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When I moved to New Brunswick, I was homesick and heartbroken and totally at a loss as to how to relate to the rural place where I’d landed. Treva, Lee’s grandmother, was immediately welcoming. I think she liked me right away, and I sure liked her. I loved the way she unabashedly spoke her mind; I loved her immense dignity always, and her fabulous fashion sense. Treva was conservative and traditional, but also independent, self-sufficient, practical. Like all the Carleton County women that I’m related to by marriage, she was unflappable, and had a kind of authentic old-school confidence. She kept her house spic and span and she was always proper. She was always a lady, as her equally elegant grand-daughter asserted. I think she kind of liked the fact that I casually rolled into town with her grandson, but paid my dues down at the wood-pile near the pole barn at the foot of her house, piling bricks and doing real work. At the time, it was all romance. Lee and I established we would get married within a week or so of meeting, but I hadn’t necessarily figured that ranking wood and all the rest would become a life, a passion, an obligation, a job, a burden, a family, a joy. “Well, he does work hard”, she said at one point, when I had trudged up the hill to her house, to fill our water bottles. It wasn’t exactly a concession, but a genuine observation, and an explanation; an encouragement of sorts. Treva, like many other members of Lee’s family, never quite fully understood why Lee would so obsessively pursue such an arcane endeavour as wood firing, but she respected his dedication, and I think on some level, trusted that the universe (God) would provide some sort of recompense, if not of the regular or socially sanctioned kind…
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After Lee and I were officially married (and no longer living in sin) but before I gave birth to our first child (Horus), Treva took me aside at a family function and said, “I watched Lee living in the woods for so many years with nothing, and I despaired that he would ever have a real home. I’m so glad he found you, because you have given him a home.” I was touched by this. I have, since then, wanted to live up to this, and also I was, and remain, a little bit privately rankled, at the blatant confirmation of the gender roles to which we are all shunted, with differing emphases and degrees, but always with the same weight of expectation. Ambivalence and sexism aside, and my occasional disgust over sometimes feeling (like so many women do) that my role in our relationship is too often parental aside, I have also realized that in fact, Lee has given *me* a home, or facilitated my establishing a heart-home: in New Brunswick, as an artist, as a woman, as a feminist, in family, and yes, as a wife.
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There was never a question that we would call our daughter Treva. I loved her name immediately, and I had never heard it before meeting Great-Gramy. When I asked Treva the elder where her name came from, she said her father had gone west as a young man, and had worked on another family’s farm for a while. Was this in Alberta, perhaps? One of the daughters at this farm had been called Treva, and Treva’s father, VanDyke Underhill, liked the name, always. Are there missing pieces to this story? Dalliances or intrigue, perhaps? We’ll never know. “Treva” is the feminine of “Trevor”, and in Welsh the name means from the “big village”, although Simonds is hardly large, and South Knowlesville, where our little Treva was born, is even more remote. According to the Celts, Treva means “wise, smart, clever, intelligent, and sophisticated”—all qualities that were evident in the late Treva, and also in our beautiful daughter. In Gaelic, Treva means “prudent, careful and cautious”. This is a relief. Someone associated with me and Lee has to be, right?
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This may sound like a strange thing to say, but Great-Gramy Treva’s funeral was warm, fun, comfortable, humorous, delightful, hopeful, and real. There is so much craziness in the world, but I’m grateful to live in a time where at least we acknowledge that children have a right to experience death. When Treva died, we told the kids straight up, and we cried, and we answered all their questions. What happens when we die? We don’t know. Is she *really* gone? Yes, and no.
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We attended the viewing of her body. She looked beautiful, and very much like herself, which was a relief, and isn’t always the case, in my experience of the recently embalmed. The kids were curious, and approached her body solemnly; tentative, but respectful; tears. I was so moved by seeing Lee, holding his son, saying goodbye to his grandmother who had lived down the road from him for his entire childhood, and who cared for him, and loved him. When the kids’ ability to maintain their composure in a room full of grief waned, we took them outside and found the gravestone of the original Horace Clark, and his wife Evangeline. The sun was hot, and we sought the shade of the large maples situated nearby, feeling very much alive, and young, and fortunate.
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The funeral itself was joyous, and celebratory, and beautiful. Many family members stood up to speak, in an atmosphere of welcome that was created by Treva’s son-in-law, who honoured her with the same manner of humour and dignity that Treva herself embodied. Many family members and friends stood to tell stories and anecdotes about her. I said a few words, and so did Horus, which made us very proud.
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When it was time for the pallbearers to rise and carry her body out to the hearse, Horus insisted on going with Lee, and Lee’s brothers, and I held Lee’s arm when he was about to say No, urging him to let Horus do the work he felt moved to do. Horus rode with the men, and in the afternoon sun, the cars snaked down the hill in Hartland, and across the covered bridge, and down the river road, to the Simonds cemetery.
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When big Treva, (Great-Gramy) found out that we had named our daughter Treva, she was floored, and she told me, with tears in her eyes, that she had always, all her life, hated her name, and that it had never occurred to her that anyone would have ever used her name in honour, but that now, she thought that maybe she didn’t quite dislike her name so much after all.
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She raised four good, kind, responsible, and moral people, and her great-grandchildren are healthy, and whole, and hurtling towards the future. As Horus, Lee, and the other young men of the immediate family carried her body across the green, weaving through the headstones to her grave near a stand of pine trees, a dark cloud passed overhead, thunder cracked, and the rain came down as the last words were spoken over the celebration of her life. The rain was momentary, and cleared quickly, but it cooled us, and relieved us, and made everything new.
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Goodbye Treva, we love you.
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This was really lovely to read. I went to a similar joyful funeral when my uncle died, and I have to say, it makes me want to demand that folks be filled with laughter at my funeral!
I have only known one other Treva. When I was in college there was a band we went to see all the time, Treva Spontaine and the Graphics. She was one of the best singers ever. I would love to see her again, I always thought her name was so great….
Absolutely beautiful Yo! Treva would have loved this read. I especially liked the part about her expressing her feeling to you for having a namesake. It made me tear up; as did the part about Lee holding his son, saying goodbye.
Thank you Lisa. Love and hugs, yo.