My Memere

     This time of year, I always seem to think of my Memere. It is not a saintly veneration nor a beliitling of the memory of anyone else. Our experiences of eachother, of other people are often exclusive. What one does behind closed doors isn't always what happens in public. One family member might be treated exclusively different, for good or evil, from another. I learned long ago not to idealize people, places or things. I take an ideal I may have witnessed, had proposed to me, seen something based upon, and then make it my own. I was amongst the youngest of the grandchildren and too soon distanced from that side of my family. No doubt many more know more than I, more intimately and perhaps it isn't even my place to try. But this is my memory and I cherish it. I honor and respect anyone else's. It is allowed to be different ;)
    This is what I knew of my Memere. She was vibrant and compassionate. She was funny. I saw and see these qualities reflected in her daughters and the granddaughters she nourished. She maintained these qualities despite a life visited with hardships. She was the, or amongst, the oldest of 13 so she never got to finish school. She had to help younger siblings, haul wood and water. She came to America not knowing how to speak english. She worked in a factory; a thumbnail permantly damaged where a sewing machine needle had punched through it. She stayed married to a die-hard alcoholic whose brain gave out long before his body. With all the children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren we each always got hand-knitted hats and mittens every Christmas. She was quite impressed with the fact that I knew and when sending her mail used her given name Anais instead of the Americanized one she adopted:Alice. She let me wash her dishes, taught me to sew and make zuchini parmasean. She taught me you could eat dandelions. She did not like snakes, for very good reason.
    Memere was a devout 'Catholic. She did not go to church once a week, she went every morning. When she had concerns about a great-granddaughter's lack of baptism, she didn't settle for just anyone's answers; she wrote the Pope! That is why I was so angry when the priest over her funeral services did not know anything about her. That is why I believe she would have been happy to have died on Easter; being released of the tomb of a dying body on the day she would have celebrated Jesus's release from death himself. The idea brought peace to me, anyhoo. But what really stuck with me about her dying was that her daughters lay right in the hospital bed with her as she faded away day after day. Never had I been exposed to such compassion and comfort with the human condition. I envied those who witnessed it. I envied those who participated. I prayed I could learn it. I pray that some day, that is the way someone  would love me. She gave it to her daughters and in returning it to her while she lay dying, just by my hearing of it, they passed it on to me.
   God gave the world many gifts through my Memere when He gave her many daughters, granddaughters and great granddaughters to be expressions/extensions of the reflection of Himself that He made her.