Gone

October 27, 1945 - December 19, 2011. (Photo by Eleanor C. Hughes.)
(Eleanor Hughes is my mother, long gone.)

My sister Betty from Fort Lauderdale, FL, one year and four months younger than me, is gone.
October 27, 1945 to December 19, 2011, just past 66 years (I’m 67).
She developed pancreatic cancer, and it took her suddenly and quickly.
Although she didn’t do much for it. She was in great pain, and unable to eat. —She just wanted to get it over.
She may have had an inkling of what was happening last summer, when she took a giant motor-trip north to visit her siblings, including me, the eldest, the so-called “black sheep of the family” (a Democrat [gasp]).
(Most of our family lives in the northeastern U.S.)
She had a hard life, married four times.
Although the last time was the most successful. It’s lasted since 1990.
She had an only daughter by her first marriage, who did extremely well.
This was despite her daughter’s lack of a father-figure until she was 31.
I wonder if her actual father is still alive? (He disappeared.)
My siblings are all fighting amongst themselves regarding a eulogy one wrote.
It mentions promiscuity and failed marriages.
I sort of agree with the critics. To me her daughter was her greatest triumph. The eulogy seems to miss that.
My sister and I were very different. We went our separate ways after growing up.
She attended nearby Houghton College (“HO-tin;” as in “oh,” not “how” or “who”) for two years, partly because I did, and she had no idea what she wanted to do with her life.
People were surprised we were related, from the same family; we were that different.
My sister was assertive, and I’m not. I’m the so-called “thinker,” leery of making decisions.
My sister dropped out of Houghton after two years, home to get married. —I graduated, first in my family to graduate college, although I think my father could have.
Her first marriage crashed.
Supposedly that was her mate’s intransigence (and infidelity).
Although I don’t think he had any idea what he wanted to do with his life either.
Although I also think an assertive person like my sister could be hard to live with.
And so began the insane rollercoaster of her life.
She moved to Fort Lauderdale from northern Delaware after divorce, a single mother, allied with a guy she eventually married, who wanted to help her.
But she was leery the guy never committed to her daughter.
So she fell into a relationship with that guy’s business-partner, sort of a redneck.
That guy became marriage number-three, and it too failed over her daughter.
She wanted her daughter to attend a private college, yet that guy didn’t wanna spend that much.
He also had children from a prior marriage, the same age as her daughter.
An almighty tempest arose. Mr. redneck became abusive.
So ended marriage number-three.
She became an ardent church-goer, much like my parents.
The church solved all her problems, and gave her life fulfillment.
She had returned to the religion she was raised with, although I had walked away, unable to make the so-called “leap of faith,” wherein you deny all scientific evidence.
She became friends at that church with the guy who became marriage-partner number-four, although there was scuttlebutt among my siblings she should not get married at all.
But marry him she did, and that was successful.
Although he got Parkinson’s Disease, but he’s not bad, at least not yet.
At last my sister was happy, or so it seemed.
If we are like each other at all, it is in the fact we are both ornery, and enslaved to “I gotta see this!”

Photo by BobbaLew.

She’s still got it!

A couple years ago my sister and her fourth husband came north to visit us, and we took a dinner-excursion on the Erie Canal packet “Sam Patch.”
My blowhard macho brother-from-Boston, who loudly badmouths everything I do or say, began fulminating something about where concrete-barges dock, a demonstration of his vast knowledge about everything.
Yet my sister sprang up and hung her head the boat’s window.
In rain.
We had navigated into Lock 32, and the lock was functioning, slowly filling with water to raise us to the next canal level.
“WHOA! I gotta see this. This is really neat!”
She still had it; rough as her life was.
The childlike wonder of all experience that I have.
Last summer we spent time on Norfolk Southern’s (railroad) Pittsburgh Division near Altoona, PA (“al-TUNE-uh;” as in the name “Al”), the location of Horseshoe Curve, where I’ve been hundreds of times.
My sister had never seen Horseshoe Curve.
(I’m a railfan, and have been since age-two.)

Photo by Linda Hughes. (Linda Hughes is my wife.)

We went to a back-country grade-crossing north (railroad-east) of Altoona, and set up at trackside.
All-of-a-sudden a train was coming!
It blasted right by us; we were about 15-20 feet from the track.
My sister was thrilled, and she’s not a railfan.
A train passing is an incredible sensory rush.
She still had it.
Yet now she’s gone.
I won’t be able to attend her funeral.
My wife also has cancer, and is starting a chemo regimen.
She is getting slightly tired.
I doubt she could make the trip, and I don’t wanna leave her alone.

• “Houghton” is Houghton College in western New York, from where I graduated with a BA in 1966. I’ve never regretted it, although I graduated a Ne’er-do-Well, without their blessing. Houghton is an evangelical liberal-arts college. —My wife graduated Houghton the same class as me.