Alice

             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 91^st 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.