Patricia Ann Fulton Boyce
I could have been better brother. I could have spent more time with her, shown more love, put my arm around her more, , done more hings with her, been the big brother that I don't think I was. Our father was a bastard, and both of us took it hard. There were a lot of "family secrets." When she entered West Chester State Teachers College fresh out of high school, she sailed through that, got a teaching job in health sciences and was gone.
She never went back home. She and dad yelled at each other all their lives...just like dad and his father did. I heard about it third hand. She and I traded letters, lunches and danced around home - " the stories " like ballet pros, but never really landed on it. She would stare off, end the talk, and then, " so, how's things with you and....' who ever I was married to.
In here 62 years of life she was filled with anger, tough as nails, scared off one burglar with a handgun in her Dover, Delaware apartment at 3 in the morning with, " C'MON, I DAMN DARE YA!." And she would have, too.
Once, on the open road, in the middle of the night driving south in the open desert a truck pulled up behind her, lights on, no one got out, she had to open her trunk to get something, the trunk horn blasted, trying to scare her.
She quietly turned, faced it's windshield with a Magnum in her hand, cocked the pistol and pointed in the air, a light rain falling, she gently smiling. The truck ground gears backing away and back on the highway - gone. Patricia had guts. Her little son, asleep in the back never knew.
Pat arrived in Salt Lake in time for breakfast with her friends.
Melancholy sets in now and then when I look at her pictures when we were in our twenties in our old home in southwest Philadelphia. We were so young, fresh and looking forward to new things. She was so beautiful. She looked as lovely as the actress Dorothy Malone, red hair flying everywhere.
Patricia Ann, my mother called her. Our letters back and forth were always full of love, always private just for us. Others could mis-interpret our relationship, but at lunch, alone, we let it all hang out. I knew what she wanted, what her dreams were, and when she got the finally diagnoses - she would die of breast cancer soon, she was crest fallen.
I couldn't believe it. My kid sister, two years my junior, would die as my late wife, Janet did. As my mother dd - right across the street from her last days. How cruel I thought. How deep could a stake be driven through Pat's heart? For me, so much death, I was numb. As a dummy with my heart shot away, filled with anger at everything and everyone, I stumbled through her last days, directionless. She died in Yuma which is to say, nowhere, with a hospital down the street, last I heard non-certified, medically. My father is buried alone in that cemetery. My nephew took my sister's ashes along with my mother's and left town with them. That's the last I have ever seen OR HEARD of him or their remains. I don't know where they are?
I should have done more for her. Been there, protected her.
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She never went back home. She and dad yelled at each other all their lives...just like dad and his father did. I heard about it third hand. She and I traded letters, lunches and danced around home - " the stories " like ballet pros, but never really landed on it. She would stare off, end the talk, and then, " so, how's things with you and....' who ever I was married to.
In here 62 years of life she was filled with anger, tough as nails, scared off one burglar with a handgun in her Dover, Delaware apartment at 3 in the morning with, " C'MON, I DAMN DARE YA!." And she would have, too.
Once, on the open road, in the middle of the night driving south in the open desert a truck pulled up behind her, lights on, no one got out, she had to open her trunk to get something, the trunk horn blasted, trying to scare her.
She quietly turned, faced it's windshield with a Magnum in her hand, cocked the pistol and pointed in the air, a light rain falling, she gently smiling. The truck ground gears backing away and back on the highway - gone. Patricia had guts. Her little son, asleep in the back never knew.
Pat arrived in Salt Lake in time for breakfast with her friends.
Melancholy sets in now and then when I look at her pictures when we were in our twenties in our old home in southwest Philadelphia. We were so young, fresh and looking forward to new things. She was so beautiful. She looked as lovely as the actress Dorothy Malone, red hair flying everywhere.
Patricia Ann, my mother called her. Our letters back and forth were always full of love, always private just for us. Others could mis-interpret our relationship, but at lunch, alone, we let it all hang out. I knew what she wanted, what her dreams were, and when she got the finally diagnoses - she would die of breast cancer soon, she was crest fallen.
I couldn't believe it. My kid sister, two years my junior, would die as my late wife, Janet did. As my mother dd - right across the street from her last days. How cruel I thought. How deep could a stake be driven through Pat's heart? For me, so much death, I was numb. As a dummy with my heart shot away, filled with anger at everything and everyone, I stumbled through her last days, directionless. She died in Yuma which is to say, nowhere, with a hospital down the street, last I heard non-certified, medically. My father is buried alone in that cemetery. My nephew took my sister's ashes along with my mother's and left town with them. That's the last I have ever seen OR HEARD of him or their remains. I don't know where they are?
I should have done more for her. Been there, protected her.
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