She was a soothing presence, my aunt. She had a limitless sense of humor, and wore a suitable grin for every matter. She never could see the logic in taking anything too seriously: “Life is already serious,” she’d say to me with a spirited smile. “Why make it any worse than it already is?”
I was never quite able to see the wisdom in this notion, as I took more after my mother, who was a gentle, well loved hammer. Not much passed me by without my taking notice and eventual offense to. My shoulders, however, were never quite broad enough to bear the loads I’d often insisted they carry.
She was one of seven, my aunt. Eight, if you count her older sister who died at childbirth. The only thing she left was a lot of tears and the name: Cecelia.
* * *
A few June’s ago, Aunt Sis became a widow, losing her husband, my Uncle Bill, to a bad heart. It tore at her pretty good, that loss. They were devoted from the start— even worked side by side at the same factory— Buchan’s, a bindery on the north side of Clifton Heights.
They kept a house down at Beach Haven on the Jersey Shore. A pleasant place, four houses away from the beach. We’d vacation there every summer when I was little. Some of my most treasured memories were of Aunt Sis and Uncle Bill rambling with me on the beach, me sporting my annual crew cut and my red-white-and-blue striped swimming trunks. Aunt Sis would always have a kerchief on her head. A babushka, they christened it. It always made me laugh to here her call it that, as American as she was.
Uncle Bill, a red-faced Irishman, represented his County Meath heritage with plaid Montgomery Ward dress shorts, a diamond print Arrow short sleeve dress shirt complete with undershirt and plastic pocket protector, knee high navy blue socks, and Florsheim leather wing-tipped shoes. A fashion risk, my Uncle Bill.
They would hold hands a lot, though they rarely displayed any public affection. The regard in which they held each other shone through anyway. After a quarter of a century together, they were closer and held more affection for each other than most newlyweds do.
Uncle Bill would always let me bury him in the sand. Aunt Sis and I would hollow out a spot on the brink of the high tide line, and he would sit in it. We’d shovel that fine, gritty sand, covering him up to his neck. Some years later I realized he must have gotten quite a few sore spots from the sand crabs that were notorious for burrowing in the sand regardless of any people that might be in their way, including uncles.
He projected an almost delicate quality on the outside— red-faced, thin, white hair. Not too physically active, Uncle Bill. Yet he was the perfect complement of strength for my Aunt Sis.
Bookends, they were. But like bookends, you take one away and all order begins to slip.
His hobby was the Civil War. He used to collect Civil War memorabilia. They had a split-level corner lot in Broomall, of which the bottom floor, the “basement” in any other home, was his collection room. Aunt Sis good-humoredly called what I now know to be almost priceless Civil War artifacts “historical junk,” as she faithfully dusted century old sabers and muskets and powder horns and uniforms. Like she, he pleasantly bore all with a joke and a smile.
She sold their house right after his death. It was a predictable move; we all saw it.
That was the beginning, as I see it now. Something was born the day my uncle die. The books had begun to slide.
* * *
She relocated back to the Mother House to live with my other aunt and uncle. They were brother and sister, not husband and wife. One the confirmed bachelor, the other the incorrigible spinster. Again, perfect counterweights, neither aspiring to leave the house they both subsisted in all of their lives.
They kept that house as their parents kept the house: old. Not old in a bad sense, mind you. Old like a favorite sweater on a chilly November day. Everything was in its place, pretty much the same place it had been, less a little dust and dirt, comfortably occupying for over fifty years. Stepping into that house was like stepping into a pleasant memory.
It had Legendary Furniture. A green mohair sofa with a thick, painstakingly hand-made stained-glass-colored afghan draped over its shoulders. That sofa will probably sit there for another fifty years, barring a new carpet or a fire or something. Someone moved it once. They were the talk of the family for three months.
I remember the house getting a new rug when I was about twelve. What a festive occasion that was! They had to tear up the tiles that were originally covering the dining room floor. Under those cracked, worn tiles was a world ripe for my twelve year-old imagination. When the floor had originally been installed back in the early twentieth century, it had been pre-covered with newspapers. I spent hours just looking at the old, yellow pages, not even really reading them, before my uncle whisked them away for trash.
Then there was the compulsory matching red mohair wing back chair, complete with complementing ottoman. This particular red mohair chair had a dip in the center, making it concave from the years of derrieres that graced its cushion. Its hassock was a study in contrast, convexed up in a large hump. A red dromedary searching the sandy yellow carpet for an oasis of decorating sense.
