I'm feeling a great deal of grief and regret around the death of my aunt Constance. I'd been writing “Call Constance” on my to-do list, over and over, for the past year or so, never making the call, never checking it off the list. It was next to reminders to call two other aunts, whom I did call, and who are both still alive. I'd seen these other two aunts in recent years, but I hadn't seen or even spoken to Constance in decades. Why didn't I call her?
I was intimidated. I wasn't sure we'd know what to talk about. I'd heard she'd become more and more dogmatic over the years, peppering conversations with “Praise the Lord!” As an atheist, I'd find that awkward to respond to. I'd heard she was drinking a lot. And repeating herself. I didn't really want to deal with that, either. I'd heard she was in a nursing home, and that you couldn't call her directly, you'd have to leave a message and she’d have to call you back. I was afraid she wouldn't call me back. Or maybe I just used that obstacle as an excuse for why I wouldn't step up, muster the slightest bravery, and pick up the phone. Anyway, couldn't she just as easily call me? I'd always been a little better at reaching out to her than she was at reaching out to me. I allowed that final technicality to let me off the hook, as if the important thing were who to blame, rather than whether I'd ever hear her voice again.
The possibility that she'd die wasn't on my radar. I thought I'd just check that task off the list one day. That's a stupid excuse, because she was in her eighties. Though I loved her when I was young, all those new things that rose up between us came to feel monumental. Our religious difference. Our distance. The habit of not calling that came before. The fuss with the call back. Too big. Too insurmountable. Better to rewrite my to-do list day after day, proving my good intentions to no one in particular, absolving me of failing to clear those insignificant hurdles. I didn't know she'd die, so I didn't know I'd feel grief. I thought we'd grown too far apart, so I didn't know I'd feel regret.
Then yesterday, a friend of hers sent me a video. She was elderly, long white hair pulled back, a couple of teeth missing. Not that spry tomboy I remembered. She was singing. A gospel song, the kind of thing that might have accentuated how strange she'd become to me. Instead, I saw in her what I'd seen so many decades ago, and loved, and still love. The look in her eyes as she glanced toward her roommate, inviting her to join in the song. The warmth in her smile. A familiar silliness in her voice as she searched for a lyric. I remembered how easy she was to talk to, how down to earth, how fun, how caring. I didn't expect all that to come back and punch me in the gut, to supersede beliefs and doctrine and inconvenience and the subtle bitterness acquired over years of silence. I didn't expect that to show up and erase everything that came before, rendering the whole estrangement null and void, punctuating grief with shame and regret. I didn't even expect to feel this depth of sadness.
Meanwhile, in my world, I join a group of religious women for a monthly supper club, I dine with a Libertarian, I drink with a transsexual, I exchange writing with a Jew, I correspond with a family man who liked my book, I read a gay man's substack, I follow a sex worker on Twitter. I meet with my heterodox community at a retreat and listen to someone praise psychedelics, someone denounce birth control, someone defend the second amendment.
And day after day I decry the way people block and unfollow those who are different, the way people no longer sit around the Thanksgiving table with their Republican uncle, facing him, challenging him if necessary, maybe even learning from him.
And I write about the value in taking care of your business, in doing those small but important things in your sphere of influence, while I am guilty of not doing my own business. Of not doing for my aunt the favor I do often enough for strangers online, of facing an uncomfortable difference, and saying that's okay, we're going to find our common humanity anyway. I learn a lesson that’s too hard, a lesson I can't unlearn.
A beautiful but difficult sentiment so eloquently and powerfully written. This has given me a lot to think about. And it has definitely illuminated some of my own resistances to overcome. <3
We cannot be everything to everyone all the time. Forgive yourself. It sounds like Constance was happy and displayed the elements of her personality that you love. What a wonderful memory for you to hang on to.