Her Real Name was Iris.....

Our friend F (Frankie) passed away at 5:30 this morning. Thankfully, gracefully... her tired body just gave in and gave out. Frankie's real name was Iris. When I first met her, I asked how she got to be called Frankie...... she told me that it was so long ago that she didn't remember.

As I got to know Frankie better (or as much as she would allow anyone to know her) I sort of figured out that with her love of language and words, there was no way she would've forgotten how she came about to have that nickname. I didn't question her again about it..... I just figured that it was something she'd rather not share.

Tomorrow would've been Frankie's birthday..... her 75th, I believe. Her children are taking care of whatever funeral services or memorial will be given for their mother. Any arrangements they make will more than likely be very simple and without fuss. Come to think of it, that's how Frankie lived her life: simply, without fuss.

Frankie had very little tolerance for ignorance, apathy, laziness, hatefulness. She would seethe when she saw The Powers That Be in this world labeling people into categories, such as black, white, Asian.... and she'd scream when she saw "Other" on any sort of application. She stood by the belief that "We are all really just one color."

Frankie would "tsk, tsk" at people she knew who refused to learn, refused to "saddle their own horse," as she would say. She believed that we were put on this planet to learn as much as we dared, not merely take up as much space as we cared.

Little lessons..... all those little Frankie-isms that would come out in our conversations and become lessons. People who didn't know her looked at her and saw a little old lady on the outside without ever giving themselves a chance to see just how young and astute and "with it" she was on the inside.

Frankie used to call my husband Darlin'........ when she called him that, she sounded like a southern belle, shortening the ing in "darling" so it sounded as if she'd been born in Alabama, rather than in London. Few people even knew that Frankie was born in Britain... she shared that story with only very good friends.

I was awake at 5:30 this morning. AngelBoy woke me up by pounding his paw on the laundry room door. I got out of bed and let both AngelBoy and ShadowBaby out onto the screen-porch. It seemed a little stuffy in the house and I went down the hallway by the TV room to turn on the air-conditioning. I didn't put the light on.... I just stood there and tweaked the thermostat a teeny bit till the unit clicked on.

As I stood there in the dark, I could've sworn that someone else was there. I am never, ever afraid in this house and I walk around in the dark all the time without so much as a thought. This morning, however, it just seemed as if I wasn't alone in that dark hallway. I even peeked into the TV room and my husband's computer room, to see if he had gotten out of bed. Both rooms were empty. The air-conditioning clicked on and I rushed back to bed..... when I got under the covers, I was tempted to wake up my husband and tell him that I thought someone else was in the house.

But that sounded so silly. My rational mind knew there was no one else in this house. I just got under the covers and got as close to my husband as I could get and fell back to sleep till nearly 9:00 this morning. When Frankie's daughter-in-law called us at 9:30 to tell us that Frankie had passed away at 5:30, I didn't even remember those minutes in the hallway. It didn't pop back into my mind till later on this morning when I again went to the thermostat to adjust it.

Only then did I remember feeling as if someone had been in the house earlier this morning.... just a little bit after AngelBoy woke me up at 5:30. Makes you wonder...... after someone passes away, do they pass by places they've been to on their way to their final destination?

Frankie would know the answer to that question now. I imagine that she now knows the answers to a lot of questions that the rest of us can only think about.