Addie’s Journey Home
Peter became friendly with a social worker many years ago. We will call her Addie. Addie was a kind and simple soul who was downtrodden and had gone through very hard times. She came from a very maladjusted family. They were poorest of the poor. There were always drugs in the house in which she was raised. Her mother married one man after another. As a child, her life was a misery. Addie had been raped by one of her stepfathers on a regular basis. It is a small wonder that she ended up in an insane asylum as a teenager. When she was old enough to stave for herself, she decided to be better than her family. She became a social worker.
Peter met her through the court house. As was usual with Peter, he brought her to the house. He brought all his lost souls and ‘interesting’ people home. Sometimes my antennas would go up and I would let him know in no uncertain terms that a certain person was definitely not welcome into our house. I liked Addie and she warmed up to me. She was a genuinely nice person with not an evil bone in her body. She had never experienced the pleasant things of life. I don’t think that she realized they existed. That’s how bleak her life was.
One day we took her to the South Street Seaport. Addie and I sat at a sidewalk café having coffee while Peter roamed around taking photographs of the scenery and the crowds. She began speaking of the time she was put into an insane asylum. She was a young girl then. She spoke of how trapped and unhappy she felt there. There was a picture on the wall in her room. In that picture there was a path leading into the woods. To her, it seemed so peaceful and serene, such a happy place to be. She would stare at that picture for hours on end. To escape her unpleasant surroundings, in her mind, she somehow entered the picture and began taking walks along that wooded path. She described the sights and sounds, the smell of the fresh loamy earth; to her it all felt real. She heard the birds sing, she felt the chilly air of the dark woods. She spoke of this in such a matter of fact way. I remember feeling my blood curdling in my veins as I listened in disbelief. How could she have survived such horrors and still be normal? I felt great compassion for her. Her life was so very different than mine. I never experienced what she did. I had never met anyone who had gone through anything as horrendous as she had.
Peter got into the habit of bringing her along on some of our outings. She became Peter’s cause célèbre. To her, he became her protective big brother who kept an eye on her. We went to the Seven Lakes one day. It was one our favourite summer haunts. It was serene and beautiful, about an hour or so drive out of the city. That was before it was discovered by the crowds. We picnicked there. We took our dog with us. He would romp about and play fetch and swim in the lake with us. Addie joined in his games. It was a place to rejuvenate one’s soul. Addie had never been out of the city. To her, this was a piece of heaven. She had not known that the world had such places. She was enthralled with it. She was enchanted. She only knew the modest side of the city. She did not have a car and wherever she went, she would go by bus or subway.
She felt the need to reciprocate. She invited us to her apartment. She lived in Brooklyn on the fifth floor of an old walk-up apartment building. As we hoofed it up the stairs, we could hear the conversations of the different inhabitants echoing through the thin walls. The paint was peeling and stairs were not too clean, the banisters were sticky with grime. It was a shabby rundown building. We finally arrived to the fifth floor. We turned down the corridor towards where she lived. She greeted us with a big happy smile at the door. We entered into the sparsely furnished apartment. It was quite light and airy, not dark. It was evident she took pride in where she lived. The place was sparkling. On a shelf in her living room a crystal vase we had given her for Christmas, was displayed. She proudly drew our attention to it. At the end of the hallway there was a padlocked room. She told us that she had rented that room out. Her tenant was not in.
We chitchatted for a while then she invited us to sit down to eat. On each setting, there was one piece of chicken drumstick or a thigh, a boiled potato and some boiled frozen vegetables. Peter and I each had a piece of doughy supermarket bread, and she had none. On a small plate she had put out some butter. My heart sank. This poor woman hardly had enough to eat. What would have been a meal for one, she split into three! She was sharing her meager meal with us? I blinked my eyes and pushed back the tears that threatened to rush down. My throat constricted. How could I take this food out of her mouth? I smiled at her and said, “Would you mind very much? I have an upset stomach. I had it from last night. I really cannot eat. I do not want to aggravate it. I will just have the bread. Would you mind very much?” She believed me. Later on Peter and I went out to eat. What a vast difference there was in our ways of life. We had never really experienced want nor hunger. We looked at the food placed in front of us in that diner with a different perspective. We felt guilt and a new sense of awareness.
A few months after that day, she called to let us know her mother had passed away. She informed us of the time and place of the wake. She beamed when she saw us enter the funeral home. She led us to her mother’s coffin. “Doesn’t she look good? She looks so natural. I also bought her Victoria’s Secret bra and panties,” she said very proudly.
Years passed. As often happens, we drifted. We hardly saw her. Peter had suffered from heart disease. He had a heart attack and heart surgery. I suffered from vestibular instability and back problems. We were getting older and engrossed in our own physical problems. Yet every once in a while Peter would hear of her through the grapevine. One day, he heard that she was sick and was in dire straits. He began to occasionally visit her and help her out financially, without offending her pride. A day came that she passed away. Peter received a call from one of her friends to let him know the sad news. She was cremated. She had requested that Peter spread her ashes by the Seven Lakes. That way her remains would be part of that beautiful serene spot forevermore.
Peter took the day off from work and drove two of her friends and her ashes up to the Seven Lakes. They walked down the incline to the lake. They stood quietly gazing into the distance. Slowly one of her friends unscrewed the urn and tipped the ashes slightly. A small gust of wind carried the ashes high into the air and then spread them about the surroundings. The trees seemed to breathe a contented sigh. ‘’Aah, aah,’’ they whispered. At last Addie was free to wander about in this beautiful place that she had come to once and that had enchanted her. She now had become a part of it. Her spirit could now soar free as the birds that dwelt there. She suffered no more pain or any of this earth’s cares and woes. Free! Free!
Peter and Addie’s friends slowly headed back to the car. They stopped somewhere along the way and had a quiet meal in her memory. Then they drove back to the city.