Alice
hated being alone so much that as a youngster she did her homework on a park
bench in order to have people around her. She died this month on her 91st
birthday, on Pentecost Sunday. We had the same birthday, but this year for the
first time I didn’t send her a birthday card, as if I already knew she had
other plans.
We
couldn’t have been more different. She was 13 years older, sociable, cheerful,
confident, bossy. But we recognized something in each other the first time we
met. She was a family counselor and I was going through the Valley of the
Shadow. Alice knew that what I most needed right then was to feel safe and be
left alone.
When
I finally began to feel like myself again, I stood up to a neighbor who warned
me not to plant anything near the fence which might shade her yard. “You mean
like a giant sequoia?” I said. Alice thought that was about the funniest thing
she had ever heard and she repeated the story more than once.
Long
after I graduated from therapy (with heart-shaped balloons and a party) Alice
would call me up or send me a
card. She once confessed that she prayed for her clients, a surprising
admission.
Alice
never got very far from the church. She was a Dominican nun, then a nurse, then
an associate of Holy Names, a teaching order. She once asked me to convert a
set of tape-recorded religious lectures into compact discs. I could hardly
believe anyone could listen to 20 hours of lecturing, but Alice was delighted
to have the tapes preserved and sent me two silk scarves as a thank you.
She
gave away almost everything she had when she moved to St. Anne’s home in San
Francisco, where she spent the last several years of her life. A friend and I
took her to lunch at the Palace of the Legion of Honor one day, wheeling her
around in her chair, laughing and joking.
Someone
at St. Anne’s found my telephone number among Alice’s things and called me to
tell me about the memorial service. “Alice really liked you,” the caller said. Hearing
that was almost as good as getting to say goodbye in person.
