The Eastern DC-6 prop plane was a fitting chariot in March 1965, above the chilly fleece of a late winter morning. First time in my life aloft. Not particularly scared — the Dramamine would factor in later. There was surprisingly no turbulence headed down into Boston Logan, as my clever dad took me by the hand across the sweeping terrazzo concourse to a waiting jitney.
The sunshine was anemic, but I stared flatly out the curved glass of the wagon’s rear seats trying to recall Mrs. Edith Sheik, a birdlike dame, born around 1882. And the one time she visited our home in D.C., she perched daintily on the tapestried sofa in the parlor, swathed in pleated black-silk widow’s weeds, trimmed in Victorian-style moire lace, and most significantly, atop her bun of yellow-cream hair perched rakishly, a triangular velvet beret. The hat had an iridescence of a shiny crow’s plumage. I think we all sipped tea from dainty bone cups.
Now the minuscule mourning procession drew into the turnaround of a craftsman’s house-made over into funeral repository. Ahead of us, the immense Cadillac Fleetwood hearse (jet-black, of course), disgorged the mahogany casket.
Soon, we were all seated on leather folding chairs. Faint organ music tootled from the back of the mortuary. Now Edith lay in repose — with the casket lid thrown back; her profile, though a bit waxy, was quite regal. Her mouth was not drawn tight, but serene and soft.
Her hair was up, but no beret, alas. My dad walked me to the coffin’s edge. I knelt and mumbled a brief prayer. The organ music came up, and soon Dad and I were on our way back to the Copley Plaza. The clam chowder resonated on my tongue.
Back in D.C. that night, my parents tucked me into my covers in my bed, and Dad serenely hummed an old World War I lullaby, “There’s a long, long road…”
I drifted off to sleep with a faint whisper of my parents referring one last time to “Dear cousin Edith, last of her line.”
