For Laura, Love, Life

     On November 3, 2022, my sister-in-law, Laura Starmer Langton died at age 62, after bravely battling aggressive brain cancer for more than two years. Artisan, dancer, lover of God, people, books, ideas, and the mother of five, she was a beauty.  I loved her and loved that we shared May 20th birthdays. This piece was written after a visit with Laura and my brother, Bill, on August 16, 2021.

For Laura, Love, Life

It’s not me who is officially dying, but my visit to Waltham to keep Laura and Bill company after her terminal diagnosis inflicts death of another sort. We go out for an ice cream and Billy takes us on a tour around the city.  Jim rides shotgun. I relax in the back with Laura and watch Waltham 2021 play out before my eyes. This empty lot, condemned church, that development, the old high school, the old, old high school, the once high school now condo. New signs in front of old buildings, new houses replacing beloved old. So much time has passed and I’m forced to look. It isn’t like I’m seeing Waltham again for the first time. After all, this is where I spent my first 21 years.  Today, though, hills seem too high, houses too old, and one special person way too sick. 

  

Back home on Island Pond, I struggle to know what it means to have ridden those hills past such huge rocks and vast wooded acres of estates I never knew were there.  Lyman and Gore were landmarks I knew, but Billy had pointed out Stonehurst, Wellington, and others.  How could I be so unaware that these grand homes have always embellished this old mill town where I grew up? And Laura sitting next to me; her sallow skin, dulled countenance, unsheltered scalp; that tender, crooked, scar. Her restrained smile arises now from a different, distant depth. 

So, Bill swings his car left off Maine Street and whips us through Grove Hill Cemetery in search of our dear friend, Kerry’s grave still fresh from planting. We travel quick, past the Mulas’ stone. Rusty and Dotty, our next-door neighbors from childhood.  Dotty, where are you? And young Michael? I knew you before you were born. How, how can we all be dead? We shoot past the playground, empty of kids outside.  LaRosa’s, our bread and milk store, repurposed into a simple house, the storefront long gone. We spend time at Russo’s store whose shelves, full of flowers and food, betray the fact that soon they are closing their doors - another death; a beloved era of food shopping soon to end. 

Before we stop for ice cream, Billy shows off the grounds of Stonehurst. We share high summer walking around this hillside estate bespeaking faded lives and a grandeur that both remains and mocks. Out back, two cleaning women lean against the kitchen door. Death, their cigarette smoke, wafts indifference into the open sky. I peer into the ground-floor windows and, like ghosts, two stray kids appear. I watch them laugh and spin circles around the wood-lined library long since stripped of books.  Back in the quiet of the car, Laura whispers a memory. I was here, she said, I once attended a party there.

Before Bill turns the car back home towards Harding Ave, he quick-stabs his finger towards some woods. He says, Ginny, look. That’s where the fire was where [our firefighter] Dad fell through the floors at Ferncroft when it burned down in ’74. I strained to look through the woods up trails we could have walked but didn’t. Tangled vines, ash-colored paths - my clear memory of the incident when we were kids and the long-term aftermath of Dad’s chronic pain and the ways he doused it. I look at Laura, her sallow skin, half-opened eyes: a once healthy tree, strength sapped. Our pretty Laura, drained by death, the greedy tapper.

Back at their place, we cheer over news announcements of the babies - Nick, Joe, Merri expecting - hooray! Laura quietly expresses thanks and joy over three new grandchildren and when they might come. We listen as she speaks her wishes softly: would they move from Harding Ave? Would she ever feel good again and enjoy a simple, daily structure? Death the stretch; the stuff of life; ongoing links in a cold, ever-lengthening chain.

Before we leave we enjoy a quick visit with nephew Geoff in his apartment downstairs.  A could-be artist, we get to see his latest art born from materials gleaned from his day job building a school. We admire the hand-crafted, concrete tiles he’s made that host his vibrant homages to life and culture: Boston Garden mallards; the Citgo sign; and exuberant flowers. All graceful, artful designs that reveal his artisan’s soul. And Laura, his artist mom, upstairs dying. 

Throughout the day we shared simple snacks: pizza, cookies, tea, and cones of ice cream. At Russo’s,  we stood outside, warmed by the sun, and Laura picked out perennials she wanted that would bloom in their yard next spring. After tossing all night, a bouquet of death flowers teases me open. I’m pushed out of bed and sit unsettled on my couch, as if food-poisoned, and must tend to this Vesuvius spill. Death, the cold pizza; the undrunk tea; death, the hidden mansion, the closing store. Death, the stall, the block, the unrealized life. Death, you hoard stories untold; force untellable truths. 

I’m filled too full of rutted roads, moss-covered secrets, and beggar roots that motion to be seen - this wound we call dying. Safe home at last becomes a lost mirage after such tumult. My words here convey nothing of the weight that today’s witness heaves upon my heart on this over-salted day.

Laura is dying and I’ll fall, too, to become a lost whisper. But, let it be known: while here, what I saw, I felt. And, it breaks my heart to know that all the very fullness of this life is meant to fade. 

Bill and our pretty Laura