June

This is my stepmother, June, 40-plus years ago with our dogs Moldy and Mildew. Yes, those were their names. I could do a whole post on unusual dog names, but for now I want to focus on June, who died Tuesday night in Florida.

This did not come as a surprise. You may remember that when we went home at Christmas we discovered she was desperately ill and she went right into the hospital while we were there. She got some treatment and seemed to improve, and more treatments were planned, but she then declined very quickly. I won't go into great detail to protect her privacy and that of the family, but I will say that she had a bladder tumor that went untreated for a long-ish time, and that led to kidney and other complications.

My relationship with June was always a bit complex. I suspect this is true for any boy whose father marries another woman. My parents divorced in 1974 and my father married June in 1976, and my mother was never subtle about feeling wronged. In fact for about ten years she walked around in a rage. I was always fiercely loyal to her, and I couldn't get beyond the feeling that June was an interloper. This was neither true nor fair, which I came to see as I got older, but it colored all my interactions with her when I was a child.

She was younger than my mother and brought two children of her own into the family, a son and daughter by her previous husband. I've always thought of them as my stepbrother and stepsister and in fact I still call them that, but my father did adopt them so I suppose they're really just my brother and sister. Again, my view on that was somewhat affected by my mother's anger.

June was an interesting personality. She could be quite blunt and forceful, especially when dealing with us kids, and when I was young she hurt my feelings more times than I can count. But I think she never meant to be hurtful, and I didn't quite realize until adulthood that even her own natural children felt the same sting. She wasn't treating any of us any different. She was the oldest of seven kids in a large military family and she learned to make herself heard.

At a vacation condo on Longboat Key, 1981

She was a good cook and somehow cajoled my father into participating in a gourmet cooking group in the 1980s. (I think my father's participation exclusively involved eating.) She loved needlework and in her leisure hours could always be found on the end of the sofa in her living room, needlepointing or cross-stitching, sometimes at a frame with a large magnifying light. She made so much needlepoint and cross-stitch that she ran out of places to hang it all. She loved clothes and sparkly accessories and even had fur coats -- in Florida!

She was generous at the holidays and Christmases at Dad's always came with a big pile of presents -- far more than my brother and I got from our practical and somewhat abstemious mother. She loved playing cards and taught us all canasta, spades, hearts and other games, which we inevitably played after dinner on our annual weeklong beach vacations to Longboat Key. She was more fun than my mom, of that I have no doubt, and that's what my dad needed in his life.

Needlepoint at the beach, 1982

She was also a career woman. She started as a teacher and a typist -- which is how she met my dad, typing the manuscripts for the textbooks he wrote with a university colleague. She moved on to sales, first as a distributor of Foster-Grant sunglasses and then pharmaceuticals. She and my father occasionally got sent on sales trips to places like Bermuda or San Juan, which seemed very exotic to us. (We kids never got to go.)

June with Manny the chihuahua, 2015

In her later years she loved going on cruises, and I mean she LOVED them. My father wasn't big on traveling as he got older, so she would go cruising with her mother, my step-grandmother, and they traveled the world multiple times over. June went everywhere, sometimes two or three or more times. You may remember that after my father died, she bought us all a cruise. Last year she was on a worldwide cruise for six months, though I'm not sure how often she got off the ship.

June and her friend Marianne in Hyde Park, 2023

When Dave and I moved to London we met up with her a couple of times as she passed through town on her travels.

At times like this, it's a drag to live overseas. My brother and step-siblings are all gathered in Florida ironing out arrangements, and although I've told them I can come if I'm needed, I think it's likely that I will stay in England until they've nailed down dates for services. Then I can go back for those, and help with whatever still needs to be done.

So, how am I feeling about this? That's a good question. I'm mostly just stunned by the rapidity of her decline. I suppose I'm sad, but as I said, our relationship was complicated. We were friendly and even affectionate with each other, but the feelings, for me, were always a bit guarded. Maybe I never completely got over the sense that loving June would betray my mother.