Auntie Mae

You've probably heard of the Broadway musical about eccentric, bizarre, and borderline crazy Auntie Mame who could "coax the blues right out of the horn." She may have been something, but I have an Auntie Mae, who is the antithesis of Mame, and I'm right glad she is. She's as down to earth and non-eccentric as pork 'n beans. My Auntie Mae has been a dependable staple in my life, providing me with kisses, hugs, smiles, and birthday cards for as long as I can remember.

When I was little, Auntie Mae, whose real name is Marian, called me "Lulu" after the girl in the comic strip who enjoyed getting into mischief. "Uh, oh, Lulu's here. Now there'll be action," she'd say, laughing.

And, she was right. None of that dull sitting-around stuff for me. When we went to visit her house, I found the much-needed fuel for fun in her four kids, for I lived alone with my parents. Greg was older, and a cool teenager, so he brooded in his room much of the time, but the others were always game for tag, bicycle riding, red-light/green-light, or whatever. I'm sure my high energy hi-jinx drove her crazy, but she never let on---too much.

In a day and age when good men are hard to find, Auntie Mae lucked out and nabbed two fine husbands in her life time. Virgil, the first one and the father of her kids, was a noisy, kind-hearted, fun-loving sort who was into nature and camping and architecture. He created a fish pond in his back yard, and once, just for kicks and under the influence of the deceased, he and my dad had a funeral and buried an empty whiskey jug near our campsite in Yellowstone Park. Such hymns they sang! I remember riding in the back seat of Auntie Mae and Virgil's station wagon and going to get milk from the store, all of us kids singing and joking, and for a little while I wasn't an only child; I was part of a big family.

At far too young of an age, a brain tumor took Virgil's life, and after awhile Auntie Mae became reacquainted with and married Bob, a guy she had known growing up. Bob enjoyed fishing, gardening and outdoor activities, and he and Auntie Mae had much fun relaxing and having a few "berrs" (beers) together at the end of the day. She often bragged about Bob's cooking, but "Oh, that man's messy," she'd say. (Auntie Mae, my mother, and their sister Doris [Dottie] were raised by their mother to be the patron saints of cleanliness---and they were.)

Auntie Mae loved simple things: a good laugh, good friends, good food. She steered clear of conflict, and I never heard her say anything bad about anyone else. Though she had endured the horrific pain of losing a child and did not feel well much of the time in her later years, she didn't make a habit of complaining.

In all the family pictures, she and my mother have their arms around each other; Mom was the girly girl who cooked and polished the stove, and Marian the tomboy just back from milking the cows. They exchanged letters on a weekly basis back in the day, but switched to calling as their arthritis made writing difficult. Auntie Mae could write the best letters. Kind of like "Seinfeld," they were about nothing, really, but her personality was revealed in them. She liked to write something funny and then put "Ha!" after it. Her letters always made me feel like I was a special part of her life because she shared it so honestly.

Mom passed away in March, and I began calling Auntie Mae about once a week to sort of fill the gap, but I think maybe I filled in for my mother for her, too. Now, Auntie Mae, age 80, is gone as well. There were three sisters raised on that farm in Squirrel Hollow in Glen Haven, and all have passed away.

I will miss you Auntie Mae.

What comes after?

On the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, my AP Language and Composition class read the poem "Thanatopsis" by William Cullen Bryant. We are studying transcendentalism; you know, the Emerson and Thoreau stuