“Being Irish, he had an abiding
sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of joy.”
-- W.B. Yeats
St. Patrick’s Day is a bittersweet
day for me. I’m a Kelley, with roots in County Cork, and I’ve always enjoyed
the wearin’ o’ the green. But since my sister passed away in the early morning
hours of March 18th twelve years ago, St. Patrick’s Day and the
first weeks of spring which follow have always been something of a tough time
for me. If you’ve followed this blog at all, you’ll know what that means: it’s writing
time--less expensive than therapy! And, as Sigmund Freud said of the Irish,
“This is one race of people for whom psychoanalysis is of no use whatsoever.” Glad
I found an alternative.
The Yeats quote I opened with makes
me laugh, in part because I recognize myself in it, despite the fact that I
strive to overcome my sense of tragedy with gratitude. I’ve always known that
life is unfair—how else to explain the fact that I, as the middle child, was
the only kid in the family who escaped the genetic mutation that limited my
siblings’ physical and mental abilities and shortened their lives? But I’ve
also always believed that life is what we make of it—that we can find the good
that’s ours for the taking, if we just look hard enough. Another Irish saying
expresses the dark optimism to which I ascribe when I’m feeling low: No matter
how bad things are, they can always be worse.
So, today, I am trying to buoy my
sense of tragedy with a bit of joy. I am sad as I remember how much I miss my
little sister, my big brother, and my friend, Fal. But remembering how lucky I
was to have them in my life—well, that’s a joy that I’ll always have. I can
mine for happiness just as easily as I can mine for despair. So here’s a little gem
from my childhood years with Jeannette.
Olive Oyl—A Slippery Tale
Jeannette’s shriek had me out of
bed before I was even awake.
I was about twelve years old, and Jeannette (aged 9) and I shared a bedroom. Our twin beds were pushed
together, which allowed me to soothe her and pull up her blankets if she needed
help in the middle of the night. It also decreased her odds of falling out of
bed by half. Had she fallen out the far side?
“Wha’s wrong? Jeannette, what’s
wrong?” I fumbled for my glasses, then turned on the light. By that time, Mom
and Dad had appeared in the doorway.
Jeannette was sitting up in her
bed, tears streaming down her face. “Ah-ee oy! Ah-ee oy!” she wailed.
“Jeannette, are you hurt? Does
something hurt?” She shook her head and began pulling at the covers.
“Was it a bad dream, do you think?”
Mom and Dad and I checked her over as she continued to sob. We pulled back the
blankets to check her legs. A bendable plastic doll, the kind with an inner
wire frame, fell from the covers, and Jeannette gasped.
“Ah-ee oy!” Jeannette grabbed the
small doll and clutched it to her chest.
My parents and I groaned. “Olive
Oyl!”
It was a dime-store present. We’d
purchased a bendable Popeye doll for Bobby, and another
doll, Olive Oyl (Popeye’s girlfriend), for Jeannette. For some reason, Jeannette
was enthralled with the gawky doll with the painted red dress. She carried her
everywhere, setting the doll next to her plate at breakfast, lunch, and dinner,
engaging in conversations that no one could understand, giggling at something
that we could only guess was a joke . . . made by Olive Oyl?
“She must have taken her to bed
instead of letting Mrs. Beasley hold her,” I decided. The bespectacled Mrs.
Beasley doll with the blue polka dot body and the yellow plastic hair was still
in her place near the bed, grinning amiably. “Did you bring Olive Oyl to bed
with you, Jeannette?”
She nodded yes. Her shoulders
heaved as little gasps pulled them forward.
“No wonder you lost her. Now let’s
give Olive Oyl to Mrs. Beasley so we can all go back to sleep.” Dad headed back
to bed.
“No!” Jeannette looked up in alarm
and pulled Olive Oyl away from Mom’s reach.
“Yes, Jeannette. You can have her
in the morning.” Mom reached again for Olive Oyl.
Jeannette began to cry. Mom looked
at me helplessly.
“Oh, let her keep Olive Oyl,” I
said. “I’ll find her if she loses it again.” I helped Jeannette lie back down
in the bed. “Look, Jay, put her here, under your pillow. That way she won’t
move around when you sleep. And you can put your hand up to see if she’s still
there when you wake up, okay?” Jeannette
nodded happily, her eyes already closing as she tucked one hand under her
pillow.
Mom turned off the lights and we
all went to sleep. Problem solved. Or so we thought. At least we knew what the
screeches were about when Jeannette woke in the middle of the night after that.
Good ol’ Olive Oyl. It wasn’t too hard to find her in the dark, now that we
knew what to look for.
But Olive Oyl, like all things
well-loved, would not stay the same forever.
One day her head fall off.
“Ahhhhh!!!!!!!” Jeannette’s wail
brought us running to the living room, where she sat on the rug, looking in
horror from one hand to the other, a red-dressed torso clutched in the left, a
smiling round head the size of a large marble in the right. She held out both
hands to us imploringly. “Fix Ah-ee Oy?”
Sometimes we could work
miracles, but this time we couldn’t. A small part of me—the tired part, the
part which had spent numerous nights since Olive Oyl’s first escape searching
for the renegade doll among Jeannette’s blankets—breathed a little sigh of
relief. Maybe now we could find a suitable replacement for the wire
doll—something bigger. Much bigger, and harder to lose in the middle of the
night.
“We can’t fix her, Jay. I’m sorry.”
I braced myself for tears.
Jeannette regarded the contents of both
her hands solemnly. “Okay,” she said, handing me Olive Oyl’s torso. “You frow
away?”
I looked back at her. “Um . . . yeah.
I can throw her away.” Really? She’s just
gonna let me toss her in the garbage? I was surprised, but not about to question her
equanimity. I reached for her other hand. “You want me to throw that away,
too?”
