electric mist

ghosts and justice

I hadn't really paid attention to the news yesterday or today, so when I clicked on Eliza's entry for today and saw where they'd caught a new serial killer here, my heart stopped a moment. I saw how Eliza had known one of the victims and then I clicked through to the news story and there at the bottom of the page were the names of two more women he's confessed to having killed, and when I saw Mrs. Ann's name there, my heart broke and I sobbed.

When I was first married, we moved into a house across the street from Carl's grandmother, "Granny." We adored one another, but more than that, we were in a lot of ways a lifeline for each other. She had been widowed just four days before Carl and I were married, and when Luke came along, he gave her something to live for. I was twenty years old and suddenly thrust into a city where I knew no one, in a neighborhood of all these industrious career types, where the only "young" (meaning under 30) woman on the street to have kids was the one next door, and she was usually high and spacey, so there wasn't much in the way of companionship there. I was going out of my mind for converstation, for feeling some sense of connection to the real world of adults who could hold conversations, and Granny would often call me to visit. The special treats, though, were when her best friend, Mrs. Ann, was there.

Mrs. Ann was tall and gracious and had the bearing of a "genteel" southern woman, and I mean that in the best possible way. She had a very quick wit and great smile and you know, I had probably visited and had extended conversations with them for months before I even realized she had been born without much of a left hand. It was mostly a nub, and you really wouldn't have guessed she had anything wrong because she never let it slow her down. She always looked beautiful, and she always did as much as anyone around her -- probably more. She painted, played the piano, but most of all, Mrs. Ann specialized in making the people around her feel loved and wonderful. No, seriously, I cannot tell you how many times I would feel like complete dreck, and with baby spit up and god-knows-what-else clinging to my clothes, but I could walk over there with the kids to have a coke, and while the kids played around us, Mrs. Ann would always manage to find something to say to me that both lifted me up and felt absolutely real at the same time. She made me feel smart and okay and even a good mom, which was a seriously impressive feat, because I hadn't even babysitted for kids before I had one of my own and I think I made every mistake a mom could make. Twice. I enjoyed her, but it's more than just that in a casual sense of the word... I loved those lazy conversations in the deep afternoons, with the sun dancing through the screen onto the porch and the fan softly blowing and how I sat with these two women who were at least 50 years older than me and we still connected on dozens of levels as women. They made me see beyond the here and now, beyond the spit up and the diapers, beyond my own small world and problems and we talked about hundreds of things, from art to politics to books. It was my first real experiences of cross-generational connections, and it made me feel happy.

When she grew fearful of break-ins at her own home, she moved into an elite "retirement" type of place, even though she was still at full capacity. The day we heard she was murdered there was such a shock to us that even now, ten years later, I feel an incomprehensible grief, because someone so sweet and kind and good was ripped from the world in such a horrific way. (The article says there were ritualistic mutilations, but whatever you're thinking, think ten times worse.) I hadn't seen her nearly as much those last few years; she wasn't driving as often, both the kids were in some form of school, life got even more chaotic. But honestly, I missed her.

I still do.

Posted by toni at May 1, 2004 12:24 AM