“My dear friend Maci …”
My coworker laughed at my use of this quaint sentiment but there is no better term to describe a friend old enough to be my grandmother, yet youthful enough to be my closest confidant.
My coworker laughed at my use of this quaint sentiment but there is no better term to describe a friend old enough to be my grandmother, yet youthful enough to be my closest confidant.
I met Maci when her son and daughter-in-law purchased a house just down the road from where I was living with my parents. They lived in California at the time, so she took it upon herself to ready the home for their arrival. She hired my dad as a handyman and me—just 19 and on winter break from my horticulture studies at SUNY Alfred—to assist her with caulking and painting the nearly 200-year-old farmhouse. I was thrilled to be making the unheard-of sum of $10 an hour, but getting to know Maci was the real reward. She was a wonderful cook, a gardener and an avid learner who took classes at the local Athenaeum, but she was hardly limited to the “grandmotherly arts.” As readily as she shared seeds from a favorite perennial, she also provided her critique of Tarantino’s “Jackie Brown.”
The three of us often had lunch at the local diner, and it wasn’t long before she was also acquainted with most of my dad’s friends, whom she called “the boys.” Our friend Ollie was especially smitten. Still an attractive woman, Maci had short silver hair and a rather large chest. She was also a terrible flirt. She delighted in wearing a T-shirt that her granddaughter, an anthropologist, brought home from the Galapagos Islands, proclaiming her the “Home of the Blue-Footed Boobies.”
She was a fashion risk taker in other ways as well, but always stylish. She once gave me a beautiful pair of leather pants that no longer fit her. I am almost embarrassed to admit they didn’t fit me either, as it demonstrates how much less fashionable I was than my 70-year-old friend. I easily adopted some of her other styles, though, including her panache for accessories. No matter what she was doing, Maci’s arms were ringed in silver bracelets that made the most beautiful sounds as they struck one another.
She certainly appreciated the finer things in life. Her husband was a successful entrepreneur and workaholic over whom she constantly fretted. They shared a lovely little home where the pantry was wallpapered with the labels from fine wines they had enjoyed and collected over the years and filled with years’ worth of Bon Appetit magazines from which she often cooked for him. Despite her fun-loving nature, Maci was a true lady and a hopeless romantic, who—much to my embarrassment—once introduced my boyfriend at a holiday party by referring to him as my “lover.”
My mother, though originally offended when her own husband and daughter continued to rave about this other woman, grew to love Maci as well. It was hard not to; she was always so gracious and had this way of making people feel special. Maci was always sending luxurious little gifts that had reminded her of the recipient. Each year she made dozens of pounds of “Christmas Crunch,” a chocolate-covered toffee that once sustained my father and me during an extended road trip through New England. When I returned to college she gave me a basket full of Crabtree & Evelyn Gardeners soap, hand cream and floral design books, and when I moved to Pennsylvania to begin my career after graduation, she sent the makings of a dinner, including homemade dried pasta, imported Italian bread sticks and woven twig placemats. Her gifts were memorable not only because they were luxurious but also because they were so deeply personal. She would just as likely pass something on to you that she had owned and enjoyed but that she knew would mean even more to you. In addition to her gifts, she frequently sent me note cards written in her beautiful staccato penmanship. We corresponded often and talked frequently on the phone about all matters of work and life.
When I met the man who would be my husband, she couldn’t have been more delighted. Upon our engagement she gave me a rather gruesome pink-and-red glass vase, declaring to us that she chose it because it looked like a heart—literally. At my wedding shower she gave several baking sheets and a treasured old edition of the “Betty Crocker Cookie Book,” with her favorites marked. That fall, Maci offered to create the centerpieces for my wedding reception; pumpkins filled with autumnal flower arrangements. I bought the pumpkins, while Maci brought a friend from her flower-arranging class, along with bags of dried grasses, flowers and seed pods from her garden. We took my Jeep out into the fields around my parents’ home so we could collect wildflowers, leaves and vines. When completed, the arrangements were beautiful.
The following year, just before
Christmas I received a call from Maci’s son to tell me Maci had passed away
that morning. It was December 21, the winter solstice. I have since heard from
those working in eldercare that it is a common phenomenon for someone to pass away
in their sleep just before waking. The body follows a circadian rhythm to rest
and rise and sometimes, as it begins the waking cycle, it simply gives out. Perhaps the beat of the rhythm was too strong on that solstice.
We couldn’t comprehend the loss. Though nearly 50 years my senior, she was not old and she certainly was youthful in spirit. Her death was particularly hard on Ollie, who was the same age as Maci. December 21 was also his birthday.
Tragically, her grandson drowned several years later on Thanksgiving Day. On that cold evening I was out hunting the grounds near my parents’ house when I heard someone shouting. I thought perhaps it might be my mother calling the dog in, because sound can travel for miles in the hills up there. When we returned at dusk, though, she told us a neighbor had phoned to tell her the child had fallen through the ice and died. A chill ran through me as I realized it was not my own mother I had heard calling but his.
