Becky Says...

August 2004

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August 12

If she were still alive, my maternal cousin Virginia would have celebrated her 92nd birthday today. And I miss her. She's been dead since early in the last decade.

There are a lot of things I can tell you about Virginia. Among them: she and her husband, Ed, ran a motorcycle sales and service shop. They had two children, both of whom were bipolar, as was Ed. Those two children committed suicide inside eighteen months in 1975 and 1976; that was written of here. She collected liquor bottles. She was an accomplished painter of portraits and doer of other artistic pursuits. She had a wicked sense of humor.

And she was my favorite of the cousins in her generation.

Most people who knew Virginia wouldn't have thought of her as being particularly sentimental, since she had the reputation of being a very strong woman. But sentimental she was. And she had a great deal of family loyalty. She was also one of the family rebels, having followed her own drummer all her life.

One of the times I had a chance to spend several hours with Virginia was on a trip to our Aunt Lib's home in the North Carolina mountains, in the summer of 1970. Part of the reason for the trip was for her to take her maternal Aunt Dorothy back to Aunt Dorothy's home, and the two of them invited me to ride along. After we dropped my mother at Aunt Lib's home, the three of us set out.

We had a pleasant visit at Aunt Dorothy's home, then Virginia and I started back to Aunt Lib's. Virginia's husband had died about a year earlier, and she was in a mood to talk about him as we rode. Specifically, she wanted to talk about the week he died. And I'm glad she chose to tell me.

Ed had been placed on a different psychotropic medication by his psychiatrist at some earlier point in the summer of 1969. Unfortunately, the psychiatrist had not paid careful attention to Ed's physical condition. The medication itself was the chief contributor to a massive heart attack. Although Ed was treated in one of the finer hospitals in the area, ultimately there was too much damage to his heart muscle for him to survive. He died about five days after the attack.

Virginia's father had been a physician. He had told her and everyone else in the family that if anyone ever asked permission to do an autopsy, we should grant it, because someone could always learn from the results. So when Virginia was asked for such permission, she granted it. It was through the autopsy that the medication's involvement was found. And the pathologist made no bones about it; he offered to testify if she wanted to bring a malpractice action against the psychiatrist.

Virginia didn't take long to decide against that. She said it was important to her that the psychiatrist learn of the death and its cause, but that suing him would not bring Ed back. And that was what was done.

As she was telling the last of the story, I happened to look at her face. Nothing in her voice had changed, but as I looked at her, I saw a tear making its way down across her cheek. I think it's the only time I ever saw her weep. And I knew I had been taken into a sacred place. Her soul.

So today I raise a cup to my cousin's memory. In so doing, I am honoring a life that had a profound impact on mine, and being grateful for our times together.

Text © copyright 2000-2004 Becky