A new baby is born. The family is there to help with the first struggles of life. When great age comes, the family is also there to help with the last struggles of life. Alpha and omega. Beginning and end.
Family continues. The family circle remains. The circle itself reaches eternity.
Lou Ella Crochet turned 95 yesterday. Her family gathered today to touch her and to smile and to wish her well. To break bread together. To watch a precious grandniece play a ukelele. To eat gumbo and birthday cake.
To help Miss Lou with the struggles of homebound hospice.
To help her blow out the candles.
Her life began in 1923 in the bayou country of Western Louisiana as the youngest child in a Cajun family named Thibodeaux.
In her teens, she married an eager young Army man with a future. His name was Harold Crochet. He would rise to become a Colonel in the era from Pearl Harbor to Vietnam. With her husband, Miss Lou would give life to four children and watch them grow.
Then she would watch the grandchildren come, and the great-children too, as the family circle wheeled forward into time.
Today, great age has robbed Miss Lou of much. But not the past. It still lives. And it lives with more force than the present.
The world in which she now resides is made from layers of long-ago things that intrude into her thoughts. Miss Lou lives inside the hallways of houses she and her husband left long ago, when her husband was still alive.
She hears voices of the dead still echoing all around her. — Words of relatives no longer alive. The music played at Officer Club dances from wars the young ones cannot remember. The stubborn cries of babies now grown old and full of sleep.
The past is so long and full that it outweighs the present. There are few tomorrows left.
Yet still, her eyes dance to a rhythm that plays through her memories. They dance as she watches a child strumming a ukele while the birthday cake is lit.
Are these images from today? Or are they memories of the duty post her husband had in Hawaii, long before he died in 1999? — A musical night at a Pacific USO show?
Does it matter what decade the music comes from or who strikes the chords?
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. How many tomorrows are there left?
No, it does not matter. The youngest has eyes dancing to the same rhythm as the oldest. One leaves and the other remains. Family is endless, a circle wheeling forward to the end of recorded time. Family has many tomorrows. The dance itself continues.
And so, just so, the special moment comes. The cake is lit. The song is sung. And a little grandniece draws near to help Miss Lou.
To help Miss Lou blow out the candles.
- Tessie Pete with her Grandmother Lou Ella Crochet
- Tessie Pete with her Grandmother Lou Ella Crochet
Robert Craig Waters 