Jeannette pulled away in horror. “No
frow! No frow Ah-ee Oy away!” If she could have added “you monster!” I’m sure
she would have. She pulled Olive Oyl’s head close to her face and whispered
something as she turned her body away from me. A protective spell, perhaps.
“Uh . . . Jay? We can’t fix her,
you know.” Jeannette ignored me stonily.
“Maybe we can get her a new one,”
Mom offered.
“Oh, Mom!” I started, shooting her
daggers.
“What?” said Mom.
“That doll’s too small! Every night
she loses it in the blankets, and I have to find it.”
“Yes, but she loves it,” said Mom,
watching Jeannette examine the dismembered head. “Let’s get her a new one.”
“But, Mom—“
“No new Ah-ee Oy!” said Jeannette,
interrupting us. “DIS Ah-ee Oy.”
“But—“ began Mom.
“DIS ONE!”
And that was that.
Olive Oyl’s head went everywhere
Jeannette went. The macabre, grinning, pebble-eyed pate sat at the breakfast
table, the lunch table, the dinner table. Jeannette clutched Olive Oyl’s head
on trips to the grocery store. Olive Oyl’s head floated in the bathtub among
the bubbles. And, of course, Olive Oyl’s head came to bed with Jeannette.
Thunk!
Taptaptap thunk! tap tap . . .
The sound of Olive Oyl’s head
slipping beneath our two beds and bouncing crookedly away between our shoes and
toys would wake me moments before Jeannette’s wail of alarm. I’d swim beneath
the bed like a pearl-diver seeking treasure, hoping I could surface before Jay
was out of breath from her sobbing. The constant interruption to my sleep began
to take its toll on me. At night, I’d yell at Jeannette. “Not again! Can’t you
let Mrs. Beasley watch her, Jay?” and worse, “Why don’t you try looking for her sometime?” Then I’d feel guilty and dive
back under the bed until I found the hated head. By day, I’d imagine all the
strange misfortunes that could befall Olive Oyl. An unfortunate nose-dive into
a pot of spaghetti sauce? She was about the right size for a small meatball. Or
maybe a trip to a driving range could set her (and me) free. Fore!
Mom must have seen how the lack of
sleep was affecting my sanity--or, at least, my mood. One day I came home from school, and she held up
a pretty little drawstring sack that she had crocheted. It was purple,
Jeannette’s favorite color. “I think this may work,” she said. At the time, I had
no clue what she meant. Did she think the sack could replace Olive Oyl? "Sure," I mumbled. "Whatever you say."
That night, Mom hung the little
purple bag from Jeannette’s bedpost. “I made a special bed for Olive Oyl,” she
told Jeannette. “She can sleep right up here, between you and Frances. And
she’ll be here in the morning when you wake up. What do you think?”
We watched for her reaction. “Bed?
For Ah-ee Oy?”
“It’s purple. Like the bedspread.”
“Puh-pah bed for Ah-ee Oy?”
Jeannette whispered something to Olive Oyl. She nodded. Then she put her in the
sack. “N’nite, Ah-ee Oy,” she said, patting the bag. And Jeannette went to
sleep with her hand clutching Olive Oyl’s head through the corner of the hanging
purple ‘bed.’
She woke up several times that week
in a panic, but she learned to reach up and find Olive Oyl sleeping in her
‘bed’, and I found myself looking much more kindly at the silly plastic head by
day, since I was sleeping so much better each night. I grew to appreciate the comfort
and companionship she seemed to offer my sister. And I learned not to underestimate my Mom's good ideas.
Olive Oyl’s features wore off in
time, and she was gradually replaced by a much bigger and brighter companion—a
Big Bird hand puppet, who, wisely, never roamed from his place on Jeannette’s
pillow each night.
---
In her three decades of life, Jeannette
never gave up her need for “lovies.” She learned not to carry them to
school—they waited for her at the top of the stairs each school day, and,
later, they waited for her to return home from work at Seabird Enterprises. She
grew a small collection of favorites. In addition to Big Bird, Miss Piggy
and Kermit the Frog became part of her circle of friends. Even when they were not
with her, she carried their voices in her head. Like our brother, Bobby,
Jeannette had schizophrenia as part of her list of disabilities—a very benign
form which generally served to keep her happy and laughing at the goings-on of
her favorite friends. She whispered to
them, she doubled over with laughter at some funny joke one or another had
played, and she occasionally scolded and yelled at them for misbehaving. But
mostly she just enjoyed their company.
Now that she’s gone, when I think
of her, I sometimes wish I had that silly Olive Oyl head to hold onto. I wonder
where it went. And then I laugh at myself a little.
A “lovey” or a token won’t ever
replace Jeannette for me. “Lovies” get lost. Tokens break. Although my sister’s
passing left a hole in my heart that won’t ever be filled, time helps heal the
jagged edges of loss. And if I listen hard enough, I realize that her voice is
still with me. It doesn’t intrude on my thoughts the way the voices of
schizophrenia intruded on hers and Bobby’s—but it is there, nevertheless. I
hear her laugh; I hear my brother’s; I hear Fal's. On the twelfth anniversary of Jeannette’s
passing, I still remember the feel of her small hand as I pressed Olive Oyl’s
head into her palm, and the feel of her arms wrapped around my neck in a sleepy
hug.
Memory is something to be grateful
for.
And a memory that brings a
smile—that’s a treasure, indeed.
Rest in Peace, Jeannette Irene
Kelley
July 15, 1966 – March 18, 2001
May the road rise up to meet you,
May the wind be always at your
back,
May the sun shine on your face,
The rains fall soft upon your
fields.
Until we meet again, may God hold
you
In the palm of his hand.