Eleanor

Their voices were sad on the phone. Flat and empty. Something bad had happened.

When my father remarried, I inherited many new family members. Interesting how one’s family grows with a parents’ divorce.

Eleanor greeted me with a knowing glint in her eye and offered me a cookie when we met. She was already treating me like a member of her family. There was no getting to know her and figuring out how we would interact. I was her grandson and it was like I had always been there.

I don’t pretend to know anything about death. I don’t think that I have anything particularly original to say about it and I often find that I am simply left without words, not knowing what to do or say. It forces me to think silent thoughts of mortality and how fragile life can be. The only perspective I can offer is my own and the only way I know how to deal with death is to articulate my memories of the recently deceased.

“Eleanor died tonight,” my father said softly. And for some reason there was no surprise; a part of me already knew. It was like when you are so sure of what someone else is going to say that you finish their exact sentence. I don’t know why or how I knew and I’m not sure if I really want to explain it.

“That’s very sad,” I said.

Eleanor was a small thin woman, slightly frail in her stature, but much stronger than her physique suggested. During the winter, she would deftly maneuver her snowblower against all weather conditions to clear her driveway. Her yellow cap puffed up tall on her head.

Without the cap, she was short with a white tuft of hair that my stepbrother Nate would mess up from time to time. She would yelp loudly and swat playfully at his hand.

She was an amazing cook and she always had freshly baked something¾usually something sweet. I remember specifically pumpkin cookies with frosting on top, and a mad rush during the holidays to snatch up all of them for yourself. She was very diplomatic and fair with her cookies. I wasn’t around as much as everyone else but she always made sure that there were some of my favorite left over for me.

She bought me warm sweaters for Christmas. A red one hangs now in my closet, along with a few oversized tee shirts she brought back from her trips. I have never worn them.

I spoke to her on the phone a few weeks ago. I was late with a thank you for the birthday money she had sent me. She spoke softly and slowly; talking wasn’t easy. She told me Nate was coming up from school to cook for her. She said it was a shame that I couldn’t be there and I agreed.

We didn’t speak for long; she thanked me for calling and we hung up. It would be the last time I’d ever speak to her.

She clipped my columns and kept them in a manila envelope. She told me that she enjoyed them. And this very well may be the first one that she won’t read.

I have an image in my head of Eleanor sitting at her kitchen table with a recent copy of The River Reporter. She carefully traces my column with a pair of large black handled scissors. She takes it and holds it, the same glint in her eye as when we first met.

It’s an image that helps me write. It’s an image I will never forget.

Liz Bucar tells me on the phone that her mother’s obituary will list me as a grandson. It’s how she felt, she says.

It’s a nice reassurance, but I already know. It’s how she always treated me. So I guess the only thing left for me to say is one of my grandmothers died earlier this week and I will miss her very much.

(Eleanor Bucar’s memorial service will be held at 11:00 a.m. Thursday, October 19 at Stewart Funeral Home in Jeffersonville, NY.)