She Slipped Quietly Into The Night

I received an email, earmarked for my Mother, yesterday evening.
Her sister, "Mary" (older by 3 years) had died.

I called up my Mother (who is currently residing at her friends house) and gently let her know. She took the news calmly. It seems this sad event was expected.
Still...it's family. An ending. A loss.

A short time later, I typed an email response back to her family in Holland. My Mother dictated it to me, letter by letter, as it was in Fries. The language her family (who live in Friesland--a small country attached to Holland) speak.

Message sent, I sat back and let the memories drift over me.

When I was 18 and living in Holland for a short time, I took the bus with my Dutch boyfriend to go visit my Mothers family in Friesland. I had been there once as a child. My memories were bits and pieces.

I knew my Mother had come from a very wealthy family. That her family owned most of the town of Sexbierum due to good investing after the War. My Mother had instructed me to ask directions to her Mother's house (my Beppe)by saying one word. Beppe "Smith".

I hopped off the bus as we entered Friesland and loped over to a man pumping gas at a station. I said, "Beppe (grandma) 'Smith'?" Just as my Mother had instructed.
I was shocked when the man's eyes widened and he quickly pulled off his cap out of respect to me. His hand trembled as he pointed to a large brick house across a freshly plowed field. I felt a fragmented memory shift inside my head. I remembered that house from my childhood visit 10 years before.

My boyfriend and I set off for my Beppe's house and were greeted warmly by Aunts and Uncles and Cousins. We spent a fine evening feasting and playing rowdy games of table top shuffleboard.

The next morning, my boyfriend and I walked to my Tante (aunt) "Mary's" house. A maid opened the door and I informed her of who I was. I waited in the large entry way for my Tante's arrival. A woman who's features bore an almost identical stamp of my Mother's walked into the entryway and paused when she saw me.

Blue eyes, crystal cold, swept over me disapprovingly as she stepped closer to me. Then, very deliberately, she turned her cheek and pointed to it. It was, like something out of an old time English tradition, a cut direct. She did not greet me with the two cheek kiss of family welcome. However, out of respect to my Mother, I shoved down my anger and stepped forward to kiss her cheek.

My Mother was so angry when I wrote her later of the greeting her sister gave to me. Apparently, because I am adopted, I am not blood. Therefore, I was not "family".

I saw my Tante a few years later after my college years. She was having hip problems and I had taken some linament and rubbed the soreness out of her hip. She had softly laid a hand against my cheek and thanked me in her native tongue. The once cold disapproving eyes were damp with tears of pain and filled with belated family warmth.

Black and white memories of a life that has now passed. I wish her well on her next journey, whatever that may be.