| Music | December 5, 2002 | Archives |
One of my favorite people died last week. My niece Lizette Matens Sullivan was 29 years old and had battled liver cancer for the last few years. She was wonderfully brave and energetic, easily amused and delighted by the world and by people. Now I treasure the memories of the two visits Lizette and the other Matenses made to Maine. When they came in October two years ago, Maine knocked itself out for them, giving them all in one week peak fall colors, northern lights, and on their last day, the first snowfall of the year.
The phone calls with family increased and language changed as soon as we knew she was dying. The mythology of childhood, the language of memory and dreams, so untranslatable, suddenly made sense. I dreamed that my grandmother, Claudia Doiron Altazan, as a strong middle aged woman, a foot taller than she was in real life, her rimless glasses now fashionable again, her hair as black as Lizette's was when it grew back after chemo, came to the house where Melissa and I live to pick up something she had loaned us. Calm, confident, matter-of-fact. I went to Louisiana for a few days this week to be with my family during the funeral services. My sister and brother-in-law, Ingrid and Robert, have been amazingly brave and steady. When sitting in the church with so much family all around, I feel like I'm in a battery charger. The grave site, selected by Lizette, was near some trees and close to a school playground where children were running and yelling. Alive is in command. |