Earth Day. The Science March (which I sadly can’t attend until Science gets around to curing my damn Crohn’s Disease). My late sister Judy’s birthday. So I’m reposting this. Hey – Jude believed firmly in recycling!
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She’s been gone now for 17 years, Jude. Not a day has gone by since that I haven’t wanted to talk with her, laugh with her, or, alternatively because she was my sister, smack her. There really isn’t a relationship like you have with a sister. Even long after they are gone.
*****
Today, April 22, is Earth Day! It’s the Anniversary of the very first Earth Day. Here is Walter Cronkite’s report on the first Earth Day, 1970:
It would also be my late sister Judy’s 65th birthday.
Whoever made the decision to turn Judy’s birthday into Earth Day chose wisely. Judy was a born environmentalist and recycler.
On the first Earth Day, Judy was a new, very young mother who believed in saving the planet. She was the first “environmentalist” I ever knew personally, and well, I thought she was nuts. There was a recycling bin in her kitchen for as long as I can remember. And this was back when recycling took effort. She believed in gardens, not garbage, and she made life bloom wherever she was.
“I’ve got kids,” she’d say. “It’s their planet too!”
But years later, Judy took recycling to a whole different level when she helped people recycle themselves. In the 1990s, Jude, who was then living in Florida, began working with the Homeless, assisting at shelters. Then she actively began trying to help homeless vets food, shelter and work — to enable them to jump-start their lives.
When she died in early 2000, the American Legion awarded her honorary membership for her services to homeless vets. A homeless shelter was named in her honor. So she’s still doing good works, my sister is. That would make her wildly happy.
Jude also gave me the Beatles. So it is very appropriate that they wrote a song for her.
You see, the night the Beatles were on Ed Sullivan, it was MY turn to choose what we were going to watch. And we were going to watch the second part of The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh starring Patrick McGoohan on the Wonderful Wide World of Disney. My four (all older and MUCH cooler) siblings were furious with me. But I was quite insistent. You might even say that I threw a Class I temper tantrum over it, but I wouldn’t admit to that. Hey, I was seven. And it was my turn to choose. Fair is fair, especially in a big family with only one TV.
Somehow, Judy talked me out of my turn. She was always very persuasive. Thanks Jude.
There was no reason to panic, just because Dad had disappeared shortly before he was supposed to “walk me down the aisle.”
“Find Beth,” I said to Mom, who was there in the church’s multifunction room that was functioning as the bride’s dressing room.
Beth had been my problem solver for nearly three decades by the time I was getting married. And she’d never let me down. Beth could calm the crazies in me better than anybody I’ve ever known. Just knowing she was around, made everything OK.
And if you had a splinter or a cut or any injury at all? Go to Beth. That was true long before she became a nurse who treated premature babies. If ever there was someone with nursing in their DNA, it was Beth.
Surely Beth could find Dad, who’d gone for a walk, and get the keys to the car from him. Because, while I’d gotten my wedding dress out of the car, everything else I expected to wear, beginning with my underwear, was locked in the trunk. And the keys were in absent Dad’s pocket.
Fast forward to 2009. July 4th was just days away, John, Jacob and I were in Maine, and I was in a panic. My eldest brother, Bob, had just been taken to the hospital.
For a decade approaching holidays had terrified me. I suffered from “heortophobia” — the fear of holidays. Well, myheortophobia had a twist: It wasn’t simply a fear of holidays. Nope. For me, it was a perfectly logical terror of illness at holidays. Someone else’s illness. Because If anybody I cared about had so much as a sniffle, well, they were gonna die.
As you may have heard 4,327 times, my family members have a nasty habit of dying on holidays. They’ve hit the all big ones — In order of occurrence: Thanksgiving. Easter. My birthday. Christmas. Ho ho ho!
So when Bob ended up in the hospital with Independence Day approaching, well, I knew Bob was toast. The odds, and likely the Gods, were against him.
“He’s not that sick, Lease.” Beth said. “You’ve been sicker and survived.” She’d contacted his doctors, figured out what was wrong, and called to reassure me. Beth, a nurse, knew this sort of thing. But as a fake medical expert with then six years’ experience, I was learning more and more –enough to make me fear everything, actually . So naturally, I wasn’t so sure.
“Beth,” I said, through slightly clenched teeth. “It doesn’t matter how serious his illness is. It’s the date. A HOLIDAY IS COMING. He’s going to die!”
As the eldest in the family, Beth had been able to calm me down my whole life long. She didn’t fail this time, either.
“Nobody is going to be able to trump Dad dying on Christmas,” she said, matter-of-factly. “The Holiday Death Sweepstakes is over, Lease. Fourth of July? Pffttt. Independence Day isn’t even a contender!”
“I HATE holidays,” I moaned, panic starting up again.
