CINDY

Tomorrow, December 8^th, 2011, is the one year anniversary of my sister Cindy’s death. She is with Dad in an alternate universe laughing about the coincidence of dying on the feast of the Immaculate Conception.

Any of you who knew Cindy loved her for her ability to challenge the status quo, but in a respectful, intelligent manner. She grappled with her faith and questioned many of the tenets of Catholicism based on her study of different faiths. For some time, the Unitarian church seemed to deliver a modicum of healing and it spoke to her sense of neutrality. Coincidentally, a Unitarian church sits next door to my neighborhood. I attend services occasionally. Cindy would have loved the service led by Buddhist monks who played long, copper horns and fashioned a mandala as the congregation watched.

When we talked the weeks before Cindy slowly faded away, I asked her if she wanted to speak with a priest. I thought for a moment that she had resigned herself to come back to the fold, but she said to me, “Yes, only because I want to go where Daddy is.” So, she did receive the Sacrament of Extreme Unction, the Last Rites, and she seemed at peace.

Cindy was an amazing mother to Des. She was the typical Earth Mother-- comforting, cuddly, welcoming, and nurturing of Des’s heart, soul, and body. When Des recalls growing up with Cindy as her mom, her eyes light up. Not your typical soccer mom, Cindy let Des wear a bathing suit for days in the winter because that was Des’s favorite clothing when she was a toddler. When I worried that Des would come down with deathly pneumonia, Cindy told Des to put a coat over her bathing suit.

Dressing up made Cindy’s dramatic sense of style unfold . Amazingly photogenic, she would don fancy hats and scarves and walk down Main Street in Loreauville. If anyone dared to call her eccentric, she would thank them. Any article of clothing she wore looked like a million dollars on her tiny frame. She leaned toward the nostalgic, old Hollywood mavens, like Rita Hayworth and Vivien Leigh. As my sisters and I looked through her clothing after her death, we recalled memories of her escapades wearing those clothes--such a good memory of her fun loving nature.  In one of my favorite pictures of her, we wear large, elegant felt hats with feathers and stand posed provocatively with fancy scarves wrapped around our necks.

A voracious reader since childhood, she drank in the written word. As I rummaged through her book collection, I was amazed to discover the depth and variety of the titles she owned.  She had a number of books on philosophy, mythology, and world religions, and I realized then that I owned the same titles. I felt sad because we never got to speak about the similarity in our reading. I was stranded on the East coast most of my married life, and she lived in Louisiana and North Carolina. Life got in the way.

Cindy ‘s resume would fill up a filing cabinet. A gifted intellect bores easily in mundane job situations. After her career as a librarian, media expert at a college in Clear Lake City, Texas, she worked for Sprint, for a real estate company,  in sales for an office equipment company, as a researcher, and many more jobs searching for a career that fed her soul. I don’t think she ever found it.

I am looking at a portrait of the two of us as very young children, I the six year old brunette and she, the four year old, fragile, delicate younger sibling. Both fiercely independent, I recall vividly how we fought tooth and nail. I was stronger, so she grew very long nails. I recall that the last time I walloped her was the first time she dug those very long nails into my skin.

The most tragic event Cindy suffered as an adolescent was the loss of her two best friends, Paula Fontenot and Jeanette Louviere, who both died in a tragic car crash on I-10 in the 1950’s. I did not realize until I became an adult teaching adolescents the emotional turmoil Cindy must have felt. Teens bond because they have such a handle on friendship, camaraderie, and trust.

I would give anything, even my shoe collection, to see and talk with Cindy just one more time. I would tell her that I love her more every time I look at Des and see what an amazing person she nurtured, that  I loved having her as a sister, that I was proud of her, and that she left a timeless legacy for her family and friends.