By Teddy Allen
The first day of November at her home in Ruston, my friend Patrice Hilton, 72, died.
Her dachshunds have been adopted by various members of her ever-expanding family that includes four children, and those short-legged, big-hearted dogs will be loved and cared for — but they’ll never have it as good as they had it with Patrice.
And so it goes for us all, for anyone she taught, for anyone she shared the choir loft with, for anyone who sat by her in Sunday school, for anyone who saw her most every Saturday of the year in Walmart or T.J. Maxx.
I am thankful for Patrice for dozens of reasons but mostly because she was “cool” in a way hard to define. Tough as leather but soft as soaked leaves, all at the same time.
She was as my big sister is, and I love my big sis: she is someone you want on your side, and if she’s not on your side, call in the dogs and tinkle on the fire because the party is over.
With Patrice in your corner, all challengers were fighting for second place.
She was one of those souls who should have lived until 102 because she would have given her friends and family and neighborhood that many more years of good memories and funny stories, shared that much more wisdom, brought that much more joy.
But I don’t call the shots and cancer did and so here we are walking hand-in-hand with Sorrow, “My November Guest,” as Robert Frost called Her.
“My sorrow, when she’s here with me,
Thinks these dark days of autumn rain
Are beautiful as days can be;
She loves the bare, the withered tree;
She walks the sodden pasture lane.”
It’s difficult to dodge sorrow, impossible really, so maybe as Frost suggests, it’s wiser to make room for it, even hold its hand, and notice the beauty in the cold. There is a bleakness in autumn, the long shadows and early darkness, the cold rain and bare trees. But there is also high school football, and pansies and pumpkins, little faces peeking out of big coats, and dogs in your lap by the fire.
And there is Thanksgiving. And I am thankful for Patrice.
Patrice never once, not even in the year since the diagnosis, walked around in grave clothes. In school pictures of her as a little girl, in that bright smile, was an educator-to-be, a loyal friend, a cookie maker, a holiday embracer, a beach lover, a hard worker. There is no way to overstate the positive, confidence-building impact she had on a couple of generations of children in Lincoln Parish.
It’s equally impossible to overestimate the number of cookie and brownies she baked. The bookmark in my Bible is one of her themed napkins; this one reads “Gobble ’til you Wobble.” Years and years ago I nabbed it one November morning in Sunday school, along with a couple of her cookies, sprinkles on top, of course.
I knew then I would always keep it.
Patrice lived true and big, loved true and big, brought passion to Thanksgiving and to every special occasion — but she brought the fire to a Thursday in March too, to a Wednesday in September, to a Monday of sunshine or rain. For Patrice, life itself was a special occasion. Every day was a good one, in this way or that, to gobble ’til you wobbled.
Patrice has the jump on us now in the Creation’s Total Renewal category. Her home at Hillcrest Elementary and her home just around the corner from the school are both in her rearview mirror now. But she’s waiting up ahead. Definitely with a smile.
Probably with cookies. Maybe even with napkins.
Definitely with dachshunds.
Contact Teddy at teddy@latech.edu