“Lease, I’m gonna make you two promises.” Beth had always kept her promises. “First, Bob will be fine.”
“Mmmm,” I replied, not believing it for a minute. Still, I started to calm down.
“Second: When I go, it’ll be on an ordinary Tuesday,” Beth laughed. “I cross my heart and hope to die,Lease, I will not die on a holiday. I mean it. I couldn’t do that to you,” she laughed still harder. At me, not with me. Had she been nearby, I might have smacked her for ridiculing me. Hard.
Bob, whose illness wasn’t all that serious, was released before the holiday; his sentence commuted. I breathed a sigh of relief, let me tell you.
Google Image, Natch
But not for long.
On a Sunday, just over a month later, I called Beth. We talked nearly every day. Beth had had a pretty severe stroke two years previously. It affected her kidneys; she had been on dialysis for about two years. Things hadn’t been going well, and she was more and more discouraged, depressed and disheartened. More importantly, he hadn’t been feeling well in the last couple of days.
Still, I was surprised when her phone was answered by one of her sons.
“Mom’s in the hospital,” Chris told me.
It was a Sunday, though. In August. No holidays in sight. So while I worried, there was no need to panic right? Chris promised that he and his brother would keep me informed.
Late Monday morning, Dave, Beth’s eldest son, called me in tears.
“They don’t know if Mom’s gonna make it.”
I rushed home, packed a few things, and got into the car, and headed to Cleveland.
The weather was horrible. Storms raged — the rain so heavy that I could barely see. Traffic rushed by or crept along. Trucks on the Pennsylvania Turnpike flew by at terrifying speeds when traffic moved. But mostly, the highway was at a standstill, the rain not letting up. I couldn’t get to Beth, and I couldn’t see to drive.
How much of my impaired visibility was due to my constant tears, and how much to the pouring rain, well, I didn’t know.
Dave called me again in the early evening to let me know that Beth was in a coma; they thought she would make it for another day or so.
So, exhausted I pulled onto an exit just above Pittsburgh, and into the first motel I found, where I collapsed into bed.
Beth’s doctor called me a few hours later. Beth had taken a turn for the worse. If I wanted to see her, to be with her, I’d better get back on the road.
I made it in time for Beth to personally deliver that second promise. She died on an ordinary Tuesday, August 11, six years ago.
With her passing, Beth brought me an unexpected cure of my heortophobia, and even let me laugh at the bizarre trend she ended.
And on the way back? The weather was clear. The Pennsylvania Turnpike twists and turns through the mountains. With each curve I rounded as I drove home, there was a rainbow. Rainbow after rainbow. I knew, seeing those colors in the sky, behind every turn, that Beth was comforting me still.
I miss you, Beth. Oh, and I was the one who spilled nail polish remover on your new dresser in 1967. Sorry about that.
Today, April 22, is Earth Day! It’s the 45th Anniversary of the very first Earth Day. Here is Walter Cronkite’s report on the first Earth Day, 1970:
It would also be my late sister Judy’s 63rd birthday.
Whoever made the decision to turn Judy’s birthday into Earth Day chose wisely. Judy was a born environmentalist and recycler.
On the first Earth Day, Judy was a new, very young mother who believed in saving the planet. She was the first “environmentalist” I ever knew personally, and well, I thought she was nuts. There was a recycling bin in her kitchen for as long as I can remember. And this was back when recycling took effort. She believed in gardens, not garbage, and she made life bloom wherever she was.
“I’ve got kids,” she’d say. “It’s their planet too!”
But years later, Judy took recycling to a whole different level when she helped people recycle themselves. In the 1990s, Jude, who was then living in Florida, began working with the Homeless, assisting at shelters. Then she actively began trying to help homeless vets find food, shelter and work — to enable them to jump-start their lives.
When she died in early 2000, the American Legion awarded her honorary membership for her services to homeless vets. A homeless shelter was named in her honor. So she’s still doing good works, my sister is. That would make her wildly happy.
Jude also gave me the Beatles. So it is very appropriate that they wrote a song for her.
You see, the night the Beatles were on Ed Sullivan, it was MY turn to choose what we were going to watch. And we were going to watch the second part of The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh starring Patrick McGoohan on the Wonderful Wide World of Disney. My four (all older and MUCH cooler) siblings were furious with me. But I was quite insistent. You might even say that I threw a Class I temper tantrum over it, but I wouldn’t admit to that. But hey, I was seven. And it was my turn to choose. Fair is fair, especially in a big family with only one TV.
Somehow, Judy talked me out of my turn. She was always very persuasive. Thanks Jude.
Hey Jude, Happy Earth Day-Birthday.
* * *
If this looks/sounds familiar, it’s because I recycled this post from last year. Because you should never use fresh when you can reuse something already written. And you can never get enough of “Hey Jude.”
