Editorial
Front Page - Friday, January 8, 2010
I Swear...
In memoriam
Vic Fleming
My three nieces performed a miracle one Wednesday night last month.
With lipstick rosy fresh on their faces, family photos all around, bed jacket draped upon their sleeping mother, they shared with her a milkshake and a bite of her favorite chocolate. This ‘midst memories of growing up, jokes they’d heard a hundred times, tears of joy and the laughter of deep sadness, as a host of heavenly angels filled the room.
And then they set about the task at hand: to pray their mother over, to the other side, to Life Eternal’s boundless space of peace.
What can I say about my sister, Nancy?
Nothing. Because she said it all herself. And when I say, “She said it all herself,” those of you who knew her know that I mean, in fact, “She said it ALL.” She was a talker, a story-teller, a jokester.
But she also was a doer of deeds. Verbally and non-verbally, Nancy told the world all it needed to know about Nancy. In the purest sense of the word humorist, she was one. She used language —the English language, thank you very much — to amuse and entertain other people and herself. She sought, her whole life through, to make people feel better with what she said and did and how she said and did it.
She was adept at the subtleties of tender loving care — kind words, timely hugs, empathy, and that special, piercing sense of knowing, understanding, intuiting what someone else might be going through.
Also an actor, she loved to move around, to go, to accomplish, to live out her love of life actively in the world. She had the attitude, and rightly so, that if she wanted something done her way, she’d better up and do it herself. And no one did that better than Nancy.
“Mission accomplished!” she was fond of saying.
It’s clear to me now that Nancy sensed the end was near some weeks, or maybe months, before the rest of us. But, true to form, she did not want to burden us with that. Her recent resolutions were simple enough:
To see her twin granddaughters, Sloan and Amelia, enter the world, which they did last spring. Mission accomplished!
To make it to the week of Labor Day and celebrate her youngest daughter’s wedding on the beach. Mission accomplished!
To love a little more on grandsons, Baby Neill and Jay Henry. Mission accomplished!
Yet, another task lay before her, as she sought a third treatment for the disorder (pure red cell aplasia) that she’d been battling for years. Then, within weeks, it seemed that “Mission accomplished” again would be her cry. But something was wrong somewhere.
In hindsight now, this other was not the mission it was thought to be, but rather an enigma, a puzzle, a mystery not to be solved by earthly means. Her last few weeks were hard, as those who loved her sought to understand how (and how many) doctors could be baffled by her case.
But in the hands of the Divine Physician, the last phase of Nancy’s main mission on the planet had begun. She was put here to serve, to walk among us as an angel. When we were down and troubled, she was always there for us, a source of strength, a font of inspiration and energy.
I will never forget Dec. 16, 2009: When the family came to realize that this would be Nancy’s last day with us, her daughters —Caroline, Mary Martha and Nan-Nan — in the presence of their loving father, Neill, transformed the ICU into a festive, send-off party room, knowing that their mother, bound for glory, having fought the good fight, and run the race till she could run no longer, waited only for a final family spiritual “Bon voyage.”
On that cold winter night, as Nancy slipped into the heavenly realm, I heard a whisper: “Well done. Mission accomplished!”
NANCY LUCILE FLEMING SLOAN, May 21, 1945 - Dec. 16, 2009
© 2010 Vic Fleming.
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