If it did indeed have eyes and the sense to use them, the dromedary-hassock would have had to stare at its across the room neighbor— a Magnavox Danish-Style Stereo Credenza. This exceptional audio artifact was an expatriate imported from my aunt’s house in Broomall, where it was the centerpiece of entertainment, now relegated to mere decoration at the Mother House. There it sat, un-plugged, the perching place for greeting cards, a lamp, glasses, and sundry pieces of opened mail. And dust, of course.
The only piece of furniture in the room that did not predate World War II, aside from the credenza and the carpet (which doesn’t really count as furniture), was The Recliner.
The Recliner. This large, ultimately temporary piece of sittery sat in the southwest corner of the room, right in the middle of the big pool of sunshine that bathed it for a good part of the day. This luminescent lake of light saw the passage of no less than four recliners into history. The current one— a big, clashing black and white checked model— has thus far had the longest stint.
This relatively innumerable Roll Call of Recliners wasn’t out of a restless inclination to change out the chair, but rather out of the large size of my uncle’s bottom, which wasn’t so large when taken in proportion with the rest of him.
If there ever was a true Santa Claus, I believed him to be my Uncle Lou. And Santa Claus has probably not seen as many children go bouncing off of his lap than my uncle saw. It was a rite of passage in my family, that lap. Hence the relatively countless cavalcade of recliners.
My other aunt, Sadie, was a study in contrast to my Uncle Lou. As large as he was, she was thin. I remember arguments where Aunt Sade used to leave the room by turning sideways and disappearing. Yeh, she was thin all right. Thin and wiry. She would go and go, doing this and that and this again before finally collapsing with exhaustion.
She had so much energy for a woman of her stature. She’d walked from the kitchen to the couch so many times over the years, there was a path worn in the rug.
Smoked about three packs of Bel Airs a day, Aunt Sade did. Supposedly had emphysema, but if she did— and that’s if— she rarely showed it. The occasional coughing jag. She reputedly hacked herself to sleep every night, coughing ‘til she was green in the face.
Most of the time though she was like the character in that cartoon from the sixties, “Tobor the Eighth Man,” who smoked cigarettes for his energy.
She was one of the nicest people you’d ever meet, Aunt Sis’s sister. She’d give you the hair off her head, if she thought you were cold. Had to be wary with her, though. She’d spoil you rotten if you let her. Not her fault. I think it ran in the family. Nice lady.
Anyway, the two of them lived there in that house, Uncle Lou and Aunt Sadie. They had a working relationship going, being very courteous to each other, polite in conversation, but they never really said anything to each other, aside from the necessities of “Good morning, want some coffee?” or “Do you mind if I put the news on?”
Peculiar, but functional. Except when they fought. It was rare, but it happened. Like a lid on a boiling pot, sooner or later, it blows off.
Every now and again, Aunt Sade would, cat-like, unsheathe her claws and sharpen them on the nearest human, Uncle Lou.
Now Uncle Lou was the sort of person who let you know he was upset at something. He wouldn’t actually say anything was wrong. You’d just know. Passive-aggressive-like: Hhhrrrrruuumph! He would plop down in his recliner, squashing months off of its life expectancy.
I thought it was kind of funny to watch this large, grown man plod around the house like a mute Miura Bull enraged by the sharp poke of the picador. But then again, I suppose it was good he didn’t yell and carry on. Just imagine the noise. No thanks.
Good people, for their few faults. And into their midst came Aunt Sis. I guess if I had to classify her, she’dve been right in the middle. When she got mad, she wouldn’t yell or anything. You knew just the same. You’d get the crossing of the arms and the scowl. It was a body language that cut to the chase like an emotional whip-crack, and if it was aimed at you, it made you feel instant ignominy for having been its cause.
She had the same qualities of both my aunt and my uncle, and some of my mother, too. My mother was a tough guy on the outside, but inside she’d spoil you just as fast as Aunt Sade. A leather Easter egg. The whole family was that way, my Aunt Sis not withstanding.
* * *
From the very outset after my Uncle Bill’s death, Aunt Sis mourned. She lost her need to mourn visibly, but those of us who knew her knew she never stopped. In fact, she steadily got worse. Right up to the end, I knew she pined to be with my uncle. They were married for twenty-two years, but they were together a great deal longer.
