Gone too soon
There is one of those typical standing family jokes in The Legal Genealogist‘s family.
I will tease my youngest brother about getting older every year on his birthday.
And every year, on his birthday, his response is the same: “I’ll always be younger than you.”
He’s right.
And sometimes that hurts a bit.
Like yesterday when it hit me that it was the birthday of my young cousin Susan.
She was born Susan Gayle Hodges in Louisa, Virginia, on July 13, 1954,1 the oldest of two daughters born to my mother’s sister, my aunt Marianne.
My first cousin. And, as in so many families, among the first and best and closest of childhood friends — and childhood foes.
Just close enough in age to be a frequent playmate — and co-conspirator in all the trouble kids can get into.
Just far enough apart in age to be frequently at each other’s throats: “but Mom, she’s too young to…” on my side; “but Mom, she won’t let me…” on hers.
We played together. We picked blackberries together. We gathered in tomatoes from our grandmother’s garden together. We closed ranks against cousins younger or older, as the winds of change blew.
And we fought together. Oh, how we fought. We fought about who got the last piece of cinnamon toast on a summer morning. Or who got to sit by the window on the car ride. Or whose bouquet of fresh-picked wildflowers (and weeds) was better. Or anything else that happened to present itself at any given moment in time as a source of competition or annoyance.
We grew apart at times in our lives. And we grew together as time went on and all the things that seemed to have divided us when we were younger were revealed as so much less important in the long run than all the things that brought us together.
The joys we shared over the years. The pains we shared. The cares, the concerns, the laughter, the tears.
And though I know she grew to be a proud mother of two daughters and even prouder grandmother of a granddaughter, I will forever picture her always as the young girl you see here. The age when we probably fought the most against each other and then closed ranks the most against the rest of the world.
A bright-eyed laughing vibrant soul whose laughter was silenced by cancer when she was just 60 years old.2
I will never forget the day we lost her. It was November, 2014. By then, she’d been fighting that blasted disease for years. Rounds of surgeries and treatments and chemo and more. Months of remission, even years at one time, and then bad news again and again.
By the fall of that year, we knew it couldn’t be that much longer. She had been failing, bit by bit, for months. But every time it looked like her fight was finally ending, she would rally. And we’d have a little more time.
Then came the day when I was speaking at a conference of the North Carolina Genealogical Society in Durham and, while I was speaking, my cellphone started to vibrate. I was a little startled, since I thought I’d turned it off, and when I reached to do that, I saw the phone number of the person calling. It was Susan’s daughter. And I knew. I knew it was over.
She will always be younger than I am.
And I will miss her all the days of my life.
SOURCES
- Entry for Susan Gayle Payne, 13 July 1954, Louisa, Virginia; database and index, “Virginia, Birth Records, 1912-2014,” Ancestry (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 12 Aug 2017). Her name at birth was Susan Gayle Hodges; it was later legally changed to Payne. ↩
- See Judy G. Russell, “A somber Sunday,” The Legal Genealogist, posted 16 November 2014 (https://www.legalgenealogist.com/blog : accessed 13 July 2018). ↩
You sure know how to bring a tear to an ol cousin’s eye Judy. I could almost see you two young girls together, laughing, always into something probably. Brought memories to mind of my cousins, we did the same things, bringing granny bluebonnets, climbing round in the barn, chasing chickens to catch one for dinner…now some are gone, but not our memories, those are forever
Wonderful tribute to your Susan. Your words also reminded me of times with cousins. She will forever be in your heart.
Judy,
What a tribute to your cousin Susan! I didn’t see all my cousins every summer the way you did. But I grew up close enough to some of them every summer that it was a real treat when we were together at reunions as adults. The last time all those of the original 13 still alive were together, about five years ago now, we spent the afternoon reminiscing and comparing who looked like Grandma, who like Grandpa, and what kinds of troubles we’d gotten into as kids. We ‘fessed up to things we never admitted to as kids. The next time we were together, we were also celebrating my mother’s 100th birthday, and there were cousins from my father’s side of the family too, some of whom I hadn’t even seen since I was a teenager. It was a treat for them to see “the other side of the family” again, and share the memories of the times both sides shared Thanksgiving. I always appreciate how even your sad stories about your family bring back so many memories of my family.
Thank you,
Doris
Thank you, Judy, for helping me realize that I need to be writing this kind of tribute for my beloved family members who are now gone.