valerie
“Not your typical British housewife.”
He had my attention. It was a Tuesday night, and I had asked my dad to tell me about his mom.
“She was easy going. She’d give you just enough rope to climb, and as soon as you were about to fall, she’d be there to pull you back up.”
I thought about the way my dad rarely interfered with my own life, allowing me to choose, to cry, to fight and fall down.
But always there beside me, helping me glue the pieces back together, or helping me rearrange them to let the light back in.
And as he painted a picture of the summer of 1975, the Blue Chevy, and the winding roads, I wondered how I was going to tell the story of someone I had never met.
“She stopped smoking when my sister and I told her what we were learning about lung cancer in school.”
Immediately, away went the cigarettes into the trash.
I thought about the power children have over their parents. Sometimes they can see death before their parents do.
“I had a sister.”
“My aunt?”
“Another sister. Technically, I’m a middle child. She died when she was a month old.”
I don’t know if there is a pain worse than losing your own child. And I thought about how that pain must have haunted her.
“But, she was a socialite.”
I’ve also always wondered what made a great socialite. Besides the obvious part of being social, all iconic socialites have this air of detachment.
“She never felt the need to climb the social ladder.”
“And that’s why people were drawn to her”, I said. She didn’t have to try.
The word enchanting came to mind, as I pictured her with a glass of gin in her hand right before sneaking out for a secret cigarette, floating around the room. Laughing and listening, enchanting them all.
And I’ve always believed people are the most drawn to those who will shine without them.
We sat in silence for a few moments.
“I was 13 years old. I thought my dad sat me down to have “the talk”, but “the talk” ended up being him explaining where the cancer had started.”
Maybe it was the familiarity of the moment. Of the both awkward and heartbreaking moment shared between parent and child, when the parent wishes they could be anywhere else, instead of reciting words that no child is ever prepared to hear, and no parent is ever prepared to say.
And as tears started to form in my eyes, I realized that I too, had lived this story.
“It would go away, and come back. Go away, and come back. And then the summer after I turned 18...”
Tears started to fall.
“It was tubes and wires.”
Another scene I knew all too well.
“I went into the hallway, And I closed my eyes, and I prayed. I asked God to please take her that night.”
And away she went.
“She was 42.”
I closed my notebook.
“That’s it?”
Tears were streaming down my face.
“I already know this story. It’s the story of those who die too young and too soon.”
And you could always tell by their eyes in pictures. They saw life differently.
So, I think about Valerie Constance Groves, the parties she threw, the mesmerizing smile, and her bell bottom jeans. I think about her aloofness to the women who probably fought at the title of being crowned her best friend. I think about her love for music, her love for the piano, and the way she taught lessons up until the summer of ‘76.
I think about her with her first born child. And I wonder if my dad knew what a blessing he would have been to her. A reminder of life after death.
The stars felt closer that night.