Mirror, mirror on the wall

When the mirror was my friend

Looking in the mirror was never a favorite pastime for me. (OK, other than for a few years when I was in my 20s.)  Since then, and especially now, my glances at the mirror are purely utilitarian—no unshaven spots, eyebrows in some semblance of order, all right—but there’s no pleasure attached, just the occasional muted sigh of resignation. I recall it used to be mostly women who worried about looking older, but now the concern is universal in our youth-obsessed culture.

Great Aunt Goldie ca. 1906

My great aunt was a woman who broke the rules and normally didn’t care what other people thought—unusual for someone born in the early 1890s. Honest, strongly opinionated, yet warm and accessible, the flashiest thing about her was her name: Goldie Diamond.

Her long gray hair was pinned up into a simple chignon; I never saw her wear any jewelry and no makeup other than deep red lipstick (she always said it was just to keep her lips moist.) She dressed as an old woman “should” (her wild anarchist days long past) but shared opinions that were hardly conventional.

“If I had it to do over again, I’d never marry someone without living together first. It makes so much sense.” (In fact, she did live with a guy for a while, but decided he wasn’t for her and passed him along to her cousin, who married him instead.) Goldie’s own marriage to a more business-minded man was a disaster, but she stuck with it until he died. As my father said, it was their mutual loathing that kept them together.

Once, when she was visiting me at my boarding school, a younger boy there was fascinated by her, asking one question after another. He pointed at the wrinkled wattle hanging below her chin, and without malice, asked, “Why do you have that?” I was mortified, but Goldie didn’t mind at all. “Because I’m OLD, honey!” she said, laughing warmly. The boy laughed with her, happy to learn something about life and people.

Goldie in 1973

She smoked (“like a fish” as my Danish friend says,) and over the decades dealt with a laundry list of health problems: two bouts of colon cancer, gall bladder surgery, a hysterectomy (due to a tubular pregnancy) and a heart attack. Yet when she died, at 82, it was by her own choice: an overdose of heart medication, and a simple note on the night stand stating, “It is enough,” along with my father’s contact information. 

It took me years to acknowledge the fact that she had actually taken her own life; I explained away the note as a precaution, in case she died in her sleep. But once I realized, I accepted without hesitation her choice. She’d lived her life, and had nothing but more pain and sickness to look forward to. Honoring her words, I agree it was enough.