Ellen was born on August 29, 1940, less than 7 months after my
parents were married. We always celebrated Ellen’s birthday on
October 31. The story I heard from Joan is Ellen learned the truth
when at nineteen she joined the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed
Virgin Mary and she had to produce a birth certificate.
She was six years
older than I was, a tomboy and the senior partner in “Ellen and
Joan.” Growing up, we didn’t have much of a relationship. Joan
and Ellen were in a different world, older, already the “big kids”
by the time I started school. Ellen taught me how to ride a bicycle
and once hoisting me up on her feet doing acrobatics, I fell and
broke my arm. She was my big sister but far removed.
At school Ellen was
the star and Joan was a year behind her. In 1955 she went on to high
school across the street at Bellarmine Jefferson. At 16 Ellen
learned to drive. She got a summer job at Local Loan downtown. She
drove whenever she could. She was a driver from then on, willing to
drive wherever and whenever she could.
She and Joan were
involved in a youth group under Father Coffield in Boyle Heights,
where she was part of an activist community organization. There were
good things and bad things about the Church in those days. I think
Ellen’s social activism began then. Coffield’s name was on the
list of predator priests released in 2000.
In 1959 Ellen
entered the BVMs; their Motherhouse was in Dubuque, Iowa. She
returned home for a visit after the first year. She and another new
nun in her class stayed in a convent nearby. They split time between
families, us in Burbank and the Coughlins in Glassell Park. That
visit set the pattern between Ellen and our mother. My mother treated
her as a kind of saint and was desperate to tell Ellen how much she
loved her and to hold her close, jealous of any time she wasn’t
home. Mom couldn’t let Ellen be herself.
I think Ellen was
desperate for our father’s love. There were flashes of affection,
but mostly he seemed to act like we were all a burden he had to bear.
I think he thought if we hadn’t come along, he would have been the
star he should have been. To me it seemed he was never much of
father. We had to be quiet when he was home, not to disturb him
while he sat in his back room studying and listening to music. I
think Ellen particularly suffered trying to please him, to feel the
love he seemed to never show.
The summer of 1959 I
got to go to Missouri with my mother’s cousin. We went by train
and it took 3 days. I stayed with our grandmother in St. Louis.
Ellen was on her way to the convent in Dubuque and she stopped by
grandma’s house. We traveled together by segregated bus to visit
our grandfather in the Ozarks. On the trip we were both shocked by
the segregated bathrooms and drinking fountains, Colored and White.
From California we thought we came from an open society; it wasn’t.
Its racism hid beneath politeness. That trip was an early moment
when Ellen and I saw the world together, two young people discovering harsh realities.
Our paths separated.
While I went to high school Ellen taught in BVM schools for a time,
including Wichita, Kansas, and later in Stockton. Teaching was never
her love; she was a community organizer at heart. The BVMs were
progressive, and by the late 1960s their habits had softened into
simple skirts, white blouses, and comfortable shoes and Ellen was
working as a Community Organizer in a Chicago parish.
When I returned from
the Air Force in 1971, I visited Ellen in Chicago. I think she had
left the nuns by then. She drove us to St. Louis and the Ozarks
again, visiting our uncle in his tar paper shack. He was showing us
his shotgun and accidentally blew out a window in the kitchen, an
incident no one commented on afterwards.
Ellen went to work for Jenner & Block, the law firm that represented
the Contract Buyers’ League pro bono. With community groups
organized by the parishes they fought predatory lending and red
lining in South Chicago and won major victories. She lived for a
time in a Lakeside condo in South Chicago, where I stayed during the
blizzard of 1978.
Our relationship
became strained when my marriage to Cathy failed. In late 1983 Cathy
and I were breaking apart and I was newly sober, Ellen and Joan sided
with Cathy. For a time I was an outsider to my own sisters.
Ellen was working in
Chicago for a few years and then sometime in the 1980s she decided to
join a contemplative order of nuns in Iowa. There she met Karen.
Karen was having health problems and Ellen took care of her and
together they moved to Arizona for Karen’s health. It became
apparent they were a couple and so no surprise when they got married
in Canada in the 1990s. Karen and I never became good friends but
she loved Ellen deeply. They built a life in Arizona, went to
community college together and became nurses. They accumulated a
modest nest egg, and created a home. Ellen became a hospice nurse and
loved the work. Karen was a visiting nurse. In a conversation before their marriage, I asked Ellen if she was a lesbian. She admitted she was. I thought it would be good just to say the word, but
she never said it again. Their relationship was loving and equal,
and it was good for both of them.
Ellen was Ted’s
godmother and she took that relationship very seriously. Ellen and
Karen helped Ted during his lost years after college in 1995 steering
him toward language programs. Ted taught English in Japan and then
in Saudi Arabia. After three years Ted came home and met Ellen
Clancy in Monterey and Karen and Ellen came to the wedding. They
gave them money for their first house. They told me to follow their
example and make my intended loan a gift. Ellen and Karen came when
Ted received his doctorate at the University of Oregon.
