Borrowed Angel

April 12, 2009 12:30 am

— Editor’s note: This article was submitted by Kathi Crawford Gregory of Chelsea, Ala., formerly of Meridian, and Rickie L. Crawford and Elizabeth Crawford Landrum. It was written about their mother, Laverne O’Mire Crawford, who died on Easter in 1968, when Kathi Gregory was 3 years old.

By Kathi Gregory
Special to the star

I remember Laverne. She was my aunt on my father’s side. Laverne retains a singular place in my memory, a vivid, uncommonly real remembrance nestled among dim, dark shadows of the past. Such a quiet and modest person in life, it’s odd that she lives so unquietly in my mind, there with all the other loved ones lost long ago, who’s memories have followed the proper procedure and dimmed over time. That she exists there so clear and alive, though death claimed her almost twenty seven years ago, is not so hard to understand. She possessed four qualities that are hardly ever found together. Laverne was kind, patient, beautiful and innocent. Those traits together combined to form something stunningly lovely. But she was something else, something hard to define.
She was childlike. Not in her intellect of course, but in her vision of people, of the world. She was childlike in her naitivity, in her love of life, even in her shyness. I never heard her say anything bad about anyone. When I was left in her care, which was often, I was indulged in almost any game, any treat I wanted. And the wonderful thing was that she enjoyed it too. Even at the age of eight, I knew I was in the presence of a ‘buddy’, someone who was like me. We sunbathed with a box of chocolates, drank Coca Cola in the morning with our eggs and did foolish and wonderful things together.
Laverne loved her mother and unfashionably enjoyed spending time talking to her, Even as an adult, she did not like to spend the night alone. She married late, she was almost forty, and very soon after had three children. I was a teenager then, and with my social life and her married life, our time together was limited. When I saw her for the first time in a while, after the birth of her third child, I saw it in her eyes. That little girl look that seemed bewildered and astonished, as if she were thinking, “I’m not old enough for all this! A husband and children!” And indeed nature seemed to agree with her, because at the age of 41, she looked 25. Laverne was a good and loving mother, at least for a short time.
When the cruelest of all fates struck, and she was diagnosed with lung cancer, all three of her children were under the age five. Her youngest daughter was still in the crib. Although life did it’s ugly best to make her grow up, she chose to stay in that lovely, serene garden that was her mind. She continued to see the best in every person she came into contact with, right up to the doctor who tended her in the end. His tears fell with ours.
She died in her father’s arms, beloved to all who ever knew her, and as the light went out in those enormous brown eyes, although I was not there, I felt a flame go out in my own heart. Over time, much time, roses bloomed through the ashes left by that fire and I suppose it’s there her memory lies deep and unmoved for all time.
I’ve never known anyone like her since then. A mind so open and alive, yet void of malice seems incomprehensible by today’s standards. That she was here, even if only for a short while, gave me my first view of true beauty and of goodness.
My theory is that she was too fragile, too gentle, and too sweet for this world. She was a borrowed angel, and when God looked around for her and saw her missing – why he just corrected a cosmic mistake, So now another star shines bright as bright can be, illuminating all the heavens, just as earth was once so brightened.

Cheri O’Mire Moore ; 1992
A tribute to Laverne O’Mire Crawford
Sept. 17, 1927 – April 13, 1968