April 22, 2007
Missing an old friend
When I got my first computer and got online I spent a lot of time looking for people who were once very involved in my life. Every now and then I got lucky and found some snippit of information that told me an old friend was still alive and doing well. A few times I found obituaries, and one old acquaintance I discovered through court records indicating he had been convicted of attempted murder. About the few people I most wanted to find, I found nothing. None of them were the extroidinary types who would have ever written a bestseller or committed a spectacular crime or done any other thing that would have merited mention in the newspapers.
Eventually I moved on to other pursuits, but from time to time I’ll think of someone I miss and google their name to see if I can find any trace of them. I did that frantically in the months following Hurricane Katrina. Having lived much of my life just outside of New Orleans, I had a special interest in gathering news of survivors and of those who had died. Still, the names I most wanted to find did not show up on any list. I hope that means that those people are living unremarkable lives and have moved on from that terrible tragedy.
Today I searched once again, and I came up empty-handed. I was searching for Miss Catherine, who lived across the street from my childhood home and was my mother’s best friend. Her family’s life and my own were intertwined for over thirty years. Her cozy kitchen was always open to me as a child and a teen. She always had interesting snacks on hand and her large extended family considered me and my siblings to be extra nieces and nephews. She had a pekingnese dog and a daughter about ten years younger than me who was my first babysitting job. Her husband, Mr. Danny, died quite unexpectedly of a heart attack when he was in his forties and I witnessed, for the first time in my life, how terrible grief can be. For a long time we all wondered if Miss Catherine could survive an ache so strong. She proved herself a resiliant survior, though, and went to work for the first time in her life, selling hosiery and dancewear in a mall. A few years later she hired my sister and they had an ueasy working relationship for a number of years. Miss Catherine was meticulous and organized. Sis, not at all. For my mother’s sake they both worked at maintaining peace, though each spoke harshly of the other. Catherine and I had become adult friends on an almost-equal footing by then, and I spent many hours in her kitchen, drinking her rich, black coffee with chicory and listening to her talk. She still missed Mr. Danny horribly. We talked about him a lot, and about their daughter, who was her great pride. Mostly, though, she vented her frustrations about working with Sis. Sis used me for the same purpose and I spent several years sitting precriously on a fence, trying to just listen to both without being “involved.”
It was a terrible blow to Miss Catherine when my mother died. They had been best friends since she was a young almost-newlywed. Thirty years - a lifetime. Again Catherine seemed lost in grief. Feeling disoriented and confused myself, I spent hours sitting with her, listening to her pain, drinking endless cups of coffee grown bitter. I thought I saw a sudden aging in her, then realized that I was seeing her for the first time ever without her careful and skilled makeup routine. She prayed daily to her catholic saints for my mother, as she still did for Mr. Danny, and bought masses for them both. She regained her footing eventually, but was never quite the same. She had lost such a big part of herself.
Six months later my job moved me across the country. Catherine and I still spoke on the phone from time to time. When I returned for a visit a few years later, she insisted that I stay in her home so we could catch up. We had a wonderful visit, but our contact became less and less frequent in the years that followed. Our last visit was about nine years ago when I returned to the old house to pack my father up and move him here to Hawaii to live with me. The old warmth and familiarity was still there, though neither of us knew much of the other’s life anymore.
I know that Catherine still lived in the house across the street when our own home was sold a year later. I don’t know when her phone number, the one she had had since I was a child, was changed. I tried to call her after Dad died. She had sent flowers for his service and a touching card. I wanted to thank her, but couldn’t find a new phone listing. The note I sent didn’t come back, so I suppose she got it, but there was never a reply. Maybe she’s finally retired from selling support hose to old ladies and leotards to little girls. She’d be about seventy herself now, so I guess she probably has. Her name doesn’t come up in death notices when I google, so maybe she’s still knocking around. I can’t imagine her in a nursing home. Maybe she’s living with her daughter.
It’s the not knowing that I hate.
Technorati Tags: friends, family, memories, sponsored post
Posted by skeet @ 1:17 am • Society & culture
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April 22nd, 2007 at 4:27 am, Acey Says:
compelling story …
April 22nd, 2007 at 8:00 am, Chigiy Says:
I hope you find Catherine alive and well and as sweet and warm as ever. It’s hard to lose people that knew our parents and us as children. It’s like losing bits of our history:)
April 22nd, 2007 at 9:51 am, Whim Says:
I’m sorry Skeet, I hope you find her.
April 22nd, 2007 at 10:34 am, skeet Says:
@ Chigiy - It’s so hard to keep track when I’m so far away, and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina has added a huge “what if” factor to each of my searches. Catherine held such an important place in my life for so many years, it’s especially hard to not know where she is and what’s happened to her.
April 22nd, 2007 at 10:38 am, skeet Says:
Mahalo, Whim. I haven’t given up by a long shot, but I suppose a long shot is what would be needed to find her. It’s very frustrating. Her daughter was planning a marriage when we were last in touch. No maiden name mention for her, and I don’t know her husband’s last name, so that avenue of search is non-productive.
April 23rd, 2007 at 7:30 pm, skeet Says:
Acey, mahalo for stopping by my place. Sorry I was so late with my GTS post. The day in Hawaii starts so far behind most of the rest of the world. I really need to get in the habit of making my GTS post on Saturday night before I go to bed, lol!
May 10th, 2007 at 11:09 am, The Panoptic Web « Neomeme Says:
[…] Missing an Old Friend […]