Ellen loved that I
became a Park Ranger. Like Hopalong Cassidy I wore a cowboy hat and
a gunbelt. Ellen and Karen visited me on Mount Diablo and later on
Angel Island. When they came to the island crossing Raccoon Strait at
night in a pontoon boat it was a moment of high adventure for Ellen.
After my retirement Ellen and I began to develop a closeness and a friendship we had never quite had. I would call her during my long
commute on I-80 to Richmond to pick up Paloma. Those long unhurried
conversations became a rhythm of our relationship. We talked about
everything: family, music, books, politics, memories. We became
peers, not older sister and younger brother, two adults, brother and
sister and friends.
When Ellen and Karen
retired they moved from Arizona to Dubuque, Iowa. Karen was from
Clinton down the river and for Ellen it was familiar territory near
the Mother House of the BVMs and Clarke College where for a short
time she and Joan had been students together.
One conversation
stands out. A year or two before her seizures began, I casually said
that if I had my life to do over, I would have more confidence and
take better advantage of opportunities. Ellen said she would be more
forceful and effective in serving the community. She wanted to be
better at helping people, more focused on making things better for
others. I was an ordinary guy with ordinary goals. Joan was a
warrior. Ellen was a saint.
When they moved to
Iowa, they joined the local Orthodox Church. Ellen found a deep spirituality in Eastern Christianity and the Orthodox traditions.
When they joined a few members of the Congregation objected to Ellen
and Karen’s membership together in the Church and the resistance
had gone to the local Metropolitan. He had welcomed them when they
came and when it became an issue later he told the objectors he had
made his decision and it was final. God bless the Orthodox Church
and its local Metropolitan.
In February 2019
Ellen had a terrible seizure. The diagnosis was Alzheimer’s.
Paloma and I came to visit in June. She was still Ellen, I was
relieved. She was shakier, less precise, but herself. She still
belonged to a book club. She said they were reading Tommy Orange’s
There There. It was
very hard for her and she was having trouble making sense of it. I
told I had read it and that it was hard for me too. Orange’s style
is to tell fragmented stories that seem unrelated and confusing. And
then he wraps it all up
in the end. She was relieved, it wasn’t just her.
Her biggest
disappointment seemed to be that she was not going to live into her
90s. She had really wanted to grow very old and 79 plus just wasn’t
enough. We had a good time, going out to eat, long drives with Karen
and her to show Paloma Wisconsin and a trip to a State Park with
waterfalls and caves. The dementia she had wasn’t devastating; she
still enjoyed life. Paloma and I enjoyed our time with her and
Karen. So in February 2020 we visited again. I wanted to show
Paloma Iowa in winter when it wasn’t so beautiful and green. It
was cold, but it was beautiful and we had a good time with Ellen and
Karen.
Unrelated to Ellen
at the time the Covid-19 Pandemic started in China in November, 2019
and by February it had begun to spread worldwide. None of us thought
much about it while we were there. At the Chicago airport on our
way home a few people were wearing masks, but the Pandemic was far
away and people didn’t seem concerned. Our flight was canceled and
we stayed overnight in a hotel near the airport. From the airport we
stuffed ourselves into a taxi with two other people, one a GI
visiting home from Korea. A month later the lockdowns began and
March 17 we began our Shelter in Place in California. That first
weekend of concern I calculated the incubation time from our Chicago
trip. At it passed we were OK.
Ellen began to
weaken in the fall of 2021 and in November she had hospice care. I
came in November. Laurie, Joan’s daughter came and Ted. Ellen hung
on longer than we expected and they had to go home to their jobs and
families. Father John came from St. George’s Orthodox Church in
Cedar Rapids and did a service for the sick at the foot of Ellen’s
bed. For the time the service took, Ellen was quiet and at peace. I
stayed on for a few more days keeping vigil with her but she just
hung on and finally I had to leave too. I drove to the Chicago
airport and Karen called me. Ellen had died.
I miss Ellen.
Writing about her brings her back to life a little bit, the girl who
taught me to ride a bike, the nun who searched for meaning, the
activist, the driver, the sister who struggled for our father’s
unreachable love, and the friend she became. I was very fortunate to
have both of my sisters. Joan and I were close when she was young;
Ellen and I became close in retirement.
We like to believe
that how we die will reflect how we lived, that there is some moral
symmetry at the end. My experience has been that this is mostly
untrue. We have very little control over how we leave the world.
My father died
peacefully. He was old, sober, reconciled, and surrounded by his
children. He seemed ready. There was no struggle, no unfinished
business he felt compelled to resolve. He let go when it was time. It
looked orderly, as if dying were the final task of his life.
Ellen’s death was
the opposite. She was younger, in terrible physical pain, and seemed
unable to rest. Even as her body was failing, something in her would
not release its grip on responsibility. Ellen had always been someone
who took care of others, who made things okay for everyone else.
Near the end, it seemed a compulsion that trapped her.
I believe she could
not let go while I was there, and that once I left she died with
Karen holding her.
We do not die as we
deserve. We die as we are. My father’s gift was peace. Ellen’s
burden was love that she could not stop giving.
