A Beautiful Life

Pat and Cherry

My only first cousins on the paternal side of the family.

Laughter, tears, smiles and hugs filled this week.  A call Saturday afternoon pulled my heartstrings in an unexpected sudden urge to review my childhood.  The photo above was taken a few years before my birth.  Cherry was ten years my senior and Pat was ten years older than my sister.  We were the four granddaughters of Gordon and Nan.  After losing Pat just a few days shy of four years ago, the news that Cherry was in her last hours of life brought my own early years bubbling to the surface.

The two cousins were teen-age girls in my early memories.  Pat was always so "cool and glamorous". Cherry still enjoyed "little girl" toys and was challenged by my first grade study tools.  My mother explained that she was "mentally retarded" and would probably never learn beyond an eight or nine year  capability.  Little did we know how she would expand those capabilities.  Yes, she remained childlike in so many ways, but she led a full and productive life thanks to the plan put in place by her diligent, protective and thoughtful mother.  That plan was followed by Pat after loss of their parents. Pat's older daughter stepped in to protect and enable Cherry's continued success when we lost Pat.

As I went away to college, Cherry was embarking on her own life away from home.  She moved into a "dormitory" where social activities were coordinated with a supervised work environment.  We discovered Cherry's aptitude for detailed shape recognition and sorting translated into a skill for earning wages.  Contracts were acquired for her group to earn a portion of their living expenses and develop money handling.  She loved her work and felt a strong sense of responsibility.  For years she had made potholders on a loom for all family and friends.  I still have two of the six she made as a wedding gift for me.  There will be no more.

Cherry had a stroke and died a few hours later. She had lived her final years in her own home with twenty-four hour care-givers under the guardianship of her niece.  I had never visited her there, but felt her presence when Karen and I went to the house to clear her personal belongings.  It gives me peace to know that she lived a life, not of limitations, but of limitless talent!