Kyle City Limits
by BRENDA STEWART
Two years ago Sunday my friend Catherine Fahringer died. I tried to write about her last December but it was too soon, still too raw. She died a violent death, her body wracked with pancreatic cancer, which had been diagnosed as old age and hypochondria in the long year leading up to her death.
Ironically, during her last appointment with him, her physician clandestinely summoned the police after Catherine said she didn’t want to live if he couldn’t offer some relief from the excruciating pain which he continued to ensure her was all in her head.
The psych police comforted my 84-year-old friend and then released her into rush hour traffic on Loop 410 while her doctor hid out behind his closed office door, never to lay eyes on her again. First, do no harm. There’s a special place in hell waiting for him.
But that was her death. Her life, actually, was incredible. Catherine was a raven-haired stunner, cultured beyond belief with a caustically irreverent sense of humor and a wit as sharp as barbed wire. She was a tornado in a sweat suit whose winds you always wanted churning in your favor. And, if you were fighting for truth and equity, you could count on Catherine to have your back, every time.
A retired colonel’s wife, she was cosmopolitan and well read. She was a gracious host and although her home was filled with fine art from around the world, she was a bit cheeky and had this affinity for the truly bizarre. Catherine drove an old station wagon that she called Herman, and every Saturday morning she and her buddy Doyle would troll the garage sales, trying to one-up each other with the tackiest finds.
Catherine had a son, broad shouldered and stoic but gentle-mannered with an easy laugh when he was amused. She had a daughter, Devon, who was killed as a teenager. It happened a long time before I came along and although she rarely spoke of her death, losing Devon shook what faith she had, to the core. What kind of cruel god...?
Devon’s birthday was the day before Christmas Eve so for years after, Catherine avoided the holiday and shut the world out. Her soul-shattering grief consumed her and the bitterness stole her joy. Somehow though, years later, she reclaimed the holiday that she had once loved and began the tradition of Garage Sale Christmas.
It was a pretty basic premise, really. Throughout the year, each one of us was to be on the lookout for the weirdest, kitschiest, aesthetically confounding object on the planet. On the 23rd, we’d gather and drink and laugh and bequeath all the treasures we’d collected and hoot and howl at everyone’s hideous finds. Think taxidermied toads fiddling with toothpick bows, Hawaiian shirts with blinking buttons and life-size velvet Elvis shower curtains. One catch, no matter how outlandish your souvenirs from the evening, you had to take them home with you and you couldn’t regift them the next year. The green velvet sombrero with the gold sequins still adorns a torch lamp in my office.
Irreverent and festive and worlds away from any religious connotations, it was generosity and good will and a healthy dose of humor with folks she loved that got Catherine through “the season”. Like the pagans who originated this holiday millennia ago, she simply sought warmth and light.
And on these long winter nights, I seek the comfort of her benevolence. I ache for her guidance and traditions. I long for her rafter rattling laughter and mischievous grin. Her warmth and light. Merry Christmas, old friend. You are missed.
