded promptly.
Jolie had learned her appreciation for the world around her and the myriad of cultures that Josephine described to her. Josephine chided those her age who vacationed on cruise ships and never left the ship, and who lived in assisted living complexes. “You’ve got to get off the boat and see life first-hand in order to stay alive. That other route leads steadily, boringly, to the grave.”
When Josephine was at home, never for more than a month or so at a time, she made the
rounds of the nursing homes and extended care facilities that housed “her people,” as she called them. It was funny to Jolie that Josephine seemed to have such disdain for what she saw as their acceptance of their fate and yet referred to them as “her people.”
On her way now to Josephine’s apartment complex, Jolie stopped by her mother’s house to retrieve the key to the apartment to let herself in. She figured she’s stop in after meeting Mrs. Martin to look around for some small token to keep of Josephine’s, perhaps a souvenir
trinket form her many travels. She hoped she might find a few photographs of her in Africa or Thailand. Or perhaps the one Josephine had kept on her mirror of Jolie and her when Jolie was
eight years old. Jolie had dressed up in some of the clothes Josephine was packing for one of the first of many trips, this one to Hawaii. Jolie wore an oversized silk flower dress, a garish matching hat with a big pink flower stuck in the hatband. The two faced the camera standing side by side, decked out in leis, next to a bulging suitcase, as if the odd-looking couple were about to board a steamer to the South Seas.
Jolie found herself crying remembering the image and the time it was captured. She wanted so to go with her Grandma, to live the rest of her life seeing the world and all its wonders in the company of someone so alive. The picture couldn’t capture the color Jolie remembered about her grandmother. Life was vibrant and gay, like a cartoon, with Josephine around, and the days when she was away as grey and dismal as a city in winter rain.
She locked her car, entered the building and found “M. Martin #336” on the board. She buzzed on the lobby phone and waited. There was no answer. She remembered Grandma Josephine telling her that her friend Mary was a quiet woman, who despite her admiration for Josephine’s
travels, kept to her room and did not venture out. She deemed herself too frail and even paid the local grocer to deliver her needs. Jolie thought it odd that she would not answer her phone, but perhaps she was napping, or was still so distraught that she was refusing visitors. Jolie thought that she might just knock on Mrs. Martin's door anyway, if only to check in on her and to thank her for her friendship to Josephine.
Jolie boarded the elevator and pushed the button to bring her to the third floor, Josephine's floor. She knew the way to Josephine's door without looking having spent so many hours visting there, and when the elevator door pened she walked still lost in reverie. She did not pay attention to the sound coming from around the corner ahead on one door closing and another being opened. As she rounded the turn she saw what would be Mrs. Martin's door closing shut. Jolie resisted the urge to call out to her.
Simultaneously, a scent so familiar to her filled her conciousness. Sweet roses wafted in the drafty hall as she stood facing her granmother's apartment. She felt again the eager anticipation of small gifts and exotic tales. It was not Josephines's only perfume but certainly her favorite and the one Jolie always remembered her wearing. She wore it more and more heavily each year, but Jolie never minded. It was always a welcome and pleasant fragranc e in Joli's experience. One that now brought her memories of Joeshine casacading around her. She steeled herself, pushed the key in the lock and turned the handle, prepared to be overwhlemed by the nostalgia.
But as the door swung wide and the room was revealed, a sudden shock took Jolie. She had opened the wrong door somehow, for this room was flooded with light from undressed windows, the floor lay bare of the Oriental carpets that had adorned Josephine's flat. Much of the antique wooden furniture was missing though not all. Recognition of a few of the remaining pieces brought her to the conculsion that this was Josephine's apartment, but that it had been pilfered of it's most prized ornaments.
Jolie stepped inside and let the door bang shut behind her, producing a hollow echo from the nearly empty room. Her mouth hung agape as she ticked off all the missing items, the camelback sofa with the shallow uncomfortable seat, the wingback chair opposite, the small rolltop desk that sat next to the door, the old mahogany coffee table. All that was left was a small table on which sat a telephone, two folding chairs by the sliding glass balcony door, and an empty cardboard box.
Jolie steeped to the kitchen and there found things midway to being packed, as if someone had stopped in the middle of the job and gone out for lunch. She realized then her mistake. Her aunts had been here and were removing all of Josephine's things. The apartment would have to be cleared for new tenants, of course. She stepped quickly around to the bedroom and found it similarly half packed. She had been lucky to get there when she did, before it was all carted up.
Jolie turned and faced where the mirror had hung, where it now sat on the floor leaning against the wall. The picture she had come to claim was no longer tucked into the frame where it had been for so many years. Instead she found it among many other photographs in a shoe box beside the bed. Jolie decided to take the entire shoe box with her and she replaced the lid and scooped it up.
As she looked at the bare walls, she couldn't help feeling as if she were robbing tomb. At the same time there was a pervading feeling of growing emptiness which justified her grabbing what she could. Even the air lacked the ambiance it had held when she previously visited. Only a hint of the rose aroma remained, what little the walls had left to release, she guessed. Something about this disturbed her and she suddenly had a desire to leave, before the mmeory of Josephine was tapped from her by this void.
She went quickly through the sitting room by the folding chairs and the empty cardboard vox, and as she opened the door to leave, she turned for one las look and shuddered. It was as if the room itself had died, and that was so contrary to tthe life she had experienced here in the past. She stepped into the hall and let the door close ehind her.
