The two Graces

She died, my replacement that is. She, almost exactly 12 months younger than me, named my name, loved by my parents, raised as the artificial oldest among a family of siblings, she died.

The two “Graces” we were, never knowing each other, we lived parallel lives.

Me, strangely dubbed Marry Ellen (the “adopted” child of an aged couple, too kind to turn me over to the orphanage) she, the artificial Grace Ruth, lived with my sisters, my mother and father doing whatever people named Grace Ruth do when they live in the upper Midwest.

Mary Ellen is was…

I found out that my name was Grace when I went to marry. Mary Ellen, the name I had known all my life, the name of that kind old lady I knew as my mother was not the name on my birth certificate. I was, in fact, Grace. Grace Ruth to be precise. The truth came in waves, not an orphan as believed, I was Grace Ruth. Given to a kind old couple, they were to watch me for a day. A year later, they were told that they could keep me.

Mary Ellen no more, I married Clarence.

Grace and Clarence (Rook to his friends) we were a pair! Only children, I fifteen, he nineteen. We forged a small life, in midst of war. The other Grace, she, who knows…

Clarence, like most of his age, was taken. Taken flight, soaring like Icarus. He crashed down stripped in his glory, leaving me alone, like before, save for the little son.

The other Grace, the little replacement, did she know? She and her sisters, did they know?

It was a full fifty years, before I knew they were there. Fifty years, one husband married, and dead to cancer, 5 children bore, the little son, the gift of that first love, lost to diabetes. Daughters in law, sons in law, grandchildren, great grandchildren.

Then, there I found you, sisters, and brothers in law, nieces and nephews, et al. That family, promised to all at birth. Given, for better and many times worse.

I made contact with all, four sisters total. One by one, refused until the youngest came to me. I, La fille prodigue, rebuffed by my replacement, shepherded by the youngest.

That youngest, she the sentinel informed me of each passing, two sisters gone within a year. Then that shepherd, the youngest. Then we were left alone, the other Grace and I. Now messages were passed via a distant cousin, ten years like this.

Did she, wonder about me? Wonder about the one who was she before she was?

I often thought about her. What would we say to each other? The simple holiday messages I sent to that cousin continued unchanged. Nobody else to die, no real change. The two Graces, living separate lives. No change, until this year.

She was gone never having met me.

It seems that now, I am wholly she, not my replacement that is, but, rather, the she that for 81 years I was not. The only Grace born to my parents, no longer hindered by that artificial Grace, the replacement. Or my own misplaced moniker, Mary Ellen. Now, the only Grace.