THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, June 9, 1996 TAG: 9606050034
SECTION: REAL LIFE PAGE: K2 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: REAL MOMENTS
SOURCE: BY LOUKIA LOUKA
LENGTH: 94 lines
WE HAD JUST finished lunch and gone outside to take a walk on this cool, kind of lonesome Sunday afternoon. Just then a light rain began to fall, so my friend and I stood under some trees and decided a drive would be OK.
As we made our way toward the car, I approached a man who was walking toward a neighbor's house. I had seen the man many times in recent weeks, but I had never spoken to him until today when I asked him how his father-in-law was. He died yesterday, he said. I had expected this, as had others on the block who knew Mr. Ansell well enough.
Now, at the precise moment I heard this somber news, my mind went mad trying to remember things to ask and I felt uncomfortable. The three of us stood in the rain for a few minutes talking about the funeral. I tried to tell him something of my recollections of his father-in-law, but my words seemed mediocre.
Later that day, I sat down to write about Mr. Ansell as my other neighbors retired to their homes on Memorial Day weekend. Night arrived with its usual secrecy and I kept on because there was really nothing else to do but write and occasionally stare out the window at Mr. Ansell's lonely house.
Mr. Ansell was here before my family moved to Virginia Beach, living on this block, watching the home being built that was eventually sold to us, a family from Ohio. They greeted us, Mr. Ansell and his wife, Frances, arriving at our doorstep 25 years ago with vegetables for our refrigerator and gardenias for our home.
Over time, they became our friends. Mr. Ansell, so proud of his garden, would share his crop. I played badminton and croquet with his grandchildren. Over the years, we knew they were not our closest friends, but we relied on them for familiarity and knew, deep inside, that only death could take them from this beloved street.
I left after high school. Going along the ride known as my 20s, roaring through the years, eventually marrying, living and working in another state. I stayed away. I probably went years without thinking of Mr. and Mrs. Ansell. I didn't invite them to my wedding. And I didn't visit them when I came to Virginia Beach. I just knew they were there and that seemed to be enough.
I also knew I needed to talk to these old people. To find out what I could about them, their lives here, what they remember about my growing up street. But Mrs. Ansell was succumbing to illness and I allowed my two more recent chances to talk to Mr. Ansell to bypass me like smoke.
Last fall, when I moved back to Virginia Beach, Mr. Ansell walked by the house my parents owned, the one I had moved back to, the one I had found peace in after leaving my marriage.
There he was. And then I heard my name. He knew me instantly. All all those years I was away, he had not forgotten me. He looked smaller, his shoulders frail, his face lined like a road map. He was in his 80s and I realized, with a sinking feeling, that he wasn't in good shape.
I was old enough now to call him Hope, but I still called him Mr. Ansell, longing to preserve some of the past and offer some respect. He didn't feel well, he said. He had had an operation and hadn't recovered as he had hoped.
Then again, a little more than a month ago, I called him. I was calling everyone on my street, asking for donations as a volunteer for the American Cancer Society.
He sounded downcast as he told me his news. His wife had been in the hospital recently and then was taken to a nursing home. He wasn't feeling well at all. A doctor's appointment soon would tell him more. There's no future for us here, he said, speaking like a man who had known sweetness in his life for the last time.
I didn't ask for a donation and he didn't ask me why I called.
A few days later, I heard from a neighbor it was cancer. A few weeks later, he was dead.
I could have visited, but I chose to distance myself. But I did watch his house with sobering interest, stealing furtive glances behind a sheer curtain in my bedroom as a steady stream of cars came and went. Relatives. Friends. Nurses. People I didn't know. People who didn't know me.
I relied on information from another neighbor. She put me to shame. She cooked for him and talked to his family, yet she only had lived next to him about five years.
Where was I? Having known the block and having watched a number of residents leave by death or old age, I knew very well why I didn't jump in. I did not want to watch this. Spare me. Spare me the knowledge that my parents' turn is getting closer. That one more person who knew me before everything started to change is gone and he's taken a library of memories with him. Memories I didn't know and was too afraid to learn.
Gone now, Mr. Ansell died last night. It's over and I can come out of hiding. I can express my grief with everyone else, call neighbors on the street, go to the funeral home where there is comfort in numbers.
I wanted to say to Mr. Ansell that I left this street for many years and had come back to find my place here, among the old and new. I felt safe here and was happy to know that he liked it enough to stay as long as he could, too. That he and Mrs. Ansell left one more memory for us, one they probably forgot about. A flower bed of ginger lilies in our back yard.
The Ansells, avid gardeners, gave them to us years ago. They've been moved around to different areas of our yard over the years, but each year they bloom delicate, white fragrant flowers.
We will look forward to them, this first summer without Hope. MEMO: Loukia Louka is a frequent contriubtor to the Virginian-Pilot.
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