She was the last sister. Actually, a niece to the main line.
Growing up, eventually old, in the grand house on the bayou, really a recent imitation of the old colonial style, she was always a bit perpendicular. Laughing at things others didn't find laughable. Loving the people others didn't find lovable.
Strangest and most worrisome was her fantasy that someday she, a much too short and rather jumpy girl would dance the ballet. Surely this was proof enough she just wasn't a realistic person.
Until, of course, she did. For years, she was a fixture in the city's company. In the house there is a painting of her in the costume for her Swan Lake, pulling on the shoes. This was ages too long ago for me to have seen her dance, but all say she was a natural.
Others remember her at the dawn of television, part of a manic team with no titles--today we would call them writers and producers--who scrambled to fill the live hours at one of our city's first stations. The common thread of their stories is the laughter.
Most of us remember her as she would not wish to be remembered: as the "old lady." We're sorry for that, but can't help it. She was old when we got here, though she never knew it.
In her heart, she was always that funny, perpendicular girl, always ready to laugh and to love and to dance. The only flaw I ever saw in her was her willingness to believe that everyone she knew, despite all evidence, was the nicest person she ever met.
Even in the somber plush of the funeral parlor, the laughter and the stories went on, stilled finally at the graveside by the voice of the cantor singing the mourning kaddish.
His voice was beautiful. She would have approved.