Life, has to be lived.
The four Collwyn girls, three of them married and no longer living at home, attended the funeral of their father.
Theresa, the eldest, at thirty-six, was four years older than her next sister, with just over a year between each of the last three girls.
Their mother had died almost two years earlier from a condition she’d had almost all of her life, and it had gradually sapped her strength and her will to live, but she had been a fighter to the end, always smiling, no matter how bad the pain had been.
It was raining hard, and there were few other family members in the church that day, but there were a few close friends and neighbors. Cremation would follow, as it had for their mother.
That, was the way the girls and their parents had wanted it. Their grief was personal. Other family members were asked not to attend the funeral, but would be invited to a wake, two weeks later, after the private tears and grief had begun to subside, and as the ashes of their father were sprinkled around the garden to join those of their mother.
The clumps of yellow daffodils, in many varieties, would benefit first, along with the crocuses, snowdrops, and tulips, and then the flowering shrubs, the azaleas, and lilacs, as they began to bud out more strongly, ready to burst into bloom, carrying the atoms of both parents into their branches and leaves to celebrate them in death, as they had been celebrated in life. The garden and its flowers had been their constant love. Sitting in the midst of flowers, was sitting in the bosom of ‘family.’ One could ‘talk’ to them, there. And she did.
It would be another few months before the Dahlias, Hollyhocks and Hibiscus took over.
Few tears were shed at the funeral. It was all sober and matter of fact. Emotional strength, prevailed. All of them, except for Theresa, had left home as soon as they were married, and were now raising families of their own. ‘One celebrated life, not death’ was the way their parents had expressed it.
Their home was only a small three-bedroom house, though had always been filled with laughter and love. It was surrounded by a massive, walled, garden. The girls, growing up, had shared bedrooms; the two older girls (Theresa and Janet) in one, and the two younger (Maureen and Elizabeth) in another. They had been close to their parents, but the three younger girls had clung closest to their eldest sister, Theresa. She had been more of a mother to them than their own had been, but that had been because of their mother’s illness, rather than from any other reason.
Now, they were alone.
By default, Theresa, had inherited the house, with her sisters gone... and the tidy sum of money that went with it. Her parents had suspected that she might never marry when her ‘thirtieth’ birthday had slipped by, and she’d shown no interest in the opposite sex—though she was trim, and beautiful, and had turned many heads (though 'they', had not turned hers)—so had wanted to make sure that she was well looked after, and would want for nothing, once they were gone.
The younger girls were all married. They had struck out in life, in an adventurous way, all of them marrying well.
Their father had been a gentle and thoughtful man, and far too easy going. He was ‘too’ good natured, helping anyone and everyone, sometimes even financially. He never expected to be repaid, always laughing about it, and pointing out that those others’ needs were much greater than his.
Theresa’s younger sisters loved her, as she did them, but as the years slipped by, they also felt sorry for her, regarded her as odd, not to have married or left home as they had, but had looked after their parents, for all of their sakes.
Theresa had been gainfully employed before then. She had started as some kind of legal assistant, and then had become secretary to some investment adviser, but she wouldn’t talk about it with them, always wanting to learn more of ‘their’ families, as she shared in it with them.
With the deaths of their parents, she had mostly given that up too. A maiden aunt (which she was) was a quaint thing that invited speculation and even gossip, but of a kindly nature.
She seemed never to be short of money and often helped her sisters out, but she never told them much of her own affairs.
They joked, semi-seriously once, that she may have become a ‘high-priced madam’, and that ‘that’ was where her money came from (it was always good for a laugh, until one of their own children began to ask what a ‘madam’ was.
They could never get her to discuss her finances, except her last place of employment… some kind of investment specialist… seemed to have agreed with her, financially.
The ‘high-priced madam’ bit, definitely was not right, either. She was too naïve for anything like that, and she didn’t dress the part. She also never seemed to go out, except to visit her sisters, which she did, faithfully each month, every weekend with a different sister, and leaving a fourth or fifth weekend free for herself.
They knew that she did take off, once or twice a year for a few days at a time, but never discussed where she went or what she did, and she always brought her nephews and nieces something back with her.
They made mild fun of her behind her back, though gently, and never with unkindness. They loved her, but she worried them, living such a lonely, empty life.
She would likely never marry.
