A sudden goodbye

"I can see her feet. They're blue. "

It's an image I can't get out of my head, not that I've had time to shake it. My mother, standing in the postage-stamp yard of that same little brick house, peering in at what's left of her friend. The paramedics wouldn't let her get closer despite there being nothing at all for them to do. The time for rescue had passed before anyone had even come home.

But 911 was called, and the emergency services responded, and my parents were summoned, and instantly, they were there. That has been the pattern for forty-some-odd years. After all, they were friends. "Russell and Becky may be nuts"--this is my mother talking--"but they will do anything for you, no questions asked. You gotta give them credit for that."

The occasion of that last pronouncement was Russell driving through an ice storm to St. Louis to rescue my brother from having locked his keys in his running car--mania has its advantages--but I'm sure she'd said it a thousand times before. Whatever will that man do without his constant foil, his comic relief, the woman known for her quirky obsessions and infinite talents? "Becky can do anything." And really, she could. Fill up an extra bedroom with every Beanie Baby manufactured and every movie John Wayne and Frank Sinatra ever made. Sew, paint, sing, crochet with remarkable skill. Alienate everyone in the movie theater with her constant commentary and questions, but, in the right mood, make a turkey fun.

My inventory of memories runs to the ceramic baby booties on my dresser--one that she made for me, one that she made for my daughter--New Year's Eves when I was young, that laugh, her kids. My sorrow for my mother, so temperamentally opposite. I imagined she'd always be there because she always was. Becky was full of life in a way that not everyone is--until tonight. Tonight, she's gone.