Strangely, it is the obituary notices that have the most impact on me today.  No amount of hard news from the front page – police raids, gang stabbings, fires, robbery—could have hit me as hard as this.  Rosie’s notice is there, nestled among the others, in closer proximity to other personalities than she had been in life for many years. 

The words are kind and vague, as most obits are.  Her accomplishments and her family fit well with all the others in black and white.  I know her name, yet am shocked to find I don’t recognize her.  Her list of life has been glossed over – yes – but it’s her picture I’m struggling with.  It’s the biggest lie of all – and I’m not sure how they did it.  She’s smiling.

I lean down close to the paper until I can smell newsprint and measure her picture in pixel dots.  They’ve done a fine job in restoring youth and removing “ravage.”  I’ve known Rosie my entire life, yet I don’t remember this smile.  Hers was always guarded, always ashamed.  She never looked straight at anyone unless she was asking for money, then she had a way of looking right through the excuses to the face you kept behind. 

Rosie’s face looks young and fresh on paper, a quality it didn’t have with life.  She wasn’t old when I first met her, but as my mother explained, “Rosie’s lived hard.”  She wore her devastation on her face.  I can only guess at what she kept inside.

Alcohol was her killer.  You won’t find that listed in the obituary here – or the prescription drugs, either.  No mention of the divorce, lost jobs, or DUIs.  Shame and ostracism were her closest friends in the end, yet someone neglected to write them into her life’s accounting.  Those terrible things that shaped her have disappeared.

She’s beautiful in this picture.  I didn’t know her before the hard years, so this sudden glimpse of beauty comes as a

 surprise.  I suppose that when a woman

knowingly and helplessly picks up a bottle in exchange for her family, her broken heart leaches out into her face.  A husband, two children, driving privileges, close friends—succumbing one by one in a game of loss.

Portions of her life I know:  The heartache of the day my mother had to fire Rosie from her job as a driver at the Senior Citizens Center after another DUI.  Rosie begged, but there was nothing to be done.  She and my mother cried together in the small office behind the kitchen while the phones rang unanswered. 

Ten years, and as many jobs later, Rosie was hired as the custodian for the building where I worked.  I had to lean close to hear her whispered words.  She wondered if I could tell her where the garbage can in her hand came from; she couldn’t remember where she’d picked it up.  I tried to help her, but in the end she knew.  “I’m sorry.”  I could tell she’d used those words before.

That would be her last job, her last attempt at failure.  She went home to work on her only successful venture – being an alcoholic.  A well-intentioned neighbor gave her an old car, and although she had no license she used it to get to the bank and the store.  Her tire went flat on a Tuesday, but she drove on the rim until the Friday following, when two other tires went flat on the way home from the bar.  The sparks from the rims marked her way home.  Another neighbor slipped in after dark and took the car keys.  No use killing more than one person if Rosie only intended self destruction.

She began walking the neighborhood.  Some took offense when she walked into their homes and helped herself to food and prescription medication.  Others left food where she was sure to find it, and hid their alcohol in locked cabinets.  Rosie didn’t speak

 anymore unless it was to ask for money, alcohol, or cigarettes.  When she encountered locked doors, she simply walked on to the next.  Often, she forgot her way home and wandered until something sparked her memory.

That day started out like a hundred others:  a drink and a cigarette for breakfast before leaving the house.  It was hot outside, but she wore the same sweater she’d worn for the past week.  She shuffled up the street, unaware of her surroundings or her pain.  Perhaps she wondered where she’d lost her cigarette.

The heat built from the inside out-- the cigarette, forgotten in the pocket of the old sweater, merely smoldered for a few blocks.  When Rosie paused a short time later, a young boy thought she seemed to be glowing. 

Accustomed to hurt, Rosie didn’t cry out or ask for help.  She instinctively turned for home.  The aching heat shot to flame, eating away the flesh of her arm, neck, and shoulder.  Fire consumed portions of her hair and her ear.  Just shy of her last safe place, rescuers found her and pushed her to the ground, beating her with their hands to extinguish the flames.  She didn’t fight them.  Perhaps it was good to feel human touch again.

Rosie didn’t get out easy.  She lived hard, and she died hard.  I didn’t witness any of her time in the burn unit where she begged for a drink with all the energy she had left; didn’t see her scars or her tears.  I didn’t cry when she died-- I didn’t even attend the funeral. 

But now, looking at her picture and this one-sided presentation of her life, I (cont'd from the print edition) am stunned by the sense of loss I feel.  Here she is, at her most basic in black and white.  I want to somehow preserve her smile and the hope it contains; shield her against the hurt, the future and herself. 

               

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