Mrs. C and Me

I have been putting off writing this for months. I know I have to get the story out. It is just hard because writing it feels like the final goodbye. A little over 7 years ago I was walking my dog Eppie around the neighborhood, which we did not do often because he was so small, and I ended up carrying him by the end because his little body would tire out. I needed a place to live, and I happened to find a for rent sign pointing down a driveway. I rang the doorbell, and an older lady answered. She gave me the key and told me to check it out since should could not get up the stairs.


I had fantasized about living in a garage apartment since Mike lived in one on Growing Pains. It is funny how those weird dreams you have sometimes work out. While living there, I had a unique view into Mrs. C’s life. While we lived in separate buildings, we shared a yard, a lot of meals, and many talks. I could see her house and know generally where she was in the house by what light was on. Likewise, she could see when I went to bed by my lights and knew if I never came home at night or very late.


Stepping into her house was kind of like a time capsule. It was really neat to see things preserved in time and to learn about a different way of life. She told me a lot of stories, but she alway was a good a listener. She asked questions. She knew everybody’s names from my stories. When she asked about my family, she called them by name. She cared. Mrs. C was one person genuinely interested in my life. She had a neat perspective from seeing so much in her almost century of life, but she had some progressive views. There was this one paradox that always makes me smile when I think about it. She would ask me if I found anyone special and then in the next breath tell me that I did not need any man and could be successful and not depend on anyone. She also firmly believed than none of my ex-boyfriends were good enough for me and would tell me so often.


Mrs. C fully lived life. She loved to eat and was so curious about things. She sat out in her garden and took in the day. I would get so caught up in the busyness of my life, and she would slow me down. Conversations with her would easily be 1-2 hours. In fact, unless I was jumping into my car in passing and saw her, I am not sure I ever had a conversation with her less than an hour. Some days she would be sitting on the porch and flag me down to talk. She told me that she had a book of everyone that lived in the garage apartment, and she kept up with them. I asked who lived there the longest since the 1950s when she first started this, and she turned and looked at me and told me it was me. Then she told me never to move away. I was told by a former garage apartment tenant that Mrs. C was picky about who she let in the apartment, but once you were in, you were family.


Although she never had children and grandchildren, she built strong friendships and they became an extension of her family. She was a grandmother figure in my life. I would look out for her, carry groceries inside, and fix things like the cable. I gave her lessons on the internet and Facebook. Yes, even in her 90s, she was not afraid to face the new frontier of social media. And in her own way, she looked after me. She loved fresh fruit and food. Whenever she would go to a fruit stand or farmer’s market, she put some aside for me. I learned how to preserve fruit during the time I lived in the backyard because she always insisted that I take more than I could eat. There is a funny story about this. Mrs. C volunteered at the soup kitchen until she could no longer get there. I was lucky enough to volunteer with her once and see her in her element. At the end of the day she would take leftovers home because she did not believe in food waste. She would call me over and give me leftovers. One day she gave me a sandwich. I went home and ate it. Later she called me and asked if I had eaten it because she gave me the wrong sandwich. I ate a three week old sandwich, but I never got sick. This story still brings a smile to my face.


In the end, things changed, and I did not even realize it was changing or maybe I was in denial. It got to where she could not be alone. I started spending the nights with her. I am grateful for this time because we had more conversations during this period. I do not know how I could have lived that close to someone that long without getting to know them well, but we got to know each other on another level when we stopped sharing just a yard and driveway and started sharing a house. I still had faith that she would recover. She always did. She would spend months in the hospital and rehab and always come out fine on the other side. We talked about future excursions and adventures. When I lost her, it was also the death of those dreams that could never be fulfilled. One of those dreams we talked about was the farm that she had in her hometown. I never got to spend the weekend there with her, but on the day of her funeral a family member gave me directions, and I got to have a moment of closure standing in the cotton fields.


I do not know if you are ever prepared to lose someone that you care about unless there is a long illness or dire news given to you, but losing Mrs. C felt so sudden and unbelievable. She had recovered every other time. She was tough. In the end, I felt so alone. We always looked out for one another, and then there was just me. I lost Eppie in that garage apartment too. We started off as three, and I was the lone ranger.


In the months that followed, I started rethinking our conversations and interactions over the past 7 years. I thought about things I could have said. I thought about conversations we could have had. I held on to the ones we did have. I started wondering what she thought of me. Coincidentally a few weeks after her death there was a pet blessing at her church. I always liked taking my dogs to get blessed, and I have visited just about every denomination that does it. I had not been to this denomination yet, and the timing was right for me to be able to go. When I arrived one of the priests was one that I had met at Mrs. C’s house. She told me I looked familiar, and I told her why. We then talked about the loss of Mrs. C and how I was struggling. She told me about a conversation she had with her about me a while back and how she thought that she loved me. Strangely enough, through a pet blessing I was able to get some peace. Since then family members recounted how she would tell them stories about what I was up to, and I felt better.


While I am sad about the things we will never get to do together and the fact that she will never get to see me get my PhD, something she has journeyed along with me for years, I know she is not in pain and reunited with her husband that she loved. And when you lose someone you care about, you may lose the physical presence, but you carry the memories with you. Thanks for teaching me a lot, Mrs. C, and if you can see down from heaven (which I am not sure is theologically accurate), I hope I am making you proud.