and then there's the matter of my name
and then there's the matter of my name
At the funeral home your kids went running past me, hands over their ears. They couldn’t stand the heat and the din of so many people talking at once in that low-ceilinged room.
Hi V., I said, stopping her in her tracks. Having only seen me once, and a year ago at that, I knew she couldn’t place me. I moved my mask aside. It’s me, Christine1. She looked flummoxed. Remember, the books? I said. At the farmhouse?
Light broke on her sad little face. Ooooooh, she said. You’re Crissy2. Using the name you always called me by. It was strange to hear that intimacy from someone so young.
Yeah, I confirmed. We stared at each other in silence, both of us representing a huge part of your life. You were the interlocking part of the Venn diagram we made. Now our point of intersection is gone, a memory, and V. and I are unconnected bubbles, set free to float away from each other.
It’s so unfair that I knew you better than your daughter ever will.
When we saw each other last, you called me by my childhood nickname - something only a few others still call me by, mostly people that came into my life before the age of 17, like Father N. When you and I met, I was in grad school. Being among all new people and teachers seemed like a good place and time to drop a nickname I had always hated. And so since then everyone has known me by my full name, same as everyone at the factory where we met doing summer intern jobs. Only people who have loved me and lived with me for a long time still use the nickname.
I’m super sorry, I told V. Can I hug you? She put herself into my arms and I hugged her. I kept it brief, knowing it was weird for her but just needing to be near her because she looked like you. She is tall for her age but felt so slight and fragile in my arms. The stillness of her expression is something she got from you. It was always gratifying to watch your icy, intelligent eyes under those lowering brows break into a warm smile. I wonder if that will be V.'s super power when she gets older, boys competing to be the one to get the reward of the smile, as I did.
When you came home to meet my parents you heard the nickname for the first time, and adopted it, getting right away my parents’ strange code of only using my full name when I was in trouble, or had disappointed them, the diminutive being my ‘good girl’ name. Calling me by my full name in front of them would have made it seem like you knew me less well than they when the opposite was true, so of course you used the nickname, and I was fine with that as the stakes were high and also it was the first time I didn’t hate the sound of my name in someone else’s mouth.
Now, with you gone, there are only a dozen people who call me by that nickname. Often I go months without hearing it, or longer - my parents call me ‘honey’, so only K. and J. say it regularly. My husband calls me by my full name, only and always.
When Father N. wrote me of course he used the nickname - that’s all he’s ever known me by. I could hear his voice, always so low and even and caring and contemplative, saying those two syllables from my past and now they don’t sound silly and immature like I used to think. Now they sound like love.
this is not my name, of course - this is an anonymous blog
just as Crissy is a nickname for Christine, so I am known to some by a similar diminutive of a saint’s name