January 10, 2012
No Make-Up
We were both women who liked wearing make-up, and neither of us was wearing any last Friday when I went to see her at the hospice. I don’t bother with the stuff doing errands on Fridays and she had just come from a shower and had her make-up bag in her lap when I walked in. We laughed at how bad we each thought we looked. Nearly the same age, girly-girls, I suppose, but down to the basics that day
She was a woman defined by beauty. Her face was fresh and luminous even though she was dying. The pictures in the room of her good-looking family were in exquisite gold frames, each carefully chosen. I was especially taken with the frame on her mother’s picture, rust-colored leather, stamped with gold.
“It’s an antique,” she said. “I love beautiful things. I guess interior design was kind of my thing. I wish I had gotten you out to my house.”
I was glad she was there at “The Little Hospice,” nestled into an Edina neighborhood, scarcely distinguishable from the other houses on the street. Big living rooms on each side of the entry; fresh chocolate chip cookies on the counter; flowers everywhere; an open kitchen where colorful, healthy cooking sends out enticing smells. There are eight people living and dying here, in bedrooms with big windows and upholstered window seats, being given gentle, generous and loving care.
I spent well over an hour with her and although I offered repeatedly to help discuss The Big Stuff, instead we talked about our kids, our marriages, our disappointments, our homes, vacations, mutual acquaintances, and, yes, shopping.
She observed, “For a long time I haven’t bought anything unless I’ve really, really loved it.”
Everything she had brought into the room showed it. Taste: you’ve got it or you don’t. She had it.
We had not been close friends, not even friends at all until several months ago when she came back to St John’s after a long absence. She had been sick and sought me out. We talked, periodically. We had lunch. I wish….
“I suppose I’ll see my mother again,” she said abruptly.
“I expect so. Do you want to talk about that?”
“Not really.”
She closed her eyes as I read her part of the 139th Psalm (my favorite):
“Oh Lord, you have searched me and known me …
It was you who formed my inward parts;
You knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made….
If I say, ‘Surely the darkness shall cover me,
And the light around me become night,
Even the darkness is not dark to you;
The night is as bright as the day,
For darkness is as light to you…”
I said what I thought was a completely inadequate prayer and she whispered, “Thank you, Barbara.”
And I kissed her good-by.
Virginia died today. In my sadness, I went shopping for words and found what Frederick Buechner writes about beauty. I have read it again and again:
“Beauty always leaves you aching with longing, not so much for more of the same, as for whatever it is, deep within and far beyond both it and yourself, that makes it beautiful.”
Beneath beauty, inside loveliness, underlying art, is the deep ache and longing for the More that we call God.
Rest in peace, Virginia, and rise in beauty.
Barbara
Virginia’s life will be celebrated at St John’s on Friday, January 13 at 3:00.
