Smaller and Smaller

Alexis was the first person I had ever met who changed her identity by changing her name. Born Linda Seymour in 1947, she chose the gender-neutral "Alexis" when she left her marriage and came out as a lesbian. Her ex-husband was my father's middle brother.

She was close friends with my mother, even long after they were no longer married to brothers. They kept in touch through my mother's second marriage--and second divorce. They exchanged letters as my mother was dying of cancer. And then she was one of the first people to write to me directly when my mom died--to offer her condolences and her friendship.

I have pictures of us together when I was very small, but I don't remember meeting her until the summer of 1990. I drove to Pennsylvania with my friend Melissa for my first Pennsic War and borrowed Mel's car to swing by Wayne, Penn. where Alexis was living with her girlfriend Val. I drank green tea there for the first time--steeping it for much too long waiting for some color to appear. I also visited the senior center Alexis directed and many of the little old ladies said they could "see the family resemblance."

We corresponded pretty regularly through my college years and when the kids were small. She even made a trip out to Kansas to see us once or twice when visiting an old friend in Missouri. When she and Val broke up, she moved to Burlington, Vermont. I always wanted to visit but it seemed impossibly far away and impossibly expensive.

By the time she moved, we were only talking a couple of times a year. We'd be on the phone for an hour and I'd realize I'd done all the talking. When I asked her about herself, she always demurred that things were the same with her as always.

In Vermont she worked for the Roman Catholic Diocese and converted to Catholicism. I think she found it difficult to square her religion with her sexuality, but she didn't say much about it.

After her father died a few years ago she left Vermont to care for her aging mother. They'd spend winters in Naples, Florida and summers in Nebraska. She was devoted to her mother and refused to even think about a vacation or respite. Her brother and sister had families of their own and Alexis felt uniquely qualified, with her Masters in Social Work and experience with geriatrics, to be the primary caregiver and companion.

You know where this is leading, don't you?

Saturday morning, in the middle of epic strawberry freezer jam making, my phone rang and the caller ID said "Pete" --my dad's middle brother, the only one of the three still alive. I didn't get to it soon enough and he didn't leave a message. It was the two year anniversary of my dad's accident, so I fleetingly thought that maybe he was nostalgic. I quickly forgot and didn't call him back.

I was napping yesterday afternoon (48 cups of jam in the freezer) when my phone rang again. It was Alexis's brother, Ron, with bad news. My favorite remaining relative, the one with whom I shared no blood, had taken her own life. Although it had been nearly three weeks, her brother was clearly still stunned. Their mother was still alive, though expected to pass at any time. Apparently the strain of caring for her, as well as her imminent death, was too much for Alexis to bear. I learned from Ron that Alexis was bi-polar, though medication had seemed to help her immensely.

As he talked I felt like I had done Alexis a great disservice by always being so willing to chat on and on about my job, my home, my family. She was the one person who really understood my complex, ambivalent relationship with my father, because she knew him. She was a great listener. But I had not made enough of an effort to listen to her.

Several times I had suggested that she move out here when her family responsibilities were over. There are no grandparents, no wise elders, in our tiny family and she did not have children of her own. We would adopt her, I said, and look after her. She could play grandma--if not to my children, now teens, then perhaps to their children. I thought this could really happen, and maybe she did too. It turns out that she left her estate--a retirement account--to me.

Ron said that she always spoke so highly of me. She loved me. And her family understood that she wanted to do what she could to honor that relationship. But I don't want her money; I just want a chance to call her and listen to her issues for once.

Our family is small and keeps getting smaller. I have an aunt and a handful of cousins, all too fundamentalist to have much in common with. The Artist has a brother who he hasn't spoken to since 2002. I have a step-mother. He has a step-father. I have an uncle; we're not close. He has a few aunts and uncles and cousins he'd be hard pressed to name. Our families of origin have not always been kind, or supportive.

Alexis was both. I'm going to miss her, and what might have been.