Another piece of my heart...gone

Spring Training 2014 - Helen cheering on our Tigers

I have started this post ten times already. I've erased pictures and words and I've closed the browser a few times. If I don't write it maybe it won't be true to me. Maybe I won't feel it so much. And yet...I do. The tears once again cloud my eyes as I refuse to wipe them away...

Thursday I was standing in the paper towel aisle at the grocery store when I got the bad news. Normally I wouldn't have answered the call from my mom at the grocery store, I'd have sent it to voicemail and called her back from the car or the house. But her and my dad were on vacation up north and we hadn't talked in a few days and I wasn't sure when they'd have service again so I picked up. And that's when my mom told me. 

Helen had passed away.

My hand went to my mouth. I audibly gasped and started to cry. In all the world I had not been expecting that call on that day. We've had our share of loss and sadness over the past year or so. Too many funerals. Too many goodbyes. Too many tears. And in the back of my mind, I know more are coming. People get older. People get sicker. But I try not to dwell. 

But Helen wasn't sick. She was fine. My parents had spent a few weeks with her at her home in Florida this winter. They'd gone to spring training and cheered on our Tigers. They'd played board games and gone golfing. We were cooking up a scheme to all fly to Florida over Thanksgiving break and spend the week with her in the sun. The first time we'd all be there together with her in a long time. But it wasn't too be. She had a stroke and slipped away. Quietly. Quickly. Without my parents getting down there. Without us even knowing. The phone call from a nephew broke the news. 

Winter 2014

Helen is family. By blood? No. But by more than that. She has just been Helen as long as I can remember. Not aunt or grandma or anything. Just Helen. She has been a rock, a friend, a confidant, a cheerleader. There are pictures from Europe and Tiger games sitting on my shelf to mail her this week. My dad's slippers are still under the guest bed at her house. Helen. 

I last talked with her on the phone on Christmas day. She was proud of me going after what I wanted. She told me not to let anyone stand in my way, certainly no man. I said no, ma'am, I wouldn't let that happen, with a smile in my voice. She thanked us for the Christmas cookies we'd expressed shipped down there and we promised more soon. She'd emailed just a few weeks ago to tell me she was enjoying my blogs and to write more often. Something a grandma would and did often say. 

She had a hard life. Lost a child to a car accident then a husband to addiction. Found a new community and vitality in Florida, her own space, her own life. Amazed all of us by traveling the globe and finding a boyfriend and adopting a little dog to devote her days to. 

More than anything, Helen is a piece of my heart. She is a piece of the family that raised me. Her mother was my Grandma Susie. And so many summer evenings were spent being coaxed off the diving board at her pool on Grand River in Howell. Listening to my parents and her and Rube laugh. Loving that we had people who wanted to spend their time with us. Not because they had to but because they chose too. 

Once I lost all of my blood grandparents I took solace in the fact that I still had an older generation of family in my life. And I hold on to that. I still do, even if today, a piece of my heart has flown away. A very big piece.

Winter 2014

A little postscript (8/27/14):
Helen's funeral was yesterday, Mom said it was lovely. Family and friends and flowers and then the pastor asked for people to share stories.

My aunt Wensday told about a hat with flowers on it that traveled around between Helen and some other family members for a while which made me smile. And as my mom was talking I thought about something I hadn't remembered in a while.

When we went to Disney World for the first time in 1988 I was just ten years old. It was the first time we went on a real vacation, staying in hotels and all that jazz. (My family was a family of tent campers, good, bad, and monsoon.) And Helen took the time to put together little envelopes for us to open on the trip. I don't remember what was in all of them though I do remember stickers on the envelopes and little handwritten notes and instructions to open this one on Day 2, Day 3, etc. But I do remember there being a little bit of money in the last envelope, to buy a souvenir with. And I remember thinking that was just about the coolest thing ever, that Helen made us this little game. Because that's what she was, just about the coolest person ever.

That's the story I would have told yesterday when the pastor asked for people to share. That and the fact that she instilled in me a great desire to someday live in a house with an INGROUND swimming pool, just like she had.

I'm sad I wasn't there yesterday, to hug my family and to pray as she was laid to rest but I take solace in the fact that I will have her memories with me always. Always.