Aunt Sis was the designated Cake Maker. She would do things to cakes— be they boxed or scratch— that still live on in the Taste Bud Hall of Fame. Legendary cakes came from her adopted kitchen. She would make cakes for all occasions: birthdays, anniversaries, holidays, Tuesdays. I used to look ahead to those cakes with great, gluttonous desire, and she knew it. There was a silent communication there: she said cake, and I drooled. I was reduced on the instant to being a Pavlov Pup.
Even now—still— I can close my eyes and see thick dark brown layers of Devil’s food topped with white frosting that was so sweet your teeth would jump out of your mouth before you even bit down! De-licious!
* * *
Aunt Sis had cancer of the colon. She’d had it a couple of years before she got the nerve up to go to the doctor, but by then it was too entrenched. She went from treatment to treatment, eventually losing enough of her system to require a colostomy bag. That’s the little baggie they mount on your side that collects your re-routed waste. Waste management, it’s called. She handled it well. Extremely well, I’d say.
Aunt Sis was a meticulously neat person. Not compulsive, mind you. Just neat. A place for everything, and everything in its place. This intrusion on her side was more painful to her than any cancer could have ever been. You could see it in her face. She dealt with it. That’s all.
Around the time Aunt Sis’ ailment started to manifest itself physically, she was seeing a friend named Danny. They would go out together, to the Columbus Club, dinner, whatever. He was good for her. He could make her laugh, distract her.
…I have the image of a teenager in my head, on the phone with suicide prevention, being told a joke by the well-intentioned counselor while the desperate adolescent swallows a bottle of pills…
We used to double date together. The four of us used to go bowling a lot. Aunt Sis was good. Danny was very good. He gave me the components of the hook that I throw to this day. I remember: “Hold the ball like you’d take a suitcase, then throw it like you’re shaking hands, and it will hook.” I never shook hands with a suitcase, but I’ll be damned if it didn’t work just like he said.
She bowled until she couldn’t move through the form anymore. Her “waste management” began to get in the way. I think she was afraid of an embarrassing accident. I never did get to tell her that we understood. I think she knew.
Anyway, I found out that they were planning to get married in the summer of ‘83. Danny would have been a welcomed addition to the family. He fit right in. I wonder if she knew what she was doing; I mean, if she knew she would never see a second wedding day.
I bet she did.
* * *
I remember August sixteenth of that year. I remember it like it was yesterday. Aunt Sis was in the hospital, as sick as she was ever going to get. I went in to visit her that night, much as I didn’t want to see her in her suffered condition. When I got there, much to my surprise, she looked great. Relatively speaking, of course. She was smiling and talking quietly, with confidence, if you can imagine that.
And she had a look of unmitigated relief on her face, like you might get as you closed out the last few miles on a long, difficult car ride. She knew. She knew that night, and she was happy at the coming reunion.
I cautiously went over to her bedside and gave her a kiss. Okay, I thought. Not too bad. Her eyes were a little drawn, but she still had spark in them. Oh yes, it was there, all right. The sense of humor was even in there as well, though it was fading as the physical overwhelmed the emotional like the high tide overwhelms a beachhead.
Polite conversation was passed, and then Aunt Sis began to cry. I looked to my mother, then to Aunt Sade, who was also at the bedside. “What’s wrong, Aunt Sis?” She struggled with a tissue.
She wasn’t concerned with her pain any longer. She wasn’t embarrassed. She wasn’t scared. She was upset with the idea that she wasn’t going to make it home in time for my birthday, six days later, to make my birthday cake.
Overcome with a despondency that wrenched my very soul, I told her not to worry, that I would make a cake and we would celebrate right here. She smiled through her tears, and for a second our eyes met. I knew then, as well. And I too was happy with my sadness, happy for my fellow passenger whose long ride was almost over. I smiled through my tears.
Aunt Sis’s journey ended the next afternoon. She went quietly, passing with the sigh of a summer breeze. I was told that she was at peace, relaxed. I knew she was.
On August twenty-second, five days later, I celebrated my twenty-first birthday at William’s Funeral Home with Aunt Sis close by in her beautiful casket. Friends and relatives came up, not knowing quite what to say. An awkward moment on this day of my “coming of age.”
As I drove home alone from the wake, I thought about Aunt Sis worrying about not making it home to make me a cake. Tears blurred my vision. I sensed her there, and I knew she was with me.
I had a dream that night. At least it was in the form of a dream. The logic of reality blurs when confronted with emotion. I was walking through a misty area, where everything was white. Aunt Sis was next to me. We were “talking silently” as we walked. After a time, she told me that it was time for her to go. She stopped and turned to face me. She paused, and smiled beautifully as she laid her hands on my shoulders. Happy birthday, honey!
