A Sad Anniversary
And Reflections On A Full Life
It was 24 years ago today that I went to visit my mother at her senior apartment and found she had died the previous night while on her nebulizer, which would have put the time at around 6 p.m. on November 30. Her official date of death was recorded as December 1, which was when I approached her apartment and, finding the door ajar, opened it to find her slumped on her couch with the nebulizer still running.
Nine and a half months earlier, my mother-in-law, Carolyn, who had been residing with us while suffering from muscular dystrophy, had died on Valentine’s Day. Sixteen months after my mother’s death, my father, who was in the dementia unit of the Merrimack County Nursing Home, died of a heart attack. Sixteen months after that, brother Eddie learned he had a brain tumor, and he would die on sister Kathi’s birthday in 2005, 20 years ago.
So it was a tough period for us.
Even after all these years, it is hard to think of Fannie as being gone, for she had been a survivor. Orphaned at age 16, she found a home assisting Rose Dempsey at her boarding house on Route 3-A, taking jobs at the Tip Top House in Bristol (where Bette Davis once stopped when she was seeking anonymity), and at the Bristol Diner.
Even at that young age, she was interested in artwork, having inherited her father’s gift for sketching scenes and drawing cartoons. She took a correspondence course in fashion illustration in hopes of making it a career. Giving up that dream after marrying Ralph, she pursued her creative interests through oil painting and drawing classes with artist Bob Erickson, learned to braid rugs and work with leather, became a member of the League of NH Craftsmen, learned Early American decoration, and experimented with pretty much any craft. When traveling, she would keep an eye open for innovative processes she could incorporate into her own craftwork, and eventually opened the Profile Falls Gift Shop to sell her creations. Her crafts and painted works ended up going across the country and overseas.
She was especially thrilled to exhibit her works at the Sunapee Craft Fair and was a regular participant in the Hebron Fair and craft shows at the Bristol Community Center.
Although she and Ralph had divorced, they remained close, and he built the gift shop on Profile Falls Road for her, later building a new gift shop for her new home on Lake Street. That location, next to the Pleasant Street bridge, elevated her visibility, and people flocked to admire and purchase her work.
She got involved with the Bristol Historical Society, and designed its brochure featuring her sketch of the Bristol Mortar (before the redesign of Central Square that relocated it and set the cannon balls on the wrong side of the mortar, to the dismay of Bristol historian Charles Greenwood).
By that time, she was having a number of health issues, some of it the result of years of breathing in the toxic fumes from the paints and turpentine she regularly used. She developed COPD, which required the use of the nebulizer, and she suffered some injuries in falls. After a period of recovery at Golden View Health Care Center in Meredith, she recognized that she could no longer live alone, and she took up residence in the Beno apartments off Central Square.
Auctioneer Charlie Reynolds took on the task of selling the contents of her home that she no longer had space to accommodate — much of it tinware that she had purchased with the intention of decorating but had not gotten around to doing. The family took as many finished pieces as they could, but the rest were scattered.
After her death, we would occasionally run across something she had decorated at a flea market or yard sale and were compelled to purchase it. People will sometimes mention having one of Fannie’s pieces in their homes. It is good to know that her works still bring joy to people who possess them.
Because her parents had died so young, and because her grandmother had “read her fortune” and determined that Fannie would die young, she had believed she would be dead at age 36, but she lived to be 77. Her wish was to be cremated, which always bothered Eddie, who expressed sadness to picture the hands that had been so creative turned to dust.
For Fannie, it was enough to have been able to live so long and make so many people happy with the things she created — many of which she gave away in appreciation of the little things they had done for her. That satisfaction was her reward for the struggles she had experienced in her life.
Lovely piece honoring special memories and wonderful talent of your mom, Tom.
12/1 is a special day in our family, as it was dad Ed's birthday, and always brings lots of memories. He passed 4/25/1994 at 78.
We're lucky to have as much time as we possibly could with them.