Happy Birthday Frankie

Today would've been Frankie's birthday. Her 75th, give or take a year. She's no longer with us so we can't celebrate her birthday, but we can celebrate her life.

Knowing Frankie, she'd probably like that better anyway. When my husband's mom passed away last year, Frankie told me not to be sad about her death but to be happy about her life.

Frankie's life was simple. She lived on a fixed income and counted her pennies and saved her dollars, but that didn't stop her from enjoying every minute of every day. Even on a pouring, drippy, rainy, thundering day, she would remind me that "everything green" needed the rain, and "the ducks are having a blast in Clear Lake Park."

Hats........ she loved hats and owned at least thirty of them. Mostly bought at resale shops and yard sales, some were gifts, some she'd bought years and years ago. Even in the deep heat of an August day, she'd be wearing a straw hat with some sort of silk flower pinned to the side of it. "My kingdom for a new hat!" she'd tell her friends.

Chocolate.... Frankie just adored chocolates. Everything from Hershey's Kisses to Belgium bon-bons. "Is there anything better in this world than chocolate melting slowly in your mouth and warming you right down to your toes?" Frankie and her daughter went on a weekend cruise from Galveston to Mexico a few years ago. There was a Midnight Chocolate Buffet one night on the ship. Frankie didn't eat a thing that whole day. She was the first one to arrive for the Chocolate Buffet and the last one to leave.

Animals... Frankie loved all of "Mother Nature's creatures," as she called them. She didn't have a dog because she worked too many hours to leave a dog at home alone. She had a cat named Charlie who died about six months before she did. Charlie was a stray who found his way to her door and charmed her into keeping him, even though she was still heart-broken over the cat she'd buried not long before Charlie came along. "How could I turn my back on that poor little thing? Maybe the angels sent him to me." Charlie was with her for more than 12 years, I think. When he died, one of her neighbors buried him underneath his favorite tree in her yard. Frankie memorialized Charlie in her monthly column for a local newspaper. Not until you read the last line of her column did she reveal that Charlie was a cat. But of course, her friends knew who Charlie was from the very first line.

Parties... Frankie was the first to arrive whenever we had holiday dinners or Charades parties. The last party she attended here was our Halloween party. She wore a red devil's wig and held a yellow Mardi Gras mask in front of her face. Between the glitter-wig and the feathered mask, she could barely see. Our friend D took a scissors to the wig and trimmed a little off so she wouldn't fall. Our friend A snapped a photo of that moment when Frankie was being "totally Frankie." The last holiday dinner she attended was Thanksgiving at our friend A's house. Frankie oohed and aahed over all the autumn-y decorations and was thrilled to go home with leftovers so she wouldn't have to cook for a couple of days. Frankie never made it to our house for Christmas dinner because she had just been released from the hospital and was under doctor's orders not to leave her house. My husband and I took leftovers to her the day after Christmas. "How wonderful! I haven't celebrated Boxing Day since I left England," she told us.

Frankie's life was full and busy in her younger days. She worked on huge sailing ships and traveled all over the world during her 20s and 30s. She settled down in Texas in her late 50s because the weather was "warm and sunny for most of the year, but cool and cloudy for just enough time to make you appreciate the warm and sunny parts." As she got older, Frankie lived alone but was always on the look-out for the perfect man. "One who cooks, one who cleans, one who has some money, one who can make a decent martini, one who likes to have fun, one who doesn't complain too much. Find me one of those, will you now? Or possibly two, just in case I don't much like the first one."

Frankie hated, hated, hated to be cold. When she was brought to the hospital the first time, our friend A brought her a warm comforter from home so Frankie could wrap herself up in it while she was in that hospital bed. The comforter brightened up the hospital-white room and it made all the nurses smile. Frankie told me "They can smile all they want, but they're not getting my blanket."

On Frankie's second-to-last night in the hospital, when she was still conscious, one of the nurses asked her if she needed anything. Frankie looked the nurse square in the eye and said "A gun." The nurse laughed and probably thought Frankie was just a silly old woman. Not so. I'm sure Frankie was serious. I'm sure she knew how sick she was and I'm certain she knew the end was as close as it could be without her tripping over it.

Frankie always said that when the day came that she couldn't hold a book in her hand to read and all that was left to her was to lie in bed in front of a television set, then the end couldn't come quick enough for her.

The end came quick enough for Frankie, I think, but it came too quick for those of us who loved her. I've read that a person will never die as long as there are people left to remember their stories and say their names.

When my young 13-year-old friend C met Frankie for the first time, C asked me: "Is Frankie what you would call a character?"

Yes indeed, I told C, Frankie surely is a character.

"Good," said C, "I didn't want her to be just ordinary."

Ordinary? Frankie? Not a chance.