I woke up. It was daylight, my face was wet. I was smiling through my tears.
© Ray Cattie
I was never quite able to see the wisdom in this notion, as I took more after my mother, who was a gentle, well loved hammer. Not much passed me by without my taking notice and eventual offense to. My shoulders, however, were never quite broad enough to bear the loads I’d often insisted they carry.
She was one of seven, my aunt. Eight, if you count her older sister who died at childbirth. The only thing she left was a lot of tears and the name: Cecelia.
* * *
A few June’s ago, Aunt Sis became a widow, losing her husband, my Uncle Bill, to a bad heart. It tore at her pretty good, that loss. They were devoted from the start— even worked side by side at the same factory— Buchan’s, a bindery on the north side of Clifton Heights.
They kept a house down at Beach Haven on the Jersey Shore. A pleasant place, four houses away from the beach. We’d vacation there every summer when I was little. Some of my most treasured memories were of Aunt Sis and Uncle Bill rambling with me on the beach, me sporting my annual crew cut and my red-white-and-blue striped swimming trunks. Aunt Sis would always have a kerchief on her head. A babushka, they christened it. It always made me laugh to here her call it that, as American as she was.
Uncle Bill, a red-faced Irishman, represented his County Meath heritage with plaid Montgomery Ward dress shorts, a diamond print Arrow short sleeve dress shirt complete with undershirt and plastic pocket protector, knee high navy blue socks, and Florsheim leather wing-tipped shoes. A fashion risk, my Uncle Bill.
They would hold hands a lot, though they rarely displayed any public affection. The regard in which they held each other shone through anyway. After a quarter of a century together, they were closer and held more affection for each other than most newlyweds do.
Uncle Bill would always let me bury him in the sand. Aunt Sis and I would hollow out a spot on the brink of the high tide line, and he would sit in it. We’d shovel that fine, gritty sand, covering him up to his neck. Some years later I realized he must have gotten quite a few sore spots from the sand crabs that were notorious for burrowing in the sand regardless of any people that might be in their way, including uncles.
He projected an almost delicate quality on the outside— red-faced, thin, white hair. Not too physically active, Uncle Bill. Yet he was the perfect complement of strength for my Aunt Sis.
Bookends, they were. But like bookends, you take one away and all order begins to slip.
His hobby was the Civil War. He used to collect Civil War memorabilia. They had a split-level corner lot in Broomall, of which the bottom floor, the “basement” in any other home, was his collection room. Aunt Sis good-humoredly called what I now know to be almost priceless Civil War artifacts “historical junk,” as she faithfully dusted century old sabers and muskets and powder horns and uniforms. Like she, he pleasantly bore all with a joke and a smile.
She sold their house right after his death. It was a predictable move; we all saw it.
That was the beginning, as I see it now. Something was born the day my uncle die. The books had begun to slide.
* * *
She relocated back to the Mother House to live with my other aunt and uncle. They were brother and sister, not husband and wife. One the confirmed bachelor, the other the incorrigible spinster. Again, perfect counterweights, neither aspiring to leave the house they both subsisted in all of their lives.
They kept that house as their parents kept the house: old. Not old in a bad sense, mind you. Old like a favorite sweater on a chilly November day. Everything was in its place, pretty much the same place it had been, less a little dust and dirt, comfortably occupying for over fifty years. Stepping into that house was like stepping into a pleasant memory.
It had Legendary Furniture. A green mohair sofa with a thick, painstakingly hand-made stained-glass-colored afghan draped over its shoulders. That sofa will probably sit there for another fifty years, barring a new carpet or a fire or something. Someone moved it once. They were the talk of the family for three months.
I remember the house getting a new rug when I was about twelve. What a festive occasion that was! They had to tear up the tiles that were originally covering the dining room floor. Under those cracked, worn tiles was a world ripe for my twelve year-old imagination. When the floor had originally been installed back in the early twentieth century, it had been pre-covered with newspapers. I spent hours just looking at the old, yellow pages, not even really reading them, before my uncle whisked them away for trash.
Then there was the compulsory matching red mohair wing back chair, complete with complementing ottoman. This particular red mohair chair had a dip in the center, making it concave from the years of derrieres that graced its cushion. Its hassock was a study in contrast, convexed up in a large hump. A red dromedary searching the sandy yellow carpet for an oasis of decorating sense.
