Felice

*Originally published on my Wordpress blog 11.13.2020

With a name like Felice, you would think a person might be predisposed to happiness but I never got that impression about Felice.  In fact, it was quite the opposite. When I first met her, she was about 70 years old. She lived with her big, not-so-bright German Shepherd Max. I didn’t know a lot about her, only that she seemed to have had a typical human life, one of ups and downs.

She was born into an affluent family in 1912. I had the impression from talking to someone else who knew her well that she had perhaps been somewhat spoiled as a child. I heard that she had lived a bit of a wild life as a young woman, finding distraction from the Great Depression by dancing and boozing it up with a rowdy crowd. I don’t know if her first marriage was prompted by a pregnancy but she was married and a mother by the time she was 18.  She was also divorced and the mother of three boys just a few years later.  I heard that those were difficult years for her and she had to work hard to support those children. Two of the boys went to live with relatives as she struggled to make ends meet. Towards the close of WW2, she met and married a police officer. By 1947, they were separated and she was raising a fourth son on her own. Gotta say, it sounds like a hard life to me.

In the early 1950’s, she heard of opportunities out in California. The three older sons had become independent so she bundled up the fourth son and took the train out to stay with friends in the San Francisco Bay Area. She found a job providing domestic help to a wealthy SF family and she was able to bring her son along to her employer’s home.  She must have been a bit overwhelmed. I would have been. I admire her courage in moving forward in her life, her willingness to take risks to build a better life for herself and her child. 

She joined a bowling league for fun and games. I heard she was a very strong bowler, a prized asset to the team. One of her teammates introduced her to Henry, a 55 year old, never married North Dakota farmer. Henry had also come to California seeking a better economic future for himself. These two ended up getting married and staying married for 20 years before he died of a sudden heart attack. Again, Felice was on her own as, by this time, that fourth son was grown and working out in the world on his own. 

I’d known her less than a year when Felice became my mother in law. I married the fourth son.  Although I am sure she was happy about the marriage and she liked me well enough, I think it was also a difficult transition for her. Before his marriage, her son had been available to help her with tasks. He would stop by her house a couple of times a week just to check in and play a game of cribbage with her. I know she enjoyed that time with him and she enjoyed her access to him. After he was married, her son continued to stop by regularly and to do tasks for her but I think it was hard for Felice to see her son’s allegiance move away from her and to his young spouse.  

As for me, I tried to be a good daughter in law. Specifically, I was receptive and warm, I did not interfere with the mother/son interactions, I listened to stories and complaints, I did what people do with family members.  She could be irritable and not very tolerant of those who were different from her but she was also intelligent, well read, and had a good sense of humor. It was hard to get close to her because she wasn’t willing to talk about anything that wasn’t light or that didn’t fit into the small talk category. She was uncomfortable with emotion and would shut down a conversation if it became intimate in any way. That was hard for me.  I assumed that her discomfort meant that she didn’t trust me, maybe didn’t like me, and that made me lean away. 

Within five years, we had two small children.  The four of us visited with Felice regularly but it never felt warm and fuzzy. Felice maintained a hands off relationship with her grandchildren.  She wasn’t unfriendly but she wasn’t friendly either. She mostly ignored them when we came over and commented on how unruly they were. Truthfully, they were not unruly. They were 1 and 3 year old children but they took attention away from her.  I think that was hard on her.

During those years, I was available to drive her to the grocery, doctor’s appointments, and errands like that. Yes, I had to pack the kids along too but I didn’t mind.   Her son continued doing home projects and such for her. We would have dinner with her every other weekend  but neither her son nor I spent much time with her outside of these obligations. She was a tough person with whom to interact. Her interests were not ours and she seemingly lacked the ability to connect in a real way with anyone. She could take from the world but she had a hard time giving back.

When our kids were four and six years old, Felice got fed up with her life in our town. She made an arrangement with the only one of her three older sons with whom she still communicated. She agreed to move to his city (a thousand miles away) and buy a duplex. He agreed to take care of her there if she would finance the duplex and give him the other half in which to live. He had no spouse, no children nearby, and I think she hoped he would be more available company for her than we were. It didn’t quite go the way she expected and within three years she was dead.

I am an older person now. I’m not as old as Felice was when I first met her but I have had some life experience since then. I can look back at my younger self and see where I could have done better. I will give myself credit for doing the best I knew how at the time. Isn’t that how it often goes?  You do the best that you think you can but later you realize you could have done better.  In this situation, I realize now that Felice was likely a lonely and somewhat disgruntled older person. She may have been carrying regrets and she didn’t trust people. It wasn’t that she didn’t like me. She just didn’t know how to connect with me or most other people. 

I could have done more than the obligatory. In some ways I was like her. I only gave so much. Would it have been different if I had tried harder? What if I had routinely offered to make her lunch after taking her to the doctor? What if I had invited her to stay the night at our house when the weather was bad?  What if I had called her just to chat (as people did in those days)? What if I had routinely brought her some little treat, just dropping it off in the middle of the day just to make her day better?  What if? What if? What if? 

Those days are over and I can’t change that. But, of course, I know now that I can sometimes change what is or what will be.  It doesn’t have to be just old people but what does it hurt to make room for the lonely people in my life? John Prine has it right:

“You know that old trees just grow stronger

And old rivers grow wilder every day

Old people just grow lonesome

Waiting for someone to say, "Hello in there, hello”

For a long time now, I’ve made that a kind of a goal of mine. I look at people when I am walking in the neighborhood. I say hello. With regulars, I might even stop and chat it up for a minute or two. That actually comes naturally for me. Beyond that, I watch out for people who might be alone, who might be lonely. I make an effort to step out of my own life and make room for them. My mother spent the last 18 years of her life living alone. Much of that time she was productive and engaged with lots of people. Her health declined over the last three years of her life. For two of those years she lived about a two hour drive from me so I didn’t get there as often as I wish now that I had. During her last year she lived in an assisted care facility about a half hour’s drive from me. To my credit I went up there often after work just to keep her company for an hour. It wasn’t always easy. Conversation could be limited. But I wanted to be there with her. It felt like a privilege to walk with her in her last months. I think I had learned something from not being as attentive to Felice as I could have been.  

Honestly? Most of the time when I do that, when I go out of my way to look out for someone else, I am the one who is rewarded. I have a friend who lives alone. I know that, especially in these pandemic days, he appreciates a visit at the local park. It gives us both something to look forward to and I enjoy just catching up with him. He has lots of interesting stories and we can commiserate around politics or daily frustrations. I enjoy our visits and iI think they matter to him. I wish now that I had known that back when Felice was living close by. I could have done better. But isn’t that what we do in life? We learn by our mistakes and we do better, right? I hope so.