She didn’t really seem the type, so I am really surprised that my sister Beth has begun haunting me. She was always a quiet, fairly unassuming person. Yes, she could be a pain in the ass, but hey, we’re related — what would you expect? But haunting? Isn’t that beyond the pale?
Saturday is the 3rd anniversary of my eldest sister Beth’s passing. And it took her that long to start rattling her chains. Yes, it started today. And I’m the one she’s rattling them at.
It started today because today I attended a funeral. And the funeral was at Arlington National Cemetery. That woke Beth up. It made her realize that I failed her. It rattled her.
You see, Beth was a nurse. She switched back and forth between working in the neo-natal intensive care unit and the psychiatric unit of hospitals across the country. Two specialties and a variety of hospitals helped her keep fresh. But nursing was her identity. Ever since she was a little girl, well, she was going to be a nurse. There was never a doubt in anybody’s mind. And that is because she wanted to be like her hero, Tantelise, my namesake.
Tantelise (pronounced Tant-a-lease) was our great aunt on Dad’s side. And from the stories I’ve heard, she was a seriously cool woman. She lived near us when I was really small, but died when I was only three, so all I really know are a few second-hand stories. Beth heard them first hand, and modeled her life on them.
Of course, Tantelise was a nurse. She was, in fact, one of the founding nurses of the International Red Cross, which, at least according to family lore, came into being in the early 1900s. Tantelise had incredible stories about nursing the wounded, the soldiers from the trenches, the victims of the gas, the amputees. None of the stories I heard (second-hand) made me want to become a nurse. But they captured Beth’s imagination.
In about 2004, Beth called me up and asked for my help. The idea had been brewing in her mind for years. Since I was in the DC area, well, it was pretty much up to me.
“Lease,” she said, “we need to get a memorial to the WWI nurses in Arlington National Cemetery. We need to get Tantelise in there.”
(Google Image)
I immediately thought it was a stupid idea. And of course I was right. But it was so important to Beth that I agreed to help. I chatted with our cousin Betsey, keeper of the family junk; Betsey was equally unenthusiastic. But I told Beth I would do what I could. After all, I work right next to Arlington Cemetery. How hard would it be for me to make some calls, go and talk to folks and be told by non-relatives that it was a stupid idea? I figured it would be pretty easy to shut Beth up with strangers on my side.
But of course making phone calls, well, it ain’t what it used to be. Because in the olden days, you know, 15 or so years ago, someone answered the phone when you called. Yeah! Imagine that! Humans! Sadly, that doesn’t happen so much any more.
So when I made my calls, I got to run around the phone circuits. I found no live people in Arlington National Cemetery. At least none that could help get me what Beth wanted. I gave up fairly easily, actually. I knew I wouldn’t get anywhere. And I tried and failed to convince Beth that it was a stupid idea to try to get Tantelise memorialized in Arlington.
Why didn’t I work harder? Why did I give up so easily? Why was it a stupid idea to begin with?
After all, Tantelise and her fellow nurses were truly heroes. They crossed the Atlantic to Europe to nurse European troops hurt in battle. They went at their own cost. They risked their lives. They did it in long, hot, itchy wool skirts. They helped an unknown number of men, many of whom would have died had those nurses not been there to help. Many more died somewhat more easily because there was someone to hold their hand, to wipe their brow, to say “I’m here. You’re not alone.” They helped the soldiers in the way nurses throughout the years have helped their patients, by being there with them.
The work of this group of nurses was so deeply appreciated that, when it came time for them to return home to the U.S., Kaiser Wilhelm himself suspended U-boat traffic to allow these nurses safe passage. Imagine that. He suspended a vital part of the war for them. Out of respect and appreciation for the work they had done, he ensured that they would survive.
This was NOT going to happen to the nurses. (Google Image of the sinking of the Lusitania.)
So why is it so unlikely that Tantelise and her compatriots would have their names in Arlington National Cemetery? Why shouldn’t their service and sacrifice be recognized? Why shouldn’t Beth’s idea come to pass?
Ummmmmm … They were working for the wrong side. Oops. Yes, Tantelise was nursing the German soldiers. She was a first-generation German-American, and she went to Germany in the years before the U.S. entered the war. She went when it wasn’t at all clear that the U.S. would enter the war, and if so, on which side. When the U.S. did enter the war, well, that’s when Tantelise and her fellow nurses were given safe passage home to their country, America.
It is a story of heroism, of sacrifice, of nobility. And of course, a story of choices.
Sigh. I may make a few more calls, but, you know, I’m still pretty sure I will be still unable to get Tantelise and her colleagues recognized.
But there is an upside. At least I’ll have my sister around again. And I’ve missed her. Go ahead, Beth. Rattle away!
FiftyFourandAHalf 