As Jolie took a step back towards the elevator, she became aware of the scent of roses again, stronger than a moment ago in her grandmother's apartment. This didn't make sense. It couldn't be stronger outside the apartment than inside. Then she remembered Mrs. Martin, and her intention to check on her. She had just gone inside her own apartment when Jolie had rounded the turn. If she had been in the hall newar Josephine's apartment, perhaps she was wearing the same scent and it had trailed off f her.
Jolie stepped up to her door, pondering whether to knowck or not. They had never actually met but she remembered Josephine pointing her out one day, an unremarkable old lady with straight white hair and simple clothes. She didnt' strike Jolie as someone who would choose such a garish scent. If she were not revieing visitors, she would have no needto apply perfume anyway, so Jolie decided to knock and simply explain she she was.
Jolie tucked the shor box under her arm and wnet to Mrs. Martin's door. She hesitated, then knocked, lightly at first, then with some authority to make sure Mrs. Martin could hear it. She could hear soem movement, footsteps across a flooor, a murmr, then a tentative voice "Yes, who is it?"
Jolie spoke loudly through the door, "Mrs. Martin, it's Jolie Barrows, Josephine Winstead's granddaughter." There was silence from behind the door.
"Mrs. Martin?" Jolie repeated.
"Yes, yes. Um, what can I do for you? I'm afraid I don't ahave a key to her apartment."
Jolie frowned. It was more than Mrs. Martin's failre to even open the door a crack. She supposed courtesy suffered when you were an old lady alone with a stranger outside your door. But there was soemthing contrived about ht ewavering and distracted voice. "No, I've just come from there. I borrowed my mother's key. I just wanted to pay you a visit. Thank you for all you've done for my grandmother."
Silence again. Then "Oh, well, you're welcome."
"Mrs. Martin, are you okay?" Jolie tried. She felt sure now that Mrs. Martin was determined not to let her in, nor even to show her face. But she felt likewise that there was something guilty about her behavior, and that revelation brought another image to her mind. That of Mrs. Martin's hasty retreat into the now locked. Papartment. Certianly she had heard Jolie's stride down the hall. The sound of the door closing had to have been her granmother's door as it was the only other apartmnt on thsi short stretch of hallway. Had Mrs. Martin just been in Josephine's apartment? Was that why Jolie smelled Josephine's perfume in the hall? Was Mrs. Martin helping herslf to Josephine's toiletries...or more? "Mrs. Martin, you were just there, weren't you?"
"No, no, dear. Uh, I'm afraid now isn't a good time, dear." Jolie could hear Mrs. Martin begin to sniffle and hear her voice falter even more, taking on a deeper quality. This convinced Jolie her suspicions were valid, that Mrs. Martin was ginding something with a false, timid voice.
"Mrs. Martin, what is going on? Why were you just in my grandmother's apartment. Please open up so we can discuss this."
Openly crying now, Mrs. Martin replied, "No. Please go away. I'm -- too upset."
"Mrs. Martin, you were just in my grandmother's apartment, things are missing and I smell her perfume on you. If you don't open up, I'll bring the building manager into this, and the police if I have to." Jolie was steaming now, ready to begin pounding on the door if she didn't relent. She knew in her bones something was wrong with this. At the same time, she felt it wasn't quite what she suspected either; she couldn't put her finger on it, she only knew Mrs. Martin had been in the apartment and was evading her now. She felt desperate to resolve this. She knocked hard again. "Mrs. Martin."
"Jolie, please go away."
She stood stunned, fist posed in the air ready to begin an assault on the door. That was another voice altoghert. Muffled still through the door, this voice was tstill one she had not really heard before, and yet it reached to her soul and spoke to the child in her. It was wracked with sorrow, and yet somehow touched a part of Jolie's memory of sweetness and innnocence. It affected her like the strongest of pleasant dreams being broken by morning and wakefulness into reality. It wrapped her in the warm scent of roses.
"Josephine," she whispered.
Then softly from the other side of the door, as if spoken while lying her face flush to it, Jolie hear her grandmother's declaration, "You will have lots of friends, best friends even, who will come and go through life, but i will always be there."
Jolie stared at the door, through the door to the source of her grandmother's voice. "But we buried --"
"Mary," the voice cut in. "Mary always told me she wished she could share mylife. She said it was too late for her though, and perhaps that was true. She was not hardy sould to begin with and you can't learn that at her age." There was a long, mournful sigh, almost a whimper. "I can't unlearn it. So I promised to share it as well as I could. She is the reason I kept returning. And you."
After another pause, Mrs. Martin's door spoke again. "I find it amazing how closely she resembled me. me in death anyway. Fix the hair up, dress her up in my thick flannel night clothes. Change her makeup and give her my rings. They were so ready to hear I'd died. They never noticed I hadn't."
"Josephine --" Jolie started, but she didn't know what to say. She couldn't believe she was there, that this was happening.
"Mary gets to go traveling now," the voice continued, weeping. "I left some money in Paris and in Stockholm. I couldn't leave here without some small piece of before. But first your aunts, and the I heard you coming." There was another long pause. "Jolie, I need you to leave. Perhaps you could write what you have to say -- to Mary -- and she could find it with the postmaster general in Paris. If you did -- I'm certain she would write back."
Jolie looked at the box. She opened the lid and took out the photograph of the odd traveling pair headed for the South Pacific. She kissed the image of her gandmother, and slid the photo under the door. "Goodbye, Josephine. I will always love you," she whispered. There was no response. She closed the box again and left.
Jolie Barrows realized that her grandmother had already said her goodby the day of the funeral. Jolie had told her that day that she had learned just what she owed her granmother. Josephine had suffered the loss of a good friend in May and had made a promise to Mary. Jolie would let her keep it.
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