Marcelle

Words are like brush strokes on a canvas, they render a poor representation of who she was and how she effected my life.

I remember the first time I saw her; it wasn’t like she was a striking beauty, not the soda pop sweet cute looks that catch a teenage boy’s eye. She was a little matronly for eighteen. Her broad inviting smile still drew me in. She was prone to talking louder when she got excited and she had a goofy laugh. Coal black hair and olive toned skin betrayed her Cajun breeding. The eldest of what I think was near a dozen younger siblings, she was hell bent on becoming a nurse. She already knew how to take care of people, and maybe I needed a little taking care of. We went out a couple of times during our freshman year, but we knew quickly friendship not romance would connect us. I appreciated her sense of family and I asked her to tell me about them all the time. She loved her family and many times over the four years that we were in school together, I could see the pangs of homesickness come over her. She had a lot to miss.

Marcelle Maria Marmande was her name, and the alliteration of saying it was a preamble to the uniqueness of her personality. I quickly recognized that Marcelle was beyond normal superficial dorm life relationships. Mature, practical and responsible Marcelle, her friends often joked that she looked and acted like she had just dropped kids off at baseball practice or a cub scout meeting. At first I thought she was a little naive, but her personality like a good gumbo was a combination of South Louisiana sensibility, catholic school manners, evangelical theology and Republican politics. She always appreciated that I knew how to cook and clean and do laundry. I’m pretty sure she had done her share. I think that helping her mother with all those younger siblings was the reason she was so careful and always planned ahead. By the time we reached our senior year, Marcelle was beginning to venture out. The maturity of the young men she encountered in her work at the hospital caught up with the woman she already was. She bloomed with the opportunity to create an identity beyond being the big sister.

I liked to get up early to eat breakfast at the university dining hall because it was the only edible meal that they served and I got more work done in the early morning hours than I could at night. During our senior year, Marcelle had to be at the hospital early in the morning so we ate breakfast together often. She would give me all of the details of her brothers’ most recent misadventures. She described a life in Houma that was certainly unique to me. She beamed as she described massive family gatherings for holidays, birthdays and weddings. It all had a harmonic ring to it, a coon ass version of a Norman Rockwell painting.

We managed to introduce our families at a dinner the night before graduation. I was set back by the depth of her mother’s beauty. She was a doctor’s wife, nurse, mother of a large family, and you couldn’t see it in her face. I don’t recall the color of her eyes, but they cut right through you, like she could see what was wrong with you, and go right in and fix it. Grace, confidence, surety of purpose, it all came through those eyes. She was striking and yet familiar at the same time, and now I realize that Marcelle had the same tools, she was just not yet as accomplished in their use.

Marcelle and I had our picture made together after the Graduation ceremony and that is the last time I saw her. We talked several times on the phone during the next year and we made plans to get together with our mutual friends. It never happened. I always knew that she had all the skills she would need to forge a successful life, marriage and family. She never got the chance.

Marcelle and her mother were killed on a July 4 weekend by a drunk driver while on their way home from a family outing at their camp south of Houma. I was too broke to attend the funeral; I will always regret that I did not get to share my memories of Marcelle with them.

I have missed her at every big event in my life since that day. She would have loved to meet the love of my life, hear about my kids and tell me about hers. I really miss that smile.

I have struggled twenty plus years to pen a fitting tribute to her; I always wanted her family to know that they were not alone in missing her. I'm thinking that if someone misses you, you are not really gone.