Nancy

Nancy Plunkett Trumble
December 22, 1932 – December 22, 2006

The Plunketts were descendents of Saint Oliver Plunkett, a 17th century supporter of King Charles I. His martyrdom was a gift from the puppet masters of that doomed monarch's son: not content merely with the restoration of a Stuart king, Plunkett dreamed of the restoration of a Catholic state. To that end, he plotted England's invasion by 20,000 French soldiers. He was apprehended, hanged, drawn and quartered; his head resides in Drogheda, his other parts in Downside Abbey. He wasn't canonized until his many times great great granddaughter was 43.

Shortly after that, Nancy had a heart attack and lay in a coma for several days. They did not expect her to live.

Once many years later, I asked her about her near death experience. "Did you see – you know – a tunnel of white light?"

"Nope," she said. "Nothing like that. I was out. And then I wasn't."

She didn't come all the way back. Her health henceforth was precarious. Years of smoking cigarettes left her with severe emphysema. (One suspects an underlying alpha 1-antitrypsin deficiency: 25 years of smoking cigarettes isn't actually all that long.)

After her heart attack, she gave up riding horses which had been her lifelong passion – it is hard to imagine stern Nancy as an adolescent girl clutching horseflesh between her thighs as a substitute for other hormonally fueled yearnings yet I imagine that's exactly what she was.

She remained active in the local equestrian community as a popular judge of dressage events. She lived most of her life in a tiny town called Millport in the Finger Lakes district of western New York state, that dour and beautiful region that went bust after the Eerie canal dried up a hundred some odd years ago, and never recovered. The woods near Millport are filled with ruined mansions and the rusting hulks of luxury Packards.

Nancy married a man called Francis Trumble. From what little I know about Fran, it seemed like an unlikely pairing: at Ithaca College, Fran studied dramatic arts; at Cornell University, Nancy had wanted to study veterinary science but denied the opportunity due to gender, she took a general science education degree. Fran went on to become a prison guard. He survived long enough to sire three sons and see them to manhood before dying shortly – before? after? – Nancy's heart attack.

All three of Nancy's sons were a disappointment to her in one way or another, I suspect. Ben, the eldest, at the age of 20 decided to embark upon a career of professional heroin addiction. Although he subsequently cleaned up, he had picked up a habit of living marginally, of living in retrograde, which he could never entirely break. Jon, the middle son, is professionally accomplished – he works now for the State Department doing… something… in Georgia (former Soviet republic not place where last train took Gladys Knight) – but he's a really cold mother fucker driving around in that black SUV with the imperturbable chauffer and the beautiful girl translator. Lew, the youngest, was most close to her in avocation – he is an Olympic equestrian who owns a stable in Eerie, Pennsylvania – but he's gay and although Nancy accepted, she never entirely approved.

Robin, my youngest son, was Nancy's only grandchild. She doted on him fiercely and critically. No one will ever love him that way again.