Last week my brother called to tell me that his wife of thirty years hadn't awakened that morning. Carole was only 58, one of those very alive people- the kind that can't sit still and is constantly doing-- cooking, shopping, playing, calling friends. She was always optimistic and positive, not a big reader, or very introspective, but one of those curious, completely involved with life people. We were total opposites, though she was a storyteller like me, only she did it orally, with every day an adventure for her, filled with excitement that only increased with every repetition.
When they visited, we would go shopping- an activity I usually despise and she lived for- and when we'd get home to our husbands, our day in the retelling became filled with interesting people and funny happenings and I would realize, gosh, I had a really great time!
Carole's life wasn't easy. She lost her father in her teens, her brother when he crashed into a tree on his high school graduation night, her first husband to cancer. When she married my brother, she had a 4 and a 6 year old. They lost the younger one a few years ago in a terrible car accident.
And yet she always picked up the pieces and soon she was Carole again- living everything more fully than everyone around her. She never talked about their son, Jason. She once told me when she and Skip were taking off to Europe right after 9-11 that the tickets were too cheap to pass on and when I asked her if she weren't afraid, she said, after you lose a child, there is nothing left to be afraid of.
Sometimes I would worry at the way they took off around the world. They loved to travel and she loved to shop, even shipping home furniture from China one trip. I worried because they weren't saving, they weren't planning for the future. She was generous to a fault. Her Christmas boxes would arrive at our house to great excitement because they were filled not only with perfect gifts for all of us, but with homemade cakes and cookies, and small fun things tucked in all the corners-- candles, potpourri, handlotion, small toys, candy.
If you admired something, she either gave it to you outright or a replica arrived soon after. I admired some monogrammed towels once when we were staying with them, and in a few weeks, every one of us received a set of our own.
They have five cats because neither she nor Skip could leave a stray behind.
Carole was one of those people who took over the center of things, she seemed to energize a room. Her death has left a dark emptiness in our family, for Skip and I are all that are left of our side. It's been a hard week, harder than I would have expected. I ache for my brother, who is lost without her. And she was so young-- that's always so jolting.
Still I think of all those trips, and all the fun they had. She never hesitated about life. And isn't it wonderful she didn't- and that she took my brother along with her on the ride.
They think it was her heart, though there was no autopsy.
I can't help thinking, corny as it is, that maybe her heart was just too big. |