If it did indeed have eyes and the sense to use them, the dromedary-hassock would have had to stare at its across the room neighbor— a Magnavox Danish-Style Stereo Credenza. This exceptional audio artifact was an expatriate imported from my aunt’s house in Broomall, where it was the centerpiece of entertainment, now relegated to mere decoration at the Mother House. There it sat, un-plugged, the perching place for greeting cards, a lamp, glasses, and sundry pieces of opened mail. And dust, of course.
The only piece of furniture in the room that did not predate World War II, aside from the credenza and the carpet (which doesn’t really count as furniture), was The Recliner.
The Recliner. This large, ultimately temporary piece of sittery sat in the southwest corner of the room, right in the middle of the big pool of sunshine that bathed it for a good part of the day. This luminescent lake of light saw the passage of no less than four recliners into history. The current one— a big, clashing black and white checked model— has thus far had the longest stint.
This relatively innumerable Roll Call of Recliners wasn’t out of a restless inclination to change out the chair, but rather out of the large size of my uncle’s bottom, which wasn’t so large when taken in proportion with the rest of him.
If there ever was a true Santa Claus, I believed him to be my Uncle Lou. And Santa Claus has probably not seen as many children go bouncing off of his lap than my uncle saw. It was a rite of passage in my family, that lap. Hence the relatively countless cavalcade of recliners.
My other aunt, Sadie, was a study in contrast to my Uncle Lou. As large as he was, she was thin. I remember arguments where Aunt Sade used to leave the room by turning sideways and disappearing. Yeh, she was thin all right. Thin and wiry. She would go and go, doing this and that and this again before finally collapsing with exhaustion.
She had so much energy for a woman of her stature. She’d walked from the kitchen to the couch so many times over the years, there was a path worn in the rug.
Smoked about three packs of Bel Airs a day, Aunt Sade did. Supposedly had emphysema, but if she did— and that’s if— she rarely showed it. The occasional coughing jag. She reputedly hacked herself to sleep every night, coughing ‘til she was green in the face.
Most of the time though she was like the character in that cartoon from the sixties, “Tobor the Eighth Man,” who smoked cigarettes for his energy.
She was one of the nicest people you’d ever meet, Aunt Sis’s sister. She’d give you the hair off her head, if she thought you were cold. Had to be wary with her, though. She’d spoil you rotten if you let her. Not her fault. I think it ran in the family. Nice lady.
Anyway, the two of them lived there in that house, Uncle Lou and Aunt Sadie. They had a working relationship going, being very courteous to each other, polite in conversation, but they never really said anything to each other, aside from the necessities of “Good morning, want some coffee?” or “Do you mind if I put the news on?”
Peculiar, but functional. Except when they fought. It was rare, but it happened. Like a lid on a boiling pot, sooner or later, it blows off.
Every now and again, Aunt Sade would, cat-like, unsheathe her claws and sharpen them on the nearest human, Uncle Lou.
Now Uncle Lou was the sort of person who let you know he was upset at something. He wouldn’t actually say anything was wrong. You’d just know. Passive-aggressive-like: Hhhrrrrruuumph! He would plop down in his recliner, squashing months off of its life expectancy.
I thought it was kind of funny to watch this large, grown man plod around the house like a mute Miura Bull enraged by the sharp poke of the picador. But then again, I suppose it was good he didn’t yell and carry on. Just imagine the noise. No thanks.
Good people, for their few faults. And into their midst came Aunt Sis. I guess if I had to classify her, she’dve been right in the middle. When she got mad, she wouldn’t yell or anything. You knew just the same. You’d get the crossing of the arms and the scowl. It was a body language that cut to the chase like an emotional whip-crack, and if it was aimed at you, it made you feel instant ignominy for having been its cause.
She had the same qualities of both my aunt and my uncle, and some of my mother, too. My mother was a tough guy on the outside, but inside she’d spoil you just as fast as Aunt Sade. A leather Easter egg. The whole family was that way, my Aunt Sis not withstanding.
* * *
From the very outset after my Uncle Bill’s death, Aunt Sis mourned. She lost her need to mourn visibly, but those of us who knew her knew she never stopped. In fact, she steadily got worse. Right up to the end, I knew she pined to be with my uncle. They were married for twenty-two years, but they were together a great deal longer.
Aunt Sis was the designated Cake Maker. She would do things to cakes— be they boxed or scratch— that still live on in the Taste Bud Hall of Fame. Legendary cakes came from her adopted kitchen. She would make cakes for all occasions: birthdays, anniversaries, holidays, Tuesdays. I used to look ahead to those cakes with great, gluttonous desire, and she knew it. There was a silent communication there: she said cake, and I drooled. I was reduced on the instant to being a Pavlov Pup.
