Loss

A short essay written by Grandma Wagner (Marie Dovel) after Kay and Jim Hughes married and moved out to New York (first page missing):

...They had planned it that way. For their life together would really begin in another State, and my new son must be back at work in a few days.

So they began the packing of the many lovely gifts, and the brides clothes. I was helpful, almost promoting their departure. I am a realist, I have had to do many things because it was the only reasonable course of action, and not because it pleased me.

My new son had splendid opportunity in his work, their apartment was newly furnished and ready to reflect the glow of their presence. Oh sure, the pay check will vanish each month as they pay for this and that necessary luxury, but I am not concerned. My tears and the anguish in my soul come from another source.

As the boxed things went out the door one by one I realized that the parting was at hand.

Gertie, the dress form my Yvonne had prepared for fitting clothes in her Home Economics classes, had been used constantly in fitting the wedding dress. And after the wedding day was over we pulled her out of the closet and put the dress back on her, hoop and all. This was for the benefit of the neighbors and friends who wanted a closer look at the dress when they came to inspect the china and silver and other gifts.

Now the gifts were packed. I went over to do something with Gertie. When I put my arms around her something died within me. She was an inanimate thing and all I had left of 22 years of loving excitement in having, working for and expecting a vibrant young person on every turn to say "Mother...".

Gertie would never say that.

Gertie would never sit at my kitchen table and eat fresh Boston Brown bread with a bevy of girls who could drink a gallon of milk and laugh away the pounds.

Gertie wouldn't eat the Sunday fruit salad for breakfast, or want her best dress washed and ironed within an hour. Gertie wouldn't hunt for curlers and bobby pins under every piece of furniture in the house because she had dropped them there.

No, Gertie wouldn't come home from Ohio State University and sit down and talk small-town stuff, gossip a little, tell strange things, tell me my food was better than anyone else's -- yes, anywhere -- it was the Most. Yvonne, not Gertie, could do that, then slip away to study or write a paper that would pull an A.

Gertie wouldn't ask for the car to drive to Purdue to attend a National Student Association meeting, as if she were going to the shopping center...

My new son heaved a box out of the door and said something lost to me. But I gave a low moan and went out the back door and sat down on the steps.

The birds were busy at the fountain and eating crumbs from the morning toast, an apple dropped from the early Harvest tree. The last rose petals were still showing color but looked as depressed as I. The garden was fairly swelling as I looked on, but my heart was bursting, and my eyes tear-washed as the sky during a storm.

That was it. The birth travail had given me something very lovely, a valued bit of clay to fashion with God's help. And he helped me.

The babe was recognized in her cradle by her bigger school brother as the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. He chose her as his topic and prepared an English paper to that effect. It is still a classic with the English teacher at our High School.

He is gone, he went out tragically a long time ago, and now she is about to leave me, to go to a new life where I will not be needed.

I don't want the parting, but my silent grieving meditation must end and I must smile - the storm had spent itself - or had it? I washed my eyes, my face, I drank a glass of cold water and made a reappearance.

And then Jim said, ever so gently as he looked at that tragic face of the Mother of all brides, "I will be good to her, and take care of her." "I know you will son, it isn't that worry that upsets me, its the shortness of these 22 years, they went like a short vacation and I am not ready for the happiness of our being together to escape me."

They are packed, the morning is gone, but I feel the heaviness of a 24-hour day.

They pulled away in a 1955 car. O lord, how I wish I could have given them the keys to a new car and a house next door. But that would have been a stumbling block to them.

Opportunity is their great blessing, and they have it, far away, where I will never be. Perhaps my shadow will be there, if I have guided her well.

So I am in her room, sitting on her bed, its mussed up - it always was. She smiled and said, "Here, Mother, are some empty drawers for you." Yes, they are empty and so is my heart.

She left a high school coat in the closet, beside it a teen-age formal, still pretty, but she is a young matron now. Little Patty next door will love it.

I am going to look at the empty drawers and probably cry some more. There is her class ring. Her little niece wrote a note asking if she expected to wear it anymore, and now there is an answer. "You may have the ring, Lannie." She put it in a blue velvet box, the one her diamond earrings were in.