The Last of Her Tribe

My dear Aunt Alice died on Thursday, June 2nd, at the age of 96. 

 

For the past several years her residence had been in an Assisted Living Facility. She suffered from a ruthlessly advancing form of dementia which bore holes in and finally destroyed all barriers that would enable polite social exchange. 

 

She was the youngest child of 15 living children of Maria and August Lima Medeiros. At a young age, she left home and eloped with a handsome young sailor of Sweedish extraction named Dale, and moved with him across the country to settle in one of the small towns outside of Seattle, Washington. 

 

She was trying to escape the often brutal realities and challenges of being a woman in a strict Roman Catholic, immigrant Portuguese culture where she was expected to marry "a nice, local Portuguese boy from a good family, settle down and have lots of babies."

 

She did the exact opposite and thus became a hero in my eyes.

 

By every account, she and her husband and their two daughters were thriving in Washington State. When viewed through my immigrant eyes, she might as well have been living in a foreign country. She came to visit us, once when I was about 6 or 7 years old, she and her husband and the two fair-skinned girls who were my cousins. 

 

Well, the eldest daughter looked more like a fair-skinned version of us, except her eyes were hazel, as are my own. The youngest looked like she had been cut from a batch of Swedish butter cookie dough, complete with blond-blond hair and piercing blue eyes. Interestingly enough, while her husband had blue eyes, my Aunt Alice had piercing blue eyes, which was not uncommon on my Grandmother's side of the family. 

 

Their lack of New England accent was probably as jarring to us as our accent was to them. We drank "soda". They drank "pop". We ate any kind of fish. They ate any kind of salmon. (well, mostly Fresh Pacific salmon - some smoked and dried. Ours came out of the Atlantic and mostly from a can.) We ate a clam boil with potatoes and Portuguese sausage and hot dogs. They ate raw oysters. On the half-shell. With a little cocktail sauce. 

 

They traveled by RV which they set up in the side yard of my grandparent's tenement house. I could be mistaken but my memory is that they arrived in the early days of summer vacation. "But, an RV!" my aunts and uncles whispered, "Do you know how much one of those things costs?" they gasped. "The gas alone. . . ." said one of my uncles, half admiringly, half green with envy. 

 

My aunt was "slim and trim" as her sisters said with no small amount of envy, wore form-fitting dresses, and smoked cigarettes with her feet up. She didn't drink wine like my aunts but, instead, drank actual alcohol - brown liquid in a bottle that came from "the package store" and not homemade beer or whiskey/rum (Cachaça or Aguardente - Portuguese for "burning water") - in a proper glass that clinked with ice cubes when she held it to her lips, deep red with lipstick. 

 

I remember finding her half-filled lipstick-stained glass on an end table once when no one was around. I put my lips on the exact place of her lips, but the smell of the alcohol was more than my young nose could tolerate so I put it down quickly. 

 

So, let me state the obvious: Mother-daughter relationships are complex and complicated. If we don't work through them, we often become what we reject.

 

I've been reflecting on this since my cousin called with the news of my Aunt's death - especially since it was my Aunt who inspired my journey to "run away from home" so I could escape the oppressive expectations of behavior and become more of who I was understanding myself to be. 

 

It occurred to me that my grandmother moved from the Azores to Fall River, MA. That's approximately 2, 403 miles. 

 

When I checked the distance from Fall River to Seattle, it was 3,044 miles. That's a difference of a little over 600 miles. 

 

One journey was over the seas, the other over the land. One journey was from one continent to another, the other journey was across an entire continent. One was to flee the ghost of her mother, the other was to flee the reality of her mother.

 

And yet, when I saw my Aunt last year, there was absolutely no doubt that, with filters off, she had become more of what she had rejected. There was a moment when I gasped at something she did and said and realized that those were my grandmother's exact words and behavior.

 

No matter the quality or content, mother-daughter relationships are fraught with complex and complicated emotions. I know I'm still sorting through my mother-daughter relationship - and my mother died in 2008 - even as I try to figure out my relationships with my own daughters.

 

What I fear most is that the patterns will repeat themselves, despite my best efforts to avoid them. Indeed, some are already well-established, which causes me to grieve more than the loss of my mother or grandmother, or aunts. 

 

I'm told that my aunt left very explicit instructions in her will. There is to be no viewing, no funeral. Gawd, no. That would be "too Fall River immigrant" for her. However, she did allow that there could be a "gathering for lunch and storytelling" which my cousins are planning later this summer. Ms. Conroy and I are planning to attend. 

 

For whatever else she was, she was the youngest and The Last of Her Tribe. She was fierce and feisty and often impossible and iracible. As she got older and her brain no longer served her as it should, she became increasingly cantankerous, fractious, and uncontrollable. 

 

She also became, more and more, what she had rejected. I shouldn't be surprised. It's a rule of the cosmos: That which we reject, we become. 

 

Which is why I so admire my cousins. They have been able to recognize, name, and work through their issues - and continue to do so. They are who they are and I detect little danger of either of them becoming their mother. Or, my mother. Or their grandmother.

 

She was the Last of Her Tribe. That's a special kind of grief, all its own, especially for an immigrant family. 

 

I shall miss her dearly. 

 

And, if I'm honest, I'll miss all that she represents, because it's also a rule of the cosmos: We miss most what we can no longer have, even if we didn't want it when we had it.