Years ago, when the woman who saved my life told me she had cancer and was dying, I burst into tears. My sobs wracked both our bodies as we hugged. She let me cry and held me until the tears subsided.
We were parked in the empty seminary lot, home to the Neo-Gothic chapel where she and her family attended mass on Sundays and where I also attended when I lived with them my first summer out of high school.
I had been abandoned by both my parents when I was a teen, had been living on my own, albeit with financial support from my father, and had graduated from high school as an emancipated minor, though there was nothing official about it. My parents and I had just gone our separate ways, first when I was fifteen and left home, and then again at age seventeen when my mom moved out of our shared apartment and let me stay behind so I could finish high school.
She taught me about personal hygiene, like washing your hands after using the bathroom
I met Pat the fall of my senior year and she took me under her wing. Took me clothes shopping, taught me about personal hygiene, like washing your hands after using the bathroom at a restaurant, and how to wash my face without flooding the bathroom counter. She taught me to change my sheets every week instead of once every couple of months, how to dust (I’d never dusted in my life), how to keep a checkbook.
Even years before she died, before she had cancer, she believed in her mortality. She gave me a gaudy pin. It was silver-plated metal with white and pale blue rhinestones the color of her eyes. I’d never seen her wear it. We were standing by her dresser. She handed it to me saying, “I want you to have something to remember me by.” She said it was valuable and that a friend had given it to her. Someone I didn’t know. I took the pin wondering if she thought I’d wear it.
Did she really know my tastes so little? She seemed oblivious to the fact that this pin was not my style. But perhaps that wasn’t the point. The point is that today, every time I open my jewelry box and see that pin, I think of Pat.
Funky jewelry wouldn’t go over well with my wardrobe
I’m now past the age she was when she gave it to me. I’ve thought of wearing that pin, but funky jewelry wouldn’t go over well with my wardrobe. People would think it wasn’t a gag or a statement, just tacky. All this goes through my head whenever I see that pin. But Pat did know me. She let me cry in her arms when she told me she was dying.
She let me cry in her arms when she told me she was dying.
After we parted in the front seat of my car, I wiped away my tears and we gazed into each other’s eyes with such grief. “Thank you,” she said. I understood perfectly what she meant. Thank you for the tears, thank you for the sorrow, thank you for acknowledging that this was real. She was going to die sooner than expected. And I was the only one who had accepted it so readily. No one else–not her kids, not her friends, at least that’s what she said.
Maybe I sobbed because I had only recently gotten Pat back. We had been estranged for seven years. But when my first born got critically ill as a toddler, I called her. She came to see me, and we cried in each others arms. She did not criticize or scold me. She said, “Thank you.” And I knew what she was saying. Thank you for calling me, for welcoming me back into your life. I forgive you. I am happy we can be friends again. I have missed you.
It’s time to be me and wear what I want to wear, tacky or not.
The other day I was wearing a royal blue sweater and thought, it needs a pin. And there was Pat’s pendant sparkling up at me from its long-held spot in my jewelry box. I picked it up and pinned it to my sweater and thought it looked nice. I thought I don’t care what other people think. It’s time to be me and wear what I want to wear, tacky or not.
My personal style is conventional. I wish I could be funky and wild, but that’s not how Pat dressed me when I was a teen. Once we got home from shopping, loaded with coordinated blouses and skirts, she took my hippie wardrobe of ripped jeans and tattered sweaters to the trash can. I never adopted her style of monochrome pantsuits, but I often accepted her hand-me-down sweaters, and I still have the muumuu she gave me that I love–navy blue with white stitching in a floral medallion on the front.
I still have the muumuu she gave me that I love.
I’ve thought of attaching the pin to a coat or jacket lapel, or pinning it to a hat, except I don’t wear hats. And so, the pin sits in my jewelry box. Every time I see it, I smile and remember her with love, just like she wanted me to.
It turns out the pin is a collector’s item made by PENNINO, an Italian costume jewelry maker established here in the states in 1908. I only just discovered that when I turned it over wondering if it was real silver and saw the tiny name etched in capital letters. It’s worth maybe a couple hundred dollars. But to me, it’s priceless.
Learn about my award-winning memoir, A MINOR, UNACCOMPANIED.