On Friday, Jan. 17, 2020, I drive to see Aunt Frances Crain at Spring Park, an assisted living facility in Travelers Rest, SC.
I sign in on the foyer sheet and walk a long hallway to the memory care portion of the large Spring Park facility. A slender young lady with a pull-along suitcase holds the door to the memory care unit. Because she lets me in, I don’t have to punch in the four-digit number in order to enter. She heads off with her pull-along.
I don’t see Aunt Frances Crain in the sitting area, so I walk toward her room. The young lady I’d just seen is standing at Aunt’s door, knocking. The memory care supervisor, Nicki, tells me that the young lady is there to give Aunt Frances an ultrasound test on a lower legs that tends to swell. I’ll have to wait to see Aunt.
“Okay,” I say, and I sit on a bench near Aunt Frances’ room.
In maybe 12 minutes, the young lady exits Aunt’s room and walks toward me.
“She’s okay. No blood clot,” the nice young lady says, as she hurries past.
“Thank you,” I say.
I knock on Aunt’s door and she lets me in. She mentions being lonely and says she’s glad I came. She and my late Uncle Fred had no children. We sit and talk about old times — she remembers those pretty well. She sits in her recliner. I sit in the one Uncle Fred once used. His memory was good, but he entered the memory care in order to stay with Aunt Frances. He passed on Feb. 21, 2018.
Aunt Frances talks about her childhood.
“When we lived near your mother [Eva Fowler Crain], we was the only family that didn’t own our home,” Frances says. “We rented. Daddy was a share-cropper. He and Mother raised six children. I was the youngest. I don’t know how they did it.”
“McDonalds owned their house,” Frances continues. “He owned a store in town. And there was the Bradleys. Mr. Bradley was a supervisor in the mill. They had two children: Ophelia and Daffen (a boy). They’d drive to town on Saturdays. We’d see them go by. They sort of seemed above us in a way. We seemed kind of out of place. Everybody owned their own place but us. We were renters. The Moons owned their house. Mr. Fowler drawed a pension from the Spanish-American War. He kept a pretty new car. He drove a Huson, a big car. Me and Mary would ride to Sunday school at Double Springs Baptist Church with the Fowlers.
She continues, “Eva and Edna buddied with me and Mary. Eva was older than me but we were good friends. Mary was over three years older than me. Edna was younger than Eva, but Edna wanted to buddy with Mary. Seems like Edna wanted to be older than she was.”
(Eva Fowler Crain was born in April 1921. Frances Hawkins Crain was born in April 1927. Edna Fowler Sloan was born in 1926. Mary was about three years older than Frances. Eva and Frances were good friends. Mary and Edna were good friends. The four all buddied together.)
“Where did you live first during your life?” I ask.
“We lived up on Hwy. 25,” Frances says.
“Where’d you go to school?”
“Was it Belview?” she says, adding, “Mary finished school when she was 15. She was too young to get a job, so she worked on the farm. She started school early. They say she got up one morning and fixed her a lunch and put it in a sack and said, 'I’m going to school and I don’t mean maybe!'”
Frances laughs. I laugh.
“I wasn’t old enough to get a job at Southern Bleachery when I graduated from Mountain View School [1944]," she says, "but I went down to the mill. You had to stand outside a fence. The boss man came there and said to me, ‘You don’t look 18.’ I said, ‘Don’t I look like it?’ He said, ‘Come on with me.’ He took me to an office and told a lady, ‘Write her up.’ That meant write me up for a job. I didn't tell a lie. I just said, 'Don't I look like it.'"
“I guess they needed you because so many men were in World War II,” I say.
“Yes, that’s right,” Frances says. “And they hired me because Mary had made them a good hand. She was already working there.”
We talk a little longer.
“How is Carol?” Frances asks.
“She’s fine,” I say.
I had hesitated for a second before speaking, and Frances picked up on that. I usually say Carol’s fine because where she is, she is fine.
“Is Carol passed on?” Frances says.
“Yes,” I say. “She’s fine in heaven.
“I thought I remembered that,” Frances says, with a worried look. “There was something in the way you said ‘fine’ that made me think of that.”
“I’ll tell you this, also,” I say. “My sister, Shirley, passed on.”
“When?” Frances says. “Why didn’t I know about it?”
“It just happened on Dec. 27,” I say.
“Well, why didn’t Fred and I know about it?” she says.
I tell her that Uncle Fred already passed on, also, and she then remembers that he did. (I don’t usually correct her on who has passed on. Aunt asks me many times about Carol and I just say, “She’s fine.”)
We talk a little longer, and I tell her I have to go. We stand and I hug her close and pray for her. She seems so tiny and frail. She says “yes” to some of the things I pray about. After the pray I lean down and kiss her on her head. She kisses me on the cheek.
“Steve, you’ve been like a son to me,” she says.
“And you’ve been like a mother to me, Aunt Frances,” I say.
We both shed tears.
“Do you want to go down to the sitting room?” I ask.
“Yes, I’ll go,” she says. “Let me take my sweater. Let’s see . . . do I have my key? Yes, there it is, around my neck.”
We shut the locked door, and I take her hand. We walk the hall to the sitting area, where four or five residents sit and watch TV or snooze.
An aide and a nurse, dressed in white, are attending to a gentleman near the TV. I see an empty rest-chair a few feet away.
“Is anyone using this chair?” I ask.
“No,” the nurse says, smiling.
I move the chair slightly, and Aunt Frances sits. I tell Aunt Francs “goodbye” again and walk away. As I go, I hear Aunt Frances say proudly to the nurse, “That’s my nephew.”
Twenty-five feet from Aunt Frances, I punch the four-digit number, wait 12 seconds for the memory-care door to open, and move into the hallway that leads to the outside world. I head to my car and drive away, thinking about Aunt Frances saying to the nurse, “That’s my nephew.”
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