A Sweet Reunion

Shirley Tassencourt was my art teacher in elementary school at the School in Rose Valley, a progressive, before-its-time, day school in Rose Valley, PA. Shirley is also the Mom of my oldest friend, Andi, and a member of the tribe my Mom was a part of in the 60s through the 80s. Shirley is 89 and living in Sebastopol with her other daughter, Zoe.

I visited Shirley overnight on Monday. A sweet visit with a self-proclaimed ‘6 year old’, as she calls herself now that her memory is going. There was time to just visit and tell stories and show photos of the people we have both known. Did she know them and remember them? Maybe not, but it didn’t matter. She delighted in hearing about them, even more than once. She wanted to hear anything and everything about how I was doing, what I was thinking. And she remembered that Ben had died.

Shirley showed me a way to fall into memory lost in the most graceful and accepting of ways. It just is. And she makes it seem graceful and safe.

We had coffee with Pat Newick and her daughter, Lark Blair, other members of the tribe. The four of us talked and talked, as if we couldn’t get enough of the experience of being together and connected. Three of us had lost our partners in the last 7 years, so we talked of death and dying and grieving and surviving and finding ourselves in the new reality that is beautiful in its own way.

These people who have been very much on the periphery of my life since I was young just became so dear to me, in just a few moments. There was time to let that happen, no agenda pulling us away, just the sweetness of four women loving each other on a Tuesday morning.

(Beautiful Lark had recently had a nose operation for some rascally skin cancer. It didn't dim her beautiful smile or warm heart one bit.)