It's Hard to Say Good-Bye: Remembering Anne Sevier

I've just finished reading a mystery set in the city of Venice, Italy.  Many years ago, when she returned from travels to Europe which included a visit to Venice, my cousin Anne Sevier gifted me with a gondola charm for my charm bracelet, a souvenir purchased in that beautiful city.  It was perhaps at that point that my love of travel and my desire to see the world were born.

That gondola charm is one of many memories of Anne that have flooded my mind since yesterday afternoon when, at the age of 106, her days in this life ended. 

Anne's mother and my grandmother were sisters.  And long before I was born, Anne and her brother Richard lived with my grandparents following the death of their mother.  She has always been more to me than just a distant cousin.  More like an aunt.  Perhaps even like a surrogate grandmother, since I never knew my grandmother on that side of the family.

This is really a bittersweet time.  Certainly Anne lived a long and very full life. She was the last member of that generation of our family to leave us.  But she was ready to go and is now joyfully reunited with family in heaven.

So many memories of Anne have been flooding through my mind since yesterday afternoon.  Some of the fondest memories of my childhood were visiting her during the summers.  She typically taught one session of summer school at Winthrop (Winthrop College, now Winthrop University) and I would spend at least a week with her.  When she went to teach her classes, Anne would drop me off at the college library under the watchful eye of Miss Schinn, the college librarian, and I would spend hours sitting in the floor in the children's section, reading book after book.  There were more books there than in the entire library in my little home town!

During those summer visits, Anne arranged for me to have swimming lessons in the college pool.  I was never a very good swimmer, but I remember those days fondly.

Anne introduced me to Rice Chex.  We always had Wheat Chex, my mother's favorite, at our house.  Sorry, Mother, but I prefer Rice Chex! 

When I was in high school, Anne and her brother Richard built a house in Landrum, our home town.  Later, when I was a student at Winthrop, Anne would give me a ride home on the weekends.  We had some interesting conversations during those commutes.

I remember one conversation in particular.  It was near the end of my senior year, not too long before graduation.  Anne and I were talking about the Bridesmaids' Luncheon that she and my aunts were planning to host before my wedding.  She asked if all the girls in the wedding party drank their iced tea sweetened.  When I replied that they did, she said, "Good.  That will obviate the need for iced tea spoons."

Seriously?  Obviate?  Who uses a word like "obviate"?  Anne did.  When we arrived home, I had to check the dictionary to find out what it meant!  It means "to eliminate or render unnecessary", in case you were wondering.  I've never forgotten that definition!

So many memories.  Hearing about her travels when she returned from far-away places like Paris and London and Hong Kong.  Our family having vacations with her and Richard to places like Daytona Beach and Cedar Key in Florida, and to Little Switzerland here in the mountains.  Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners.  Her apartment in Rock Hill, in an old house on the edge of the Winthrop campus.  That house is no longer there.  In fact, the dorm where I lived during my senior year at Winthrop was built on the very spot where that house used to stand!

It was in that house that I first ate Rice Chex.  That I first ate blueberries.  That I played with Anne's collection of porcelain Dickens figures.  She would likely have been horrified to know that, when she was in class and I was in the apartment, I played with those figurines as though they were dolls.  How glad I am I never broke one!  I always wondered if she had noticed that every time I was there, the figures were always rearranged!  Many years later, when Anne and Richard sold their house and moved into an assisted living facility, she gave me those "Dickens people".  Yesterday afternoon I gave them a special dusting and rearranged them.

Anne was a brilliant woman.  She was funny.  She was opinionated.  She was demanding. She was inspiring. She was an outstanding teacher. She was kind.  She loved her family.  And good books.  And travel.  And good conversations. And I loved her so.

It's hard to believe she's actually gone.  It's hard to say good-bye.

In a few days we'll say our last farewells.  Until we meet again.



Grow old along with me!
   The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made:
   Our times are in His hand
   Who saith, 'A whole I planned,
Youth shows but half;

trust God: see all, nor be afraid!'

(Robert Browning)