A Dozen Red Roses

Some of the brilliant reds of my mother-in-law’s home state

The dazzling woman in the red dress?

That was my mother-in-law.

We don’t know if the story was as much of a legend as my mother-in-law herself, but the story my father-in-law told was that he’d been at a Boston College dance where he saw a beautiful woman in a red dress from across the room. When she later emerged from behind a column he had asked her to dance… and discovered it was a different woman in a red dress.

Their own family would begin with their first child and only son, my husband. And Grandma Jackie would become a legend in that family, experiencing joy and enduring tragedy with grace; dedicating herself to service and all the families to which she belonged; maintaining her strong faith and fortitude and good humor; creating art; and teaching the rest of us a great deal about acceptance of all the beauty and tragedy in her long life.

My father-in-law grew up as the youngest of five brothers, just south of Boston. But far northern Maine, where my mother-in-law had grown up as the middle child among more than a dozen–some of whom had died very young– was an entirely different story. My husband had been anxious to share that part of his mother’s life and world with our own children, especially the outdoor wonders which were so close and omnipresent even when life itself had been so hard.

Seeing my mother-in-law with her brothers and sisters at “The Camp” was a revelation. I suppose we all revert to our original selves when we play games, and it was a feast to watch and listen as gaggles of very serious men and women (including those who wore collars and habits) snapped at and joked with each other when the stakes peaked. After all, only one would win the Cribbage game at hand.

The “Camp” was a cabin built by a half-dozen of my mother-in-law’s brothers, including three priests. Of multitudinous siblings, on my best count, eleven had reached adulthood. They included a heavenly complement: two Diocesan priests and one Franciscan, one Dominican sister, and one Daughter of Wisdom. All had French names, including my mother-in-law, and one had been Christened Jeanne D’Arc, lending some support to the intersection of given names and destiny. She was a force in the world, and would spend the next quarter-century providing nursing care to women and children in Malawi. The rest stayed closer to home, triangulated within the 1.5 latitudinal degrees which separate Lewiston and Montreal. In rotation they would conduct the marriage ceremonies of dozens of nieces and nephews, beginning with our branch of this very fruitful tree.

Whenever we went to Maine, I found shades of red. They simmered and blazed and reflected on Eagle Lake. They glowed like red phosphorus on the shining casings of what was represented to me to be a regionally beloved hot dog. I did not partake. Reds flashed on birds’ wings and beckoned from berries, and I wondered if they included the poisonous ones which may have been consumed by young Valére, who had been among the siblings of my mother-in-law who did not grow up to be an uncle to the next generation. This place was part of my mother-in-law, too, which she carried with her to her new life in Massachusetts and transmitted to all of us for whom she set an example of tenacity and quiet strength and resilience, all of it anchored in faith and love.

Her grandchildren adored her, and she would host an army of them every Sunday. The cousins would exhaust themselves playing games outside, eventually settling in groups all over the house. My in-laws upsized for retirement, in order to be able to fill their home with their children’s children. Some, thumbs locked in cupid mouths between bright cheeks, napped in cribs under Grandma Jackie’s quilts. Toddlers cradled newborns on the big yellow couch as parents hovered within lurching distance. Children clustered around early-generation computers in Papa Dick’s office, its walls overflowing with family photos and their artwork-of-the-day. Above them was always the hand-hammered silver letter “G” his own little boy had forged for him in elementary school, which also hung on the wall of his room when he peacefully passed away to rejoin his son almost five years ago.

Grandma Jackie was so vibrant and strong and giving for so very long, and all her grandchildren had a chance to say goodbye before she passed away in comfort and at peace. On a glorious day when it could just as easily have been an ice storm, there was clear blue sky and sun when we whispered what we needed to say as she took her place next to her husband in a cemetery just down the street from their retirement home.

Papa Dick had always marked special occasions by bringing her a dozen roses in dancing-dress red.

Under a heart-shaped rose wreath, a dozen red roses glowed in Pentecost red, under a perfect sun.