To my father, Maci’s sudden passing now made sense: He felt that she—a woman so brokenhearted over the loss of her elderly cat that she would never adopt another—could not have bore the loss. My mother looked at it in a more positive light, feeling that God had called Maci home ahead of the boy’s death so that he would not have to enter heaven’s gates alone. I comforted myself with the fact that she died the sort of noble, quick and painless death we all hope for. Good for you, Maci.
She always was very practical. Years earlier, when I marveled at a Victorian cloche filled with taxidermied hummingbirds and preserved butterflies in her home, she told me she would like to give it to me but she already had her children and grandchildren in to mark the things they wanted so that she could divvy them up in her will, as she did not want any fighting after she was gone. When they cleaned out her home on Nundae Boulevard later that year, so her husband could move into something smaller, her son was kind enough to think of me and give me a few items of hers: a beaded belt, a denim jacket, which still carried in its pocket the wrapper from an Andes candy she had eaten, and a comfy taupe sweater. The spring day he delivered them was surprisingly cold. I had not packed enough warm items for my visit and took comfort in that sweater. I told my mom it was just like Maci to look after me in that way.
The sweater was nothing special but it still smelled of her perfume. That year when I seemed to keep getting poison ivy on the same spot of my wrist, I realized it was coming from the sweater. The last time she wore it she must have been gardening. I cried when I finally had to wash the sweater to remove the oil from the ivy, knowing that at the same time it would lose her scent.
There was no funeral. Instead her family held a celebration of her life later that summer. If memory serves me, it may have been on the summer solstice. Dozens of us gathered in an orchard owned by a friend of hers. We shared music and stories, followed by a meal. She had told each of us so much about the others that it was easy to “recognize” one another. Thanks to Maci, we were all friends.
In the years since, the solstice has been my day of solace: a moment to take time out from the busy season and cry. This year was no different; I looked fondly over her letters and gifts and thought of the dear friend I have lost. One of the last things she ever gave me was a jointed, wooden Gardening Angel figure. It still hangs on my porch on with a tag that reads, “Merry Christmas. Love, Maci.”
We couldn’t comprehend the loss. Though nearly 50 years my senior, she was not old and she certainly was youthful in spirit. Her death was particularly hard on Ollie, who was the same age as Maci. December 21 was also his birthday.
Tragically, her grandson drowned several years later on Thanksgiving Day. On that cold evening I was out hunting the grounds near my parents’ house when I heard someone shouting. I thought perhaps it might be my mother calling the dog in, because sound can travel for miles in the hills up there. When we returned at dusk, though, she told us a neighbor had phoned to tell her the child had fallen through the ice and died. A chill ran through me as I realized it was not my own mother I had heard calling but his.
To my father, Maci’s sudden passing now made sense: He felt that she—a woman so brokenhearted over the loss of her elderly cat that she would never adopt another—could not have bore the loss. My mother looked at it in a more positive light, feeling that God had called Maci home ahead of the boy’s death so that he would not have to enter heaven’s gates alone. I comforted myself with the fact that she died the sort of noble, quick and painless death we all hope for. Good for you, Maci.
She always was very practical. Years earlier, when I marveled at a Victorian cloche filled with taxidermied hummingbirds and preserved butterflies in her home, she told me she would like to give it to me but she already had her children and grandchildren in to mark the things they wanted so that she could divvy them up in her will, as she did not want any fighting after she was gone. When they cleaned out her home on Nundae Boulevard later that year, so her husband could move into something smaller, her son was kind enough to think of me and give me a few items of hers: a beaded belt, a denim jacket, which still carried in its pocket the wrapper from an Andes candy she had eaten, and a comfy taupe sweater. The spring day he delivered them was surprisingly cold. I had not packed enough warm items for my visit and took comfort in that sweater. I told my mom it was just like Maci to look after me in that way.
The sweater was nothing special but it still smelled of her perfume. That year when I seemed to keep getting poison ivy on the same spot of my wrist, I realized it was coming from the sweater. The last time she wore it she must have been gardening. I cried when I finally had to wash the sweater to remove the oil from the ivy, knowing that at the same time it would lose her scent.
There was no funeral. Instead her family held a celebration of her life later that summer. If memory serves me, it may have been on the summer solstice. Dozens of us gathered in an orchard owned by a friend of hers. We shared music and stories, followed by a meal. She had told each of us so much about the others that it was easy to “recognize” one another. Thanks to Maci, we were all friends.
In the years since, the solstice has been my day of solace: a moment to take time out from the busy season and cry. This year was no different; I looked fondly over her letters and gifts and thought of the dear friend I have lost. One of the last things she ever gave me was a jointed, wooden Gardening Angel figure. It still hangs on my porch on with a tag that reads, “Merry Christmas. Love, Maci.”
