posted
I can not do a real Card-envisioned speaking for Mrs. Bucher.
I did not know her when she was a child in England playing in the streets of London.
I did not know her as a young woman, discovering good beer and bawdy songs.
I did not know her during the dark years of WWII, when she helped her country, and others, as a nurse, caring for the wounded soldiers.
I did not know her when she met that German born American GI freshly wounded in battle.
I do know she nursed him back to health with perhaps a bit more care than her other patients, and he responded a bit more than her other patients.
I did not know her when she left her beloved England with her new American husband and her new German name and settled in the center of the US, in St. Louis.
I did not know her as her first boy--David--came into the world. He was bright and good with numbers, tall and thin.
I did not know her as her daughter--Linda--entered the world.
I did not know her as her baby, her second son--Tom entered the world. Little Tommy filled her with joy.
Her children grew up thin and smart and proud and strong. David met a woman of Italian heritage up on the Hill in St. Louis. Before long they were married with a daughter on the way. By now David was an engineer, building Roller Coasters and later Naval weapon systems. They moved out of St. Louis and began their journey around the South East.
Linda married soon after and headed to the hills of Kentucky and Tennessee.
Her baby Tom married, a artist with wood and solder, he took a steady job and stayed in St. Louis.
I was not there when her David's marriage, with the influence of a lovely secretary, dissolved into arguments and accusations. It was an ugly divorce.
Yet two people were always welcome on either side of the fight, as their kindness and help was seen by all. They were Joy Bucher and her husband.
The four grand children from David's marriage stayed with his ex-wife Marlene. Yet when personal and economic tragedy struck Marlene it was not David who came to the rescue of those children. (His new wife and ex-secretary said their hands were full with the children from her previous marriage). It was Joy who brought them into their house and helped raise them.
She helped her husband who was sought after to rehab old houses in exchange for board. She worked long hours helping him, helping her grand children, and helping others as a nurse or a cleaning woman for the disabled or through the church.
That is not to say that she was the dutiful quiet nursemaid. She danced. She enjoyed a drink or two. She had her hair done nice and wore her clothes just nice.
She had fun.
I was not there when her husband passed away.
The grandchildren, often difficult from their broken lives, were more than she could handle alone. They were split up between other family and their mother who worked hard doing the best she could.
Joy moved back to St. Louis, into a small duplex, near her baby Tom.
This is when I knew her.
I began dating her oldest grand daughter. Our dates would routinely include a visit to her, where she and her room of dolls all named and cared for, welcomed us. She was not a cook, so we went out together--usually after "Wheel of Fortune."
When her grand daughter and I married she cried.
When we took some friends and her to a local "Henry VIII" themed dinner show, she laughed. She out drank our 20 something friends and she out sang the chorus of professionals when the bawdy tavern songs were sung.
She was selected as the Royal Virgin, and hammed it up better the King Henry VIII.
Still she worked for the church. She worked for several ladies older than her who could no longer clean their own homes. She worked at a local beauty parlor--sweeping floors in exchange for a weekly hair cut.
In her late 60's she was caught with pictures, flirting with the Easter Bunny as her line-dancing class was traveling to a competition.
When we announced our adoption plans she was the only one who questioned our wisdom--not because we were adopting, but because there were so many local children in need of fostering, like her Tommy and family did.
Yet when we brought Sasha home, she loved him, played with him, became his favorite grandmother ever.
She didn't bribe him with toys--an occasional stuffed animal or some cars to play with over at her knick-knack filled home. No, she spent time talking to him, playing with him, being gentle.
We believe that Sasha had some issues with some of the older women at his orphanage, since he dislikes many that he comes into contact with, but she found a way around that.
She blew bubbles with him.
She was never heavy, always small and thin.
Then her baby--Tom--passed away. The cigarettes and the cancer caught up to him.
From that day on, she began to fade away even more. She began to walk in her sleep, falling out of her bed. She began to mistake her medicine.
Despite her many, many friends and the pleas of my wife, David came and took her to a wonderful retirement home in Florida where he lived.
She did not like Florida, but she was too tired and worn to argue much. Or perhaps, she lost one son, so didn't want to anger her other one.
We visited annually. Plans were under way for this summer's visit. Sasha looked forward to it with excitement. Last year he brought bubble wands and we all played with them outside her room.
Last Tuesday David was visiting, like he did almost every day. She was tired and wanted to take a nap. David left, but before he got home the center called him.
Joy Bucher died peacefully in her sleep, surrounded if not by all her family, at least by all her dolls, and with all of her family in her heart.
You will never know Joy, the woman I called grandma even though we share no blood. My own grandmothers had passed away just before I met her so she was the fourth grandmother (Cindy's other Grandmother I met first, and is just as great) to enter my heart.
posted
Very touching. I am sorry for your loss, for your wife's loss, and especially for Sasha's loss.
Posts: 3149 | Registered: Jul 2005
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