A Goose Chase Ending At A Farm

Waking up this morning, I had the feeling I was lifting the page in a long saga. 

It was a new chapter in the story Bernice has enriched my life with.  When she died, and all of her odds and ends fell into my hands, I didn’t know what to do with them.  I left them in their boxes, her scrawl fading on the masking-tape labels, stuffed in a closet for a long time.  Then one day, packing for a move, I poured myself a drink, sat down on the floor, and dove in.   It was almost all papers; address books, letters, church bulletins.  Stacks  of notes scratched out to herself in her final decade.  I read them all.  It was like a tragic chronicle of her decline.  The notes she wrote became increasingly desperate and despairing, and it was clear that she knew full well the abyss she was sliding into- financially, socially, and mentally, as her memory slipped away.   Not all of it was heartbreaking.  There were cassette tapes of her singing with her husband, a musician, and news clippings with him posed and smiling with hi ukulele.  And in her address book, there was a page labeled: “relatives”.  

It’s funny how alzheimers erases memories more or less in order, from the present back; like a tide flowing out to a grey and fathomless sea.  Bernice couldn’t remember the years she’d written those notes to herself.  She could only barely, on a good day, remember the husband she’d been so proud of and devoted to.  But she could remember her childhood- her parents and brothers, “our farm” that she’d grown up on- clearly, any day.  From the many stories she’d shared over years of lucid moments, I recognized some of the names on her list instantly.  The name of her older two brothers had notes dashed in at the corner of the entries- “died” and the year.  But her younger brother had no such note, and there he was, his address and phone number. 

I called.  I had been told that she had no family, none.  No living relatives at all.  And yet, when the phone was picked up, it was her brother.  He put his wife on, and we talked.  They were quite elderly and perhaps memory failures were a family affliction; I told them that Bernice had died, and was never sure if they understood what I was saying.  In the end, they were just confused and asked me to contact their daughter instead; they gave me her name. 

After some time on the internet, I found an address for her.  I sent a box of almost everything, and a letter.  In the letter, I explained that I had her original birth certificate, wedding certificate, and high school diploma.  Printed on vellum, bound in velvet or leather, in a time when such documents carried a reverence.  I thought they belonged with her family.  The niece wrote me back, just as I moved.  In the turmoil, the letter was lost.  By the time I found it, she had moved, too, and all the googling in the world brought me no closer to finding her again. 

But her letter had mentioned that her father, Bernice’s brother, had died and she was planning to take over the farm.  The same one Bernice had grown up on and told me stories about.  In Indiana. 

So, when we planned this trip, we marked out our route in such a way that we would pass through the town she’d grown up on.  And this morning, I took those documents, a picture of Bernice, and the crinkling page of her address book, and drive to the house number she’d listed under her brother’s name. I didn’t know what to expect.  I didn’t know whether I’d end up disappointed or whether something wonderful would happen; whether anyone lived there at all, whether this niece, who would be nearly 80 now, was even living.  But I knew I had to try. 

I left J and the kids to swim at the hotel pool and followed my GPS deep into rolling rows of seedling corn.  The morning was crisp and sunny when I pulled onto a dirt road and saw a pretty little white farm house nestled into a bend.  That was it. 

I pulled up and saw the sweetest, tidiest little farm.  The white house backed to a sturdy barn and a silo crept over with strands of ivy.  There was a little patio off to the side, and a garden patch, freshly weeded.  Redwinged blackbirds flitted from the lilacs and the sound of frogs and crickets rang from the fields all around. 

I walked up and knocked at the door.  I waited and held my breath.  I waited some more.  I knocked again, a little louder this time, just in case. 

I waited, to be honest, a little longer than a person who doesn’t want to be creepy ought to wait.  And finally, had to retreat down the porch steps.  I sent a message to J that no one had answered.  Next I meant to ask at the post office, to see if she still kept the PO box that was the return address on her letter those years ago. 

Just as I was leaving, he answered, “is there a mailbox?”

“Yes, but I can’t really know who lives here”

I didn’t want to leave these precious documents in some random person’s mail box. 

But that J, he’s always thinking for me when I’m too emotional to do it myself. 

“Is there a name on it?  People used to put names on their mailboxes”. 

I hadn’t even thought to check.  So I pulled over, and looked.  And there it was.  I wrote her a novel of a note, slid the items into the box, took a picture (I mean I’d been parked outside this house for 20 minutes, what’s a little more creepy at that point anyways), said a little prayer, and that was it. 

I so wish I’d met her.  Had a chance to talk to her, and ask about the farm, about Bernice before the tide of her mind went out.  But I still consider it a minor miracle that I was able to find this relative that supposedly didn’t exist.  I am thankful that Bernice’s last few treasures found their way back to where they began and belong. 

And for me,  it was really something to see the farm I had envisioned so often, to know that a hundred years ago, Bernice had played where I was standing.  It was like getting to step into those stories, into that mysteriously clouded mind, and see something even more clear than the memories.  It made me happy to see it looking so well.  Somehow, even though it may have been a bit anticlimactic, it felt like a good way to end the chapter.  Like a full circle had been made.  But in a way that was gentle.  Like her.