Peggy

There she was, plain as day. I found my cousin, Peggy, on Facebook. No picture but the stats worked. Same home town, graduated a year ahead of me, living now in Flint, a fact I’d known from an internet search I’d done years ago.

I really wanted to find her. She was my mother’s beloved sister’s daughter. Her beautiful mother, Margie, died when Peggy was just six. A year later, Peggy developed juvenile diabetes. This was a long time ago so it was very rough going for Peggy. She lived with her father and then her stepmother in the upstairs of a gas station and general store in a tiny four corners town outside of Hastings, Michigan. We spent a lot of time with each other when we were little, she was older, tougher, funnier, with prettier hair and a lot more freckles.

The last time I saw her was at my grandmother’s funeral when we were in our early twenties. We were standing on the sidewalk watching her casket loaded into the hearse. After that, we went to our cars and I never saw her again. We didn’t stay in touch. We never wrote. Because my grandmother had died, there were no occasions to celebrate in Hastings. I can’t explain it and I have no excuse. I didn’t do my part. But then, neither did she.

About ten years ago, I did an internet search for her. I found a series of addresses in Flint, a town where I’d lived for five years in the 70’s. It would be easy to get her phone number, call her, drive to Flint, and go see her, my cousin Peggy. But I didn’t.

I was afraid of what I would see. Looking at those words, I can’t believe I wrote them. What does that mean?

I was afraid she would be sick. Or like so many diabetics, I was afraid she would be blind or had lost a limb. I was thinking she might be in a wheelchair, that she would be ill and old. And I didn’t want to see that.

Peggy with her hair in braids and a million freckles, wisecracking Peggy rolling her eyes at my grandmother’s bad clutching and shifting in her old Chevrolet, polite Peggy who thanked Grandma for saving us the little apple crisps from her TV dinners, that Peggy, I was afraid of her.

I put the results of the internet search in my desk drawer where I would see it every time I went looking for a warranty on my son’s computer or my cell phone. There it was folded up, the connection to my long lost cousin. I left it in the drawer.

So it made me really happy to find Peggy on Facebook a few days ago. Because, you know, on Facebook you can have friends without having to actually see them, right? I wanted to connect with Peggy but not risk seeing her. And there she was, 29 friends, so I figured she was just getting started on Facebook. I sent her a Facebook email. No response. It figures, I thought, she probably had one of her grandkids put her on Facebook and she only checks it every three months. Disappointing, I thought, but still, the potential was there. It will be great to know how she is.

I shared this happy news with another cousin with whom I do stay in touch. A coup, of sorts, “I found Peggy on Facebook!” I told him in an email.

He wrote back. “She died a couple of years ago. A lifelong diabetic, you know.” How did he know that? All this time, I’d never thought to ask him. We are a family littered with estrangements and loose ends.

There are about twenty morals to this story. I leave it to you to figure out which one suits you.

But for me, it’s this. Jan, don’t give yourself made-up reasons not to do what’s right. Stop looking for the swinging door. Stop thinking what you think is always so real and so right. Be a grown-up.

I’ve spent a lifetime claiming that I have no regrets. It’s never been true. But it sure isn’t now.