(St. Ambrose School)
I have long subscribed to Dignity Memorial emails from Calcaterra Funeral Home in St. Louis; they are funeral announcements and provide a connection to the neighborhood of my childhood.
Calcaterra’s is located on The Hill, where I grew up, and the announcements include family names of people I knew back then. Often there is a face of someone who I dimly remembered as an older child or young adult from my childhood; and there have been brothers and sisters of children with whom I grew up.
Yesterday, the same day Oliver left us, I got an email that said a Virginia B. had passed, and announced her memorial service and funeral (I redacted the family name for privacy).
The email said she had been born in 1952 (same year as me). There was a photo of her at what looked like perhaps her late teens.
As I looked, and given her age, she looked vaguely familiar.
I dug out the 8th grade graduation photo page where each of us had individual portraits. And I found her – her name was Virginia Z. back then.
(I found my own photo too – who was that kid with too much goop in his hair?)
As I read the email – I learned she had gotten married at the age of 20 and had remained married to the same man for 53 years; they had a daughter.
At St. Ambrose, we attended daily mass together; we sat in the same classes with the same teachers – mostly nuns, but with a few lay teachers; we ate in the same cafeteria eating the same boring food; and we had recess periods outdoors. But I never recall talking to Virginia in all those eight years of elementary school.
At that age, we all tended to gather in our groups, or tried to be part of the group of the cool kids. And we tended to ignore everyone else.
And that was particularly true of the girls – we had little interest in them; at least until we discovered them at the first stirrings of our sexual maturity.
I remember a number of the girls were popular (I had a few crushes); but like many of the other girls, I don’t think Virginia was popular – at least with the boys. I hope she had good friends with the girls.
But looking at the photo in the email I see a young attractive woman – somewhat self-conscious, but with a smile that mixed innocence and hope. She would have been someone worth knowing.
I regret I never got to know Virginia or many of the other girls.
We boys tended have an assumed superiority over the girls; movies and television, and most of our parents, said as much. Girls were “sugar and spice and everything nice”, but certainly not equal of the boys.
We didn’t learn at that early age – as we should have – that girls were equal and in many cases, superior. It’s a thing of regret – but that was life in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Our lives went their separate ways after that June day in 1966 when we graduated from St Ambrose.
Whether she had a happy life I don’t know. What she did with her life; who her friends were; I’ll never know.
I know in the email there was a request that in lieu of flowers, contributions be made to St. Ambrose Tuition Assistance Program or to the Sick & Elderly of “The Hill”. So, I assume she kept some connection to The Hill over her life.
So why do I care to write about someone I barely knew and last saw 60 years ago?
Maybe because Virginia is someone with whom I shared the start of this life’s journey, which seemed would go on forever back then. Now, it seems incredibly short.
None of us could possibly know – as no one can – how life would evolve. The successes; the losses. The friends; the lost relationships. The happiness; the disappointments. All became part of each of our lives.
And it all started when we began to learn about ourselves – for the first time apart from our families – in those years in elementary school.
Remembering Virginia is another chance to reflect on how those early years set the pilgrim’s road for each of us.
And to understand there’s still time to not take anyone for granted.
Rest in Peace, Virginia.
