Friday, March 7th

WHENEVER I go “inland,” as I did yesterday to Cambridge for Rosalind’s funeral, I am aware of the ice-locked ponds and lakes and rivers, and what a joy it is to live all winter now by “open water.” Inland the ponds are all white-gray, while here I look out on the brilliant blue of the ocean against the sad prespring browns and grays. It is a constant lift for the eyes.

The funeral was in Christ Church in Cambridge, immaculate, austere, seventeenth-century church. I got there early, on purpose, moved at once to tears by the blue iris and anemones which seemed to express perfectly the flame, the blue flame of Rosalind herself. In the front pew at first there were only Joy, Rosalind’s only remaining daughter, and little Francesca in pigtails, one of Rosalind’s great-grandchildren. I had minded terribly that anyone should be called Francesca when this child was born, after her grandmother Francesca’s death, Francesca whom I loved so much and who was so beautiful! But now that so many of that family are dead, I felt suddenly the sweetness of something carried on into life through the generations, and I was glad for little Francesca, whispering and smiling, and unaware of all the tragic deaths we had come to mourn.

Later at the gathering at 10 Longfellow Park, Joy and I talked for a few moments, as we always have, in perfect communion. For thirty years or more I had talked with the daughters, trying to fathom the mystery of their mother. Katrine, so often fierce in her rejection, determined at the end to die her own death in her own way, not allowing Rosalind to “take over,” as she had Francesca during her long last illness. Rosalind had not been a good mother, but she had been a wonderful grandmother and when I uttered something of this, Joy answered, “Yes, the grandchildren got the glow; we were burned.”

So much erupted in me at these words that I wanted to get away at once to think them over. “For me, Rosalind was a hero,” I had heard a young man say just a few moments before.