Remembering Margaret

Last week, for the second time in a month, I got the kind of phone call you never want to get. The kind that leaves you sitting stunned on the couch, dimly realizing that there is a hole in the fabric of your life, your family. The kind that brings numbness first, then pain.

This call came as I, and my family, are still getting used to life without Mimi, though I suspect it will take a while for me to really believe she’s gone. It takes longer, I think, when you live far away. I grew up a day’s drive from my dad’s hometown in southwest Missouri, where the rest of his family still lives. And so, when I was a teenager, it took time for the fact of my Papaw’s death to sink in, even though we had been expecting the call as he struggled with cancer, even though we traveled there for the funeral. I am even farther away now, on the East Coast, and so I couldn’t get there for Mimi’s funeral; I am sad, but the grief still seems remote at times. And similarly, I could not travel to that same town in Missouri this week to mourn my cousin Margaret, so I suspect it will take a while for me to believe she is gone.

She was my only girl cousin, five years older than me, born the same year my parents were married; there are photos of her at their wedding, a four-month-old baby in a little white dress. By the time my sister and I came along, she was ready to slip into the role of cool older girl, stylish and sophisticated, warm and funny. Like many girls she loved to play with other girls’ hair, but she had a special knack with brushes and braids and bobby pins; she later went to beauty college and made a living styling hair for a while. She came to the rescue when my sister’s wedding veil needed securing, and she wielded a comb and curling iron at my wedding with calm aplomb.

Seven years ago this month, she lost her little girl in a car wreck. This phone call reminded me, so much, of that one: sitting on a couch in a softly lit, wood-floored living room, next to Jeremiah, hundreds of miles away from family and completely unable to do anything to make the situation better. I did not make it to either funeral; then as now, logistics and finances made travel difficult, if not impossible. We mourned six-year-old Randen Dee, and we mourn Margaret, differently than we mourn Mimi. This grief tastes sharper, more metallic. Mimi’s life was long and full and rich; both Randen’s and Margaret’s ended far too soon.

It is probably too soon for me to write this post; it is definitely too soon for me to try and make sense of that phone call, of the gap in my family tree and the accompanying ache, which is small (I know) compared to the grief of Margaret’s parents and brother. But I wanted to mark this time, here, somehow. To say: I am grieving. It is a long, slow journey, one I have taken before, and I will be on it, I know, for some time. I do not grieve without hope, but I do grieve. And I remember.

I remember slumber parties with my sister and Margaret and her brother Andy when I was a little girl, watching movies in the living room until we fell asleep. I remember riding through town in her little dark blue Honda, still in awe that I had a cousin who could drive. I remember her brushing and braiding and styling my hair; I remember board games and Lincoln Logs and Thanksgiving dinners at Mimi’s, with her and all the other cousins; I remember laughter as she and her parents helped us decorate for my sister’s wedding reception. I remember sadness too, and grief and pain and health struggles, but mostly I remember her big brown eyes and her small-town drawl and her warm heart.

Godspeed, Marge. We already miss you.