My Feb. 11 column has come back not to haunt me, but to serve as a gentle reminder.
I'd recounted that in the midst of my joy in discovering and connecting with several cousins through Ancestry.com came some guilt concerning "known" relatives with whom I'd fallen out of contact. Speculating that I wasn't alone in my lack of communication with kin, I wrote that "we assume they'll always be there, and then we're shocked when somebody passes on."
Little did I know that one of my four older sisters, the Rev. Paulette Palmer of Kansas City, Mo., would win her battle with the lung cancer with which she'd been diagnosed just last fall.
I say "win" because I refuse to acknowledge the term "lose" in this case. She made her transition from this world on March 15, a week after my husband, Dre, and I had gone to see her crowned one of two Women of the Year at a dinner given by her American Business Women's Association chapter. Paulette looked frail but radiant that night in a white and gold ensemble, wearing a million-dollar smile.
It had been some years since I had seen any of my Kansas City kin, which includes a couple other siblings and a gaggle of nieces and nephews. The vicissitudes of life had, I'm sad to say, won out over family fellowship.
I was especially grateful that I'd obeyed what I'm convinced was divine prompting to accept Paulette's invitation to attend this dinner as part of a three-day visit. As she and I said our goodbyes at the end of this visit, I felt compelled to hug her twice. Looking into her eyes, which had become so prominent due to her weight loss, I knew in my heart that this was goodbye.
I prayed again for her healing, but began to face the probability that said healing would not come in the form in which I wanted it to manifest. Sure enough, her physical condition deteriorated after our visit. Her daughter and other Kansas City kin gathered at her hospital bedside. She went peacefully. Two weeks after that first Kansas City trip we traveled north again, this time for the homegoing celebration.
The one most bittersweet thing about death is that it does bring family together, and Paulette did indeed bring ours together. I'm the youngest of a blended family of what was eight siblings; the six surviving siblings hadn't been together in one place since heaven remembers when. I got to see a gaggle of nieces and nephews along with their children. Other relatives who either hadn't seen each other in years, or hadn't seen each other before, got a chance to mingle.
The day after saying our goodbyes to Paulette -- the day most of the visitors left for home -- we gathered for breakfast at a cafe in Independence, Mo. Several tables were pushed together to accommodate us all, with my 96-year-old father at his rightful place at the head of the tables. It was a grand time. Luckily our fellow diners didn't seem to mind our constant phone-photo shoots of each other.
After breakfast, my father and stepmother both admonished me to check in with them more often. Seeing my father, still obviously feeling the loss of the identical twin he'd lost in November, made me determined to do better. Seeing my sister Pauline, obviously feeling the fresh loss of her twin, Paulette, made me resolve to do better. Overhearing a lively conversation between two of my adult nephews about relatives not keeping in touch with them made me want to do better. Wondering how my brave niece, Dayna, would hold up after everyone left, I vowed to do better.
The very day we left for Kansas City for the second time we found out that BeBe, Dre's grandmother in Houston and an Alzheimer's patient, had also passed. As we prepared for our third road trip -- and second homegoing/family gathering -- in a month, we mourned the fact that we'd run out of time to visit her. Several previous plans to go to Houston had fallen prey to accommodation issues and event cancellations. So my Promise to Self to keep the lines of communication open extends to Dre's family, too.
I have Paulette's legacy as an example. The day after her transitioning, we got a note from her in the mail. She was thanking us for our attendance of her Woman of the Year coronation, and our gift to her.
No, dear sister. Thank you.
Do stay in touch:
hwilliams@arkansasonline.com
Style on 04/08/2018