Her husband called yesterday. She died at about 6 PM in Gainesville GA. She'd requested to be let be, i.e., not go back into the hospital, and let come what may. She was 85 years old.
Those of us she left behind are grieving the loss of a dear person, a wife, mother, grandmother, aunt, sister, sister-in-law, cousin, and good friend. She helped so many sort things out when they felt troubled. She, like her parents, was of superior intelligence. Able to keep her head when all around her were losing theirs.
She had a sharp wit as well. One time, when I boasted to my parents, and her, at the dinner table, that I'd learned a tune on the clarinet and played Twinkle Twinkle Little Star for them, she said it was really nice except for the middle part; between the first note and the last.
Our lives were intertwined from my birth. My mother asked her what she would name her little brother. She said Johnny Boy and so I was. She named me!
We had conflicts, as all siblings do, as we were growing up. In retrospect, I remember it to do with her assuming she could boss me around since she was a little older. That all went away before we were twenty.
We shared a bedroom until we were teenagers. My mother and father had vociferous arguments about his business, we would be upstairs in our beds, and I could hear her crying and she would not be consoled.
Those arguments affected both of us. I didn't cry but the experience of them stayed with me, undetected, for a long time. Then I dealt with it. I think she, too, dealt with the carry-over, either with or without help.
Her major project at the house, in which we were raised, was the finishing out of the front room of the basement. She designed and carried it out without a lot of help, and it was well done.
When Laboure' HS for girls was merged with St. Andreas HS for boys in St. Louis, she met Joe. He was a senior, she a junior at the time. They were attracted to each other and were married in June of 1957 just after he graduated from St. Louis University. They were still married yesterday, more than 65 years. Now death has parted them.
She had three daughters, all successful and independent women. One granddaughter, also successful. The family moved to the Atlanta environs in, or about, 1964 for him to pursue his career. It also gave them freedom from the yoke of their parents who expected them to "be there." They continued to live in Georgia and now the remainder of the family is there too.
Barbara went to work out of high school for Ruberoid, a roofing materials manufacturer in St. Louis. She was working there when they got married but she and Joe relocated to Kansas City for a short time then came back to St. Louis. She was a stay-at-home mom from then on.
We were good friends as adults. We never disagreed vocally with each other because we never argued, never told one another what was going on inside. I think she was a lot more intuitive than I, a bit more sensitive.
A few years ago, she began to have trouble with Parkinson's disease and the tremors that often go with it. She had a brain implant that resolved them and was doing just fine. Then slowly she started to have trouble with oxygen absorption and that is to which she finally succumbed.
There will be a memorial service in October. I think she was a practicing Roman Catholic.
So, I bid farewell to my only sibling, sadly but reconciled that this is what she wanted.