They were teases and torments, but all, good naturedly. They suspected that their sister had never been kissed; never had skinny-dipped; had never seen a boy rampantly naked; had never played doctor; had her dress lifted; never been groped, or had her breasts fondled in the back seat of a car or the cinema; wouldn’t know about a ‘boner’, or what went on in the bedroom.
She was supremely, incurably, monumentally, naïve… or was happy to give that impression rather than to get into a discussion about various things she wasn’t comfortable with.
Obviously, she’d never known a man in that closer way, or had any intimacy of any kind. It was an unthinkable state of affairs for her sisters to accept. They’d tried setting her up with a few older friends, but she hadn’t appreciated that, and it had soon fizzled out.
She immersed herself in whatever she did, as well as her reading. She was an avid reader, outspokenly intelligent too, and when once provoked beyond a certain point, could take on any man in an argument, if she thought it necessary, but she hadn’t done that for a while. She also tended to regret it afterward. Her nagging conscience was her constant companion.
She could now afford to travel, and she began to do more of it, rather than to burden her sisters.
Her father had been successful in business. When things became too difficult emotionally, watching his wife, fade, he had a hideaway over the garage where he ‘charged up his emotional batteries’ at any and all hours.
It had been full of books. He’d been learning Spanish toward the end, but his tastes had been wide ranging.
Theresa had only discovered those most personal parts of his life, after he’d died, and then she’d begun to work through those same books.
There were letters from others, friends, hidden in a small metal box.
They were safe where they were. He seemed to have many friends who seemed to lean on him, probably almost as much as he had leaned on them for emotional support.
She had not realized that there were so many people who needed to keep secrets about things they couldn’t discuss with those most close to them.
After their mother died, her father had seemed to find solace in a succession of short-lived mistresses, though when she discovered more about her father, and them, it had not been as she’d assumed. They, had been friends who had reached out to him; to help.
She would have liked to have talked to him about that more personal and private side of his life, but it was too late now. Except, she was able to talk to him through those books, and by reading his correspondence. He’d kept copies of all of the letters he’d sent.
Theresa’s sisters were happy that their father had left the house to their sister. They did not want to see her move away from them, or they might never see her again with nothing else to hold her here, so it had been an easy decision to make, not to argue about that arrangement.
Theresa even had a housekeeper; a distant relative who seemed even shyer than she was, if that were possible, and a friend, to be her companion, and see to her needs, and to her cat.
She’d tolerated everything for a year, but then had woken up to the inescapable fact, that life was not only catching up to her, but had slipped by her unnoticed, and she didn’t like it.
She was alive, maybe, but what did she have to show for it compared with her sisters? She was happy… in a way, which meant that she wasn’t ‘really’ happy at all. Her life seemed, somehow, incomplete. She’d heard of others going through this early, mid-life crisis, if it was a crisis.
It would soon pass. Except it hadn’t. The discomfort with her life had only grown.
Maybe it had been a mistake to retire as early as she had, with the death of their father. She had wanted to travel, had dreamed of it all of her life, and ‘travel’, she would. But she would start cautiously at first, visiting those of her childhood memories she most valued when they had travelled as a family.
Christmas was the most depressing time for everyone who was single and without anyone to depend upon ‘her’. She couldn’t get out into the garden in winter. She had a long-standing invitation from all of her sisters, and she would always be welcome at any time. She knew that. But she would always feel out of place—an outsider, looking in upon their lives, feeling an inner ache that kept growing as the months slowly passed, and the colder weather closed in. She wanted something different this year. She realized that she did not want to go to visit her sisters this year. She would, undoubtedly, feel even more depressed by her own circumstance, in comparison with theirs, yet she was not jealous of them (perhaps she ‘was’) or resentful (never that). They seemed happy. Their children were noisy, as young children almost always were if they were happy. She wanted, ‘quiet’, this year.
This would be the first real holiday she’d had since school. She would take a week away from everything. Perhaps her distant friend, Jessica (last seen as they’d graduated), but who wrote to her religiously, once each month, could be persuaded to join her.
She re-thought that. Jessica was excellent at a distance. It might test their friendship of they had to share a holiday together.
She would go by herself, but would take all of Jessica’s letters for the last year with her, to buoy up her spirits, if she need lifting up. They corresponded like clockwork, starting the next letter as they’d sent one off, and taking as long as three or four weeks to finish it… responding to all questions, before sending it.
Jessica had moved away, which was probably why they were still friends. They’d both hated school, but both had had a love of science in general, so had studied biology and general science together, discovering how much they had in common.
Jessica was another one who’d never married.
