Time doesn't heal, but it helps you cope

The Boston Globe

Beverly Beckham

There's a Willie Nelson song that keeps playing in my head. "I've been feeling a little bad, 'cause I've been feeling a little better without you."

My aunt Lorraine died 10 years ago and the song, I suppose, is a reminder that not only have I survived, but that I have grown, too, and despaired and rejoiced and wept and failed and laughed and succeeded, all without this woman I was certain I could not live without.

I thought it would be impossible to feel joy without her. Or watch an old movie without having my heart hurt. Or drive past her house without aching to go inside and see her there, in her big chair in the family room, her glasses on, reading a book.

But I have done all these things. And each time was a little easier. Each month. Each year.

And this is good.

But this is bad, too, because how is it possible that life goes on with its celebrations and parties and children growing up and children being born when there are people you love missing, everywhere you look?

Mothers. Fathers. Friends. Children. They die. And we weep and we stop sleeping and eating and smiling and listening.

Nothing engages us.

And then something does. Just for a second. And then more seconds.

Lorraine was 62, healthy one day, dead three weeks later.

"The doctor must be wrong," I told her when she called, stunned and frightened.

A mistake. That's what it was.

But it wasn't.

Her Snow White skin turned yellow. She took to her bed. She stopped reading. And eating. And still I said, no.

Even when she died, I said no. It can't be. I won't let it be.

Her brother flew from California to be with her, to be with us. But I didn't want him. I wanted her.

Lorraine was my mother's sister, 11 when I was born, more like a sister to me than an aunt. I can't remember a time when I didn't love her, not when I was 5 and she spanked me all the way up Prospect Street for running out in front of a car. Not when I was 10 and she and my mother weren't talking and she sat in the passenger seat of her old green car in front of my house on Christmas Day, while her husband, Frank, came to the door with my presents. Not when I was 13 and begged her to convince my mother that I was old enough to wear lipstick and she said, "You're not!" Not even when we were adults and argued about politics, a silly fight, and the loudest and longest we ever had.

Lorraine was a part of my life all of my life, and when she died, I wept the way people in movies weep, inconsolably.

She knew the family stories. She remembered all the names. She knew how to get crayon off wallpaper and gum out of hair and what works for colic and how to accessorize and how to disguise eggplant so that it actually tastes good.

I made her secret chocolate-fudge recipe after she died. But I couldn't eat it. I couldn't read a book or watch TV or have a conversation or take a breath or close my eyes without thinking that I had to rewind, reframe, and somehow get back to before.

Time doesn't heal, but it changes things.

Ten years later, I come across Lorraine's signature on a card she sent and my heart doesn't flinch. I look at photos of her when she was young and I don't moan. I make her fudge and I eat it.

But I still can't drive by her house without wishing she were inside, or finish a book I love or a movie and not want to tell her about it. The other night, when "The Enchanted Cottage" was on TV, I thought, Lorraine would love this.

I wish she knew my grandchildren. I wish I could talk to her about my father's father. I wish I could just talk to her. But all this wishing isn't painful anymore.

It's manageable.

And this makes me happy.

And sad.