Some sister time, hold the sadness

From left, the sisters Sofia Hughes and Felicitas and Crispina ffrench.

 

This article first appeared in The Berkshire Eagle.

By Felix Carroll

 

GREAT BARRINGTON — The lovely lady in room 201 has lately suggested to her sisters that she may have travel plans. The plans would entail her drawing a final breath and moving on to the next realm. No date has been set. Chances are it’ll all happen when she’s simply damn well ready.

 

For now, Felicitas ffrench may be working out a few existential details. What did that Jesuit priest tell her? And what’s that first law of thermodynamics — the one about energy never being destroyed?

 

But mostly she appears to live moment to moment because moments are what she has.

 

“Mind if I open the curtain?” her sister Crispina asks her as she enters the room for her weekly visit last Sunday. Not waiting for an answer, Crispina shoves aside the heavy drapes. In an instant, a gush of light anoints the gloomy room, rummaging until it finds what it seems to cherish: the smiling face of Felicitas ffrench in her bed, her body broken.

 

Felicitas first arrived in this nursing home 15 years ago, beaten by the effects of multiple sclerosis, furious and resentful. At the time, she was the youngest resident here by far at 39 years of age. She’s no longer the youngest, and the fury is long gone. That fact, the fury gone, is the miracle in all of this — the single miracle thus far bequeathed to the ffrench family of Stockbridge in a set of circumstances that Felicitas, herself, otherwise describes thusly: “Oh, this sucks.”

 

She laughs heartily at that. She laughs till her face turns red. As does Crispina, by her side. As does the third sister, Sofia, by her other side. Laughter, a miracle. Because yes, let’s be clear: This sucks. 

 

After all, this is Felicitas ffrench, the girl who, by first grade, was already reading Agatha Christie. The nerdy, know-it-all who earned a perfect score on her SATs. Who graduated from Monument Mountain High School in 1981, a year ahead of her class. Who graduated from the University of California-Berkeley, then earned a scholarship to Stanford Law School. 

 

This is Felicitas ffrench, remember? The fierce young woman determined to spend her life providing legal counsel to the poor and marginalized. 

 

She was diagnosed with MS at age 20. For the next 15 years, her health would sputter. She’d temporarily lose the ability to control her left side. Her vision would temporarily turn kaleidoscopic. When she was 35, her frantic parents intervened. She was living in Oakland in a third-floor walk-up and could no longer climb stairs. For good measure, a boyfriend had recently ripped her off.

 

Just as she was preparing to take the bar exam, her parents sent a friend out to Oakland who brought their daughter home. She was enraged. They got her a wheelchair. They made some changes to the house. But after nearly four of living at home, Felicitas needed round-the-clock care. She wound up here, where she quite quickly, quite astonishingly did what intelligence and grace would prescribe given the circumstances: She surrendered. Just like that. A model patient, never complains. Who can explain it?

 

Felicitas ffrench is at peace in this place, in this room with three beds and a roommate behind a curtain who shouts out non sequiturs. She’s at peace in this place permeated by the odor of decay chased with cleaning solvents by a saintly staff who call her dear. They keep her covers pulled tight to her chin the way she likes it.

 

And when her sisters come to visit, her face lights up — the sisters whom she used to drive up the wall when they were all kids living on Main Street in Stockbridge. Like oil and water. Crispina and Sofia would be playing outside with the neighbor kids while Felicitas would ensconce herself inside reading Dickens. How annoying! 

 

The three sisters together can now scavenge dark hilarity from the madness of a world in which Felicitas ffrench, the sassy, genius brainiac, can no longer even pick her own nose.

 

“Oh, God help us all,” Felicitas says, locking eyes with Crispina.

 

“I wish he would,” says Crispina.

 

Her short-term memory is shot. She doesn’t remember that her parents have died. That her father, John, no longer visits every single day, bringing with him a defiant attitude that all is well. She doesn’t recall how her mother, Primm, couldn’t hide her sorrow. She doesn’t recall a fellow resident here, Sue with the sunglasses, who died a couple months ago from cancer, or the beloved Pat, who adored fresh peaches and never had visitors.

 

But Felicitas remembers things from long ago. That super cute guy in Ireland — Sean or Seamus or something. She remembers sunny California. And the lyrics to Bob Marley songs. And her father shouting “Bloody hell!” in his Irish accent whenever she rammed her wheelchair into his door jams, scratching the paint. 

 

Does she remember the people she helped in Harlem, the people she helped in Oakland?

 

“Remember?” Sofia asks. “Weren’t they people with — what? With AIDS? People who were losing their healthcare?”

 

“Yes,” Felicitas says, haltingly. “People that didn’t have representation, ever, which I thought was really important.”

 

She remembers her sisters. Sometimes she opens her eyes and they are there — Crispina knitting, and it all feels like home. They spoon-feed her SoCo Creamery ice cream, her favorite. They share wise cracks and belly laughs — or they don’t talk at all. Just sisters hanging out, delighted.

 

Crispina reports that Felicitas has lately confided that she sees her body as a trap from which she’s getting ready to free herself. The Jesuit priest, an old family friend, has specific ideas about what all would happen next, but the three sisters are not so sure. What they seem sure of is that the energy that is Felicitas ffrench won’t just — poof! — disappear. Once set free, maybe all that energy that yearned to care for society’s marginalized will lean hard against the levers of injustice. Maybe.

 

Whatever the case, Crispina and Sofia have decided to not be sad, because Felicitas is not sad. 

 

And anyway, out of the blue, their eldest sister recently announced that this past year has been the best year of her life. So what do you do with that information? 

 

You do what they’ve been doing. You visit, with ice cream. You fling open the curtains. You be a sister. And you take your leave with an “I love you” and an “Hasta luega, girl.” Goodbye, for now, to Felicitas ffrench, full of light.

 

Felix Carroll can be reached at felixcarroll5@gmail.com.