Virginia, Aunt Mimi’s elder daughter, gave birth to a third son, Terry. Tiny, resembling his mother in facial structure and his father in coloring, he became the center of attention.
Kenny and Wade and I ignored him. He was a pretty baby but he was boring. We found there wasn’t much you could do with a baby except change his diapers. Dad said he’d be big in no time and then we’d have another player for our baseball team. We weren’t convinced.
After the birth Aunt Ginny couldn’t put weight back on. Usually women blow up like a poisoned dog when they’re pregnant but she wore down.
I don’t know when they knew for certain that Virginia, at age thirty-three, was dying of cancer. Maybe the boys knew before I did.
You could see her wasting away, but she fought back. She didn’t want to take to her bed. Julia Ellen, her younger sister, was away at school, the Immaculate Heart of Mary. When she came home even though it wasn’t vacation time, that’s when I knew it was bad.
Two occurrences stick in my mind from that time. Dad had me in the car when he drove to Aunt Mimi’s. He parked in front of the house. Mother was staying with Sis around the clock. He told me to stay in the car. It was cold. An eon passed, and I got antsy. So I walked home, a few miles away.
One of our neighbors, Helen Stambaugh, saw me walk up the driveway. She called Dad. He came home frantic. I’d never seen Dad lose his temper, and a man that strong ought not to lose his temper. Shaking, he spanked me up every step to the upstairs. I didn’t utter a peep. I was too terrified.
I had scared him half to death. The poor fellow, exhausted and sad, had come out from his sister-in-law’s house to find an empty car. Had I been kidnapped? Had I been run over on the road? He must have felt as if someone had ripped his stomach out.
The other event happened at Ginny’s farm out in Shiloh. A thunderstorm rose up even though it was cold out. Kenny, Wade and I were playing outside because it was too depressing to be in the house. The storm rolled over, and then behind the house appeared a rainbow of startling color. I thought Jesus would slide down that rainbow. We ran in the house to get the adults. They came out on the porch and clapped their hands.
That was the last time I saw Virginia stand on her feet.
Ginny was a quiet, warmhearted woman who was some kind of saint. I mean it. There was only goodness in her. People felt it. She lived for her husband, Ken, and the kids. Ken had survived the front lines at Okinawa, being wounded, coming home to more hard times, having to eke out an existence. Things had just begun to pick up for him at the farm, and now he was losing his wife and would be left with three sons to care for, one of them six months old.
Virginia died at Aunt Mimi’s. Cheerful, no matter how searing the pain, loving in the face of her approaching death, that woman taught me courage. You could smell the cancer. It ate through to the surface of her skin. The sickly sweet odor of rot clung to her, and even though Mom, Aunt Mimi and Julia Ellen changed her bandages regularly, the fluids and blood kept seeping through.
Despite the grimness, no one minded being in Ginny’s presence. She shared with each of us everything she had: her heart and her unshakable faith in the goodness, mercy and wisdom of God.
As I watched her suffer I felt the reverse. God was a bully. How could he allow Ginny to suffer from breast cancer? I could think of a few kids and adults that I’d have liked to see in her place and I prayed for him to give them her affliction. God didn’t see things my way.
Just before Virginia died she sat up in the bed and said she saw the Virgin Mary. The Blessed Virgin Mother was coming to take her from this life. Radiance shone over her face. She closed her eyes, surrendering to this new adventure.
I cried. I cried until I had a headache and was sick to my stomach. While the women prepared the body, I cried and cried. Dad cried, too. Ken was so distraught we didn’t see him. I don’t know who was taking care of him. Kenny, Wadie and I didn’t know what had hit us.
Many people came to Ginny’s funeral. Flowers filled the church and a large satin ribbon with Mother embroidered on it was on the huge floral blanket covering the casket. Ken Bowers, a powerfully built man, shrank before my eyes. I saw the savagery of grief, but I also saw the power of love. No man looks like that or cries like that if he hasn’t loved a woman with his body, his mind, his heart and his soul.
I didn’t understand that love but I saw it.
After the funeral we went back to the farm in Shiloh. The adults hovered in the kitchen. Ken wanted the boys with him. I went to find them.
I walked up the narrow wooden steps to their bedroom. Kenny and Wade lay on their beds, and behind them on the wall was the embroidered ribbon that read Mother. I had never felt so desolate, helpless, useless. I kissed them and went downstairs.
On the surface, Ken eventually recovered. Some years later he married the woman he’d hired as his housekeeper. I don’t think he ever really got over Virginia’s death, though. At the end of his life, when he was dying of lung cancer, he visited Aunt Mimi and Mom and cried over Virginia. He cried for the times he’d been mean to her. He cried for the stupid things he’d done, for his hair-trigger temper, for the times he’d hit her, which weren’t many but it only takes one. He wanted forgiveness and the Buckingham sisters did forgive him, although Aunt Mimi couldn’t let slip the opportunity to tell him only God could really forgive him.
By that time I was a grown woman and I happened to be home visiting Mom. I had always adored Ken. What woman didn’t? In his twenties he had looked like that other blond titan, Gary Cooper. And Ken aged well too, like Cooper.
He told me that the pain he’d felt when Ginny died was worse than any pain he’d felt when he was wounded fighting the Japanese.
Pain is a purifier. I know that now. I even knew it then, and yet when I remember those two little boys lying in bed, eyes hollow, the embroidered ribbon over their beds, I still wish we could learn how unique people are before we lose them.