Goodbye Eunice

This past Monday at 5AM, a dear friend of the family passed away. A portion of her obituary in the Journal & Courier newspaper reads:

“Eunice Lucille Klopfenstein, 92, of Lafayette, died Monday morning, March 22, 2010, in Lafayette…

From 1984 to 2006, she worked as a nanny and loved caring for children. She had previously worked for General Foods. During World War II, she worked at Brown Rubber plant, making cluster bombs for the war effort…

A member of Kossuth Street Baptist Church, she was the caretaker of the church nursery for over 43 years.”

She wasn’t just a nanny, she was my nanny. And I was one of several generations of children at KSBC that got hooked on animal crackers because of her. Tomorrow, my family and the members of the church where I was raised will lay her to rest. My brothers will be pallbearers. I, for my part, torn between attending the funeral and overwhelmed with the weight of responsibilities for school, work, church, and taking care of a child who just got over the flu, made the difficult decision to stay in Pittsburgh.

From 1984 to 2006, she spent time in my family’s home. We were, for all intensive purposes, her family. She washed our dishes, our laundry, our kitchen counters. For 16 of those years (until I went off to college), she had an indelible impact on my life, one I must admit, that is hard to trace because it is so buried under the dozens of cynical comments I made of her, bad experiences, and the honor and respect I never gave her. Thus, this blog is as much as a confession as it is a eulogy.

You see, as a teenager, there was a lot to laugh about when it came to Eunice. For one thing, her name was Eunice (or “Unit” to one of my brothers). She always wore the same outfit. I’m not kidding at all really. From the years working at General Foods, she had managed to accrue an entire wardrobe of light blue uniforms that kind of resembled nurse gowns but had huge side pockets (the kind of pockets that always had candy in them).

Oh, and she picked food out of our trash can. When I was younger, I remember her criticizing me for using more than one square of toilet paper at once. Her house was filled with clutter: I think she may have been the biggest packrat I’ve ever met.

She was also a terrible driver (mind you, when I was in high school, and before I got my license and started picking up my brothers at school, she was almost 80 years old) and got in a couple wrecks with us in her car. And since she was so old and slow, all she could do when we were being ornery was yell and make empty threats (I have this vague memory from when I was a wee lad running through the house with her yells fading in the background).

Sometimes, she would fall asleep on the couch while doing laundry. One time, one of my brothers came home to find her that way and was afraid she was dead. And she had that nasty flab sagging from beneath her upper arm (you know, the kind that Mick Jagger was sporting at the 2006 Super Bowl halftime show).

All of these stories and attributes create quite the definition of “uncool” to a teenage boy.

But every story has another side.

She ate food from the trash because she lived through the Great Depression. My Grandma McCool told us stories of her eating lard sandwiches as a child. I don’t know what the Depression was like for Eunice, but it yielded a person who was incredibly frugal and knew how to save. Really, a number of my complaints about Eunice was simply my incredulity that one could conserve so much. And yet, she was no Scrooge either. Despite her low income, I often received gifts from her—for graduation, Christmas, and my wedding (they weren’t always the most extravagant gifts—like the $5 gift card she gave me to Ryan’s Steakhouse for Christmas!). And she was able to save by pinching away little by little, far more money than her mildly mentally-disabled daughter will need for the rest of her life. Perhaps part of my own frugality now is a result of her way of life.

And really, all the other complaints can be chalked up to the sheer fact that she was old. I mean, I’m already a pretty bad driver (as much as I proudly think I’m the best driver on the road), so I can’t imagine still driving at 85. And one day, as much as I don’t want to envision it, will have those nasty flabby arms too. Ugh. The great thing about Eunice is that she just wouldn’t stop living. I can’t imagine how bad it killed her inside to stop driving, to stop being able to come out to our house and feel useful. I remember picking her up at her house for church when I was back in Lafayette not long after that switch and I could see the sadness in her eyes. We all want to be useful, to do something that changes other people’s lives. Eunice did the little things that no one ever bothers to notice. She was faithful day after day after day to change poopy diapers (and I’m already pining for the day Emerson will be out of them!), fold clothes, and make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for us. And she kept doing it well into the “retirement years,” which most of us think are my years when I get to do what I want to do.

She truly was one of the great ones.

It is hard to say goodbye to Eunice—not because I was so close to her, but because we had already gone our separate ways several years ago. I went off to college, got married, and moved away. She, bless her soul, lost her memory—lost it before I ever got the courage to ask about her, about her life—and was moved into a nursing home. The one time—only ONE time! (or was it two? Regardless)—that I visited her in the home while back over Christmas, she no longer remembered my name. She remembered my parents and called all of us “Brandon” (my older brother, the one she probably had the most memories of…it’s the memories of orneriness that stick with you anyways). I guess that was the day I said goodbye, but I should have been saying hello so much more often.

Perhaps, though, that is the greatest lesson of all that I learned from Eunice: you never care for children because you expect them to give equal, reciprocal repayment of thanks and deeds. You just love them and hope they too will love the least of these when their time comes.