Even now—still— I can close my eyes and see thick dark brown layers of Devil’s food topped with white frosting that was so sweet your teeth would jump out of your mouth before you even bit down! De-licious!
* * *
Aunt Sis had cancer of the colon. She’d had it a couple of years before she got the nerve up to go to the doctor, but by then it was too entrenched. She went from treatment to treatment, eventually losing enough of her system to require a colostomy bag. That’s the little baggie they mount on your side that collects your re-routed waste. Waste management, it’s called. She handled it well. Extremely well, I’d say.
Aunt Sis was a meticulously neat person. Not compulsive, mind you. Just neat. A place for everything, and everything in its place. This intrusion on her side was more painful to her than any cancer could have ever been. You could see it in her face. She dealt with it. That’s all.
Around the time Aunt Sis’ ailment started to manifest itself physically, she was seeing a friend named Danny. They would go out together, to the Columbus Club, dinner, whatever. He was good for her. He could make her laugh, distract her.
…I have the image of a teenager in my head, on the phone with suicide prevention, being told a joke by the well-intentioned counselor while the desperate adolescent swallows a bottle of pills…
We used to double date together. The four of us used to go bowling a lot. Aunt Sis was good. Danny was very good. He gave me the components of the hook that I throw to this day. I remember: “Hold the ball like you’d take a suitcase, then throw it like you’re shaking hands, and it will hook.” I never shook hands with a suitcase, but I’ll be damned if it didn’t work just like he said.
She bowled until she couldn’t move through the form anymore. Her “waste management” began to get in the way. I think she was afraid of an embarrassing accident. I never did get to tell her that we understood. I think she knew.
Anyway, I found out that they were planning to get married in the summer of ‘83. Danny would have been a welcomed addition to the family. He fit right in. I wonder if she knew what she was doing; I mean, if she knew she would never see a second wedding day.
I bet she did.
* * *
I remember August sixteenth of that year. I remember it like it was yesterday. Aunt Sis was in the hospital, as sick as she was ever going to get. I went in to visit her that night, much as I didn’t want to see her in her suffered condition. When I got there, much to my surprise, she looked great. Relatively speaking, of course. She was smiling and talking quietly, with confidence, if you can imagine that.
And she had a look of unmitigated relief on her face, like you might get as you closed out the last few miles on a long, difficult car ride. She knew. She knew that night, and she was happy at the coming reunion.
I cautiously went over to her bedside and gave her a kiss. Okay, I thought. Not too bad. Her eyes were a little drawn, but she still had spark in them. Oh yes, it was there, all right. The sense of humor was even in there as well, though it was fading as the physical overwhelmed the emotional like the high tide overwhelms a beachhead.
Polite conversation was passed, and then Aunt Sis began to cry. I looked to my mother, then to Aunt Sade, who was also at the bedside. “What’s wrong, Aunt Sis?” She struggled with a tissue.
She wasn’t concerned with her pain any longer. She wasn’t embarrassed. She wasn’t scared. She was upset with the idea that she wasn’t going to make it home in time for my birthday, six days later, to make my birthday cake.
Overcome with a despondency that wrenched my very soul, I told her not to worry, that I would make a cake and we would celebrate right here. She smiled through her tears, and for a second our eyes met. I knew then, as well. And I too was happy with my sadness, happy for my fellow passenger whose long ride was almost over. I smiled through my tears.
Aunt Sis’s journey ended the next afternoon. She went quietly, passing with the sigh of a summer breeze. I was told that she was at peace, relaxed. I knew she was.
On August twenty-second, five days later, I celebrated my twenty-first birthday at William’s Funeral Home with Aunt Sis close by in her beautiful casket. Friends and relatives came up, not knowing quite what to say. An awkward moment on this day of my “coming of age.”
As I drove home alone from the wake, I thought about Aunt Sis worrying about not making it home to make me a cake. Tears blurred my vision. I sensed her there, and I knew she was with me.
I had a dream that night. At least it was in the form of a dream. The logic of reality blurs when confronted with emotion. I was walking through a misty area, where everything was white. Aunt Sis was next to me. We were “talking silently” as we walked. After a time, she told me that it was time for her to go. She stopped and turned to face me. She paused, and smiled beautifully as she laid her hands on my shoulders. Happy birthday, honey!
I woke up. It was daylight, my face was wet. I was smiling through my tears.
© Ray Cattie
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