Oh these feisty old ladies. They have survived so much. Doug's aunt Vi grew up in North Dakota, in a farmhouse with a dirt floor. She had seven or eight brothers and sisters, and when the oldest girl died in childbirth, her baby was taken in and raised as another sibling. They all had great, old fashioned, salt-of-the-earth names--Nellie, and Mavis, and Mary Lou. And that was fitting, because these were old-fashioned, salt-of-the-earth women. They served white bread and margarine at every meal, along with big hunks of well-cooked meat and vegetables boiled vigorously to a pale pea-green, and they always said grace and went to church, whether they believed or not, and if they didn't believe it was nobody's business.
Vi married a guy named George, and it wasn't an easy life, but they had a son, Greg, who grew up to be a lawyer and to play guitar in a Christian rock group, and he and his family have been the light of her life these past 25 years. About 10 or 12 years ago Vi moved from North Dakota to the Twin Cities to live with Mavis, her little sister (and Doug's mom). It was always great fun to visit them on Sundays, two widows, side by side in their matching leather recliners in front of the TV. Mavis, being hard of hearing and a little more subdued personality-wise, was always pretty quiet. But Vi talked and talked and talked.
She was bossy. She had opinions on everything. She read the papers, and she watched television, and she commented with great certainty, primarily on the Minnesota Twins and Vikings football, but also on politics and crime.
One November weekend she told us that she and Mavis had watched the Razzle-Dazzle parade on television the night before. It took us a minute to understand that she meant
the Holidazzle parade, which glides, illuminated and glittering, up the Nicollet Mall on weekend nights between Thanksgiving and New Year's. But Razzle-Dazzle was a better name, and Razzle-Dazzle it has been, to us, ever since.
Her health was not good; she suffered from osteoporosis. Some years ago, her older sister, Nellie, had fallen, and Vi had tried to help her up but instead had fallen, too, and heard a loud crack! as she fell, and there they both lay on the ground, two cranky old ladies, unable to get up, and each yelling at the other for the sorry situation they were in. Vi told this story with great humor, but the truth was that when she fell with a crack! she had fractured her own back, and had to wear a brace forever more.
The brace laced up the back and was shot through with metal stays. Doug and I used to take her to the airport for her annual Christmas trip to Milwaukee to visit Greg, loaded down with carry-on bags packed with homemade peanut brittle and fruitcake, and each time she would set off all the metal detectors. She was then forced to stand there, ancient and stooped, teetering on her small feet in their orthopedic shoes, arms outstretched, while the bewildered Homeland Security official went over her whole body with a wand.
Five years ago she grew very ill and moved to Milwaukee to be near Greg (l
eaving her freezer behind, as many of you know). Her health improved, and she lived in an apartment with just a little help getting dressed and bathing. She and Mavis talked on the phone every Saturday, the last two remaining feisty North Dakota sisters, and last summer Greg brought Vi to the cities for a visit, right after her 89th birthday.
She made it one more year, to 90, but that was it. A few weeks ago, she fell in her apartment and broke her hip. She had surgery and moved to a rehab center to heal. On Saturday night, she and Mavis talked as usual. Vi was in some pain, but she sounded pretty good, up on all the gossip, sounding off about the moves the Twins needed to make in the off-season. On Tuesday night, Greg stopped by and gave her a chocolate malt. The next day, Vi suffered a massive stroke and only lived a few more hours.
My sister was 52 when she died. Mavis's sister was 90. I don't think it gets any easier. It might even get harder. But for Vi, to go out after a chat with her sister, a visit from her son, and a chocolate malt, is not a bad way to go. For the rest of us, it's hard, and we will miss her.
