Aunt Carol is the reason my husband asked
“what’s with the kissing?” when we were engaged. My mother’s
family is very German American. What that means in this context that you get
big hugs and kisses from extended family upon greeting and exit, and then zero physically
demonstrative affection is shown for the rest of the visit. This in no way reflects the love that exists.
To my sister and I, Aunt Carol, the mother of 3 boys, was the aunt
who cheerfully braided our hair during visits, and who made us doll clothes.
She was the aunt who crafted and quilted and liked to haunt thrift sales for
furniture and home décor items. She was the aunt who brought me a tiny
dollhouse sized globe once when I was hospitalized, and who was always
interested in discussing whatever crafty venture I was in the midst of. She was
also the aunt in whom I could see myself, more than any other relative. She
showed me that it was okay to be the one who found thrifted furniture and
turned it into something beautiful with paint or fabric (long before home-décor
blogs and HGTV shows made it trendy), and the closest example I had to what it
meant to “get out” of our tiny rural town and make a life elsewhere.
She was also the aunt
who, while as far as I know didn’t have an athletic bone in her body, became
the enthusiastic soccer mom who sacrificed days off and family vacation time to
the thing her kids were passionate about, and the aunt who, at the funeral of
my much adored Nana, handed me a cousin’s newborn and calmly said “you need to
hold a baby.” She was right.
When I was a kid I
found Aunt Carol’s home exotic. While I have an older brother, he lived with my
dad for much of our childhood, and Aunt Carol’s house was filled. With. Boys. There
were bunk beds, and soccer balls and Playmobil figures. There were my 3 rowdy cousins
who wrestled so violently that things would sometimes break. Aunt Carol did radical
(to my mind) things like hang her handmade quilts on the wall! When her family bought a modest home in a Pittsburgh suburb and then added a master suite I was
fascinated (and not a little jealous). I’m fairly certain that their master
suite was the first one I ever saw outside of TV.
Aunt Carol did not
suffer fools gladly or brook any nonsense. I have a clear memory of standing in
her kitchen one morning during a visit looking around with a very teenage
“where’s breakfast” look on my face and being pointed towards the cereal in the
cabinet and the bowls and told “this is a self-serve house.” That one never
needed repeating. She was the aunt who would yell “the bus is leaving” before
everyone needed to pile in a station wagon for an outing, and who herded my
mom, Nana and I along on dozens of trips to her favorite bargain haunts of
Gabriel Brothers, or T.J. Maxx, neither of which were my idea of a good time
(the boys, assumedly having their own manly endeavors to attend to, were
generally exempt).
When the news arrives
that my beloved aunt, my mother’s only sister, my big sister’s godmother and
frankly one of my favorite humans, will likely pass away within the week I try
to think instead of the visit my mother, sister and I took to see her just over
a year ago. The homes of my aunts and uncles have always felt comforting, like
finding an old sweater, the one you thought you gave away, and snuggling into
it, and this time was no different. Aunt Carol was clearly struggling a bit, but
she was so happy to see my sister and I. She told me us about what was happening with
her children and grandchildren and discussed tablecloths (of all things) with
me after we visited a sale at her church. That weekend brought unprecedented rain and
flooding to PA and I remember a distinct sense of it feeling like the end of
the world as I watched shoppers pick over antiques with rain dripping on them,
but the skies cleared within a few days and life moved forward. I thought I’d return to Pittsburgh and visit
with Aunt Carol again in 2019, but time got away from us, and once again it
feels just a little bit like the end of the world. I’ll wake up tomorrow and my 12-year old will ask me to braid Christmas
ribbon into her hair. My 15-year old will once again ask me to explain extended family math, by defining cousin identities
with clues like “which one took Lena down to the creek at Joel’s wedding?”
As I attempted to
finish writing this through tears and a growing sense of frustration,
I found myself angrily typing: “write a better ending. This one sucks.” I wanted to say
something profound about the portrait of my mother and aunt that once hung in
my Nana’s living room. The one where they both have clear expressions and fabulous wings of hair. I wanted to write something about how much I
loved Aunt Carol and that I’ll be thankful to carry that with me. I wanted to write something about
how she and Uncle John raised a beautiful family and gave their kids a firm
moral foundation, and about how she was such a caring nurse. I wanted to write about how her voice was
always soft and modulated and how seeing her always made my late Nana feel
close by, and how she loved to have a baby on her lap. I wanted to share all of this and more, but all I can say right now is . . .
write a better ending. This one sucks.
Author’s note: Aunt
Carol passed away peacefully with family nearby a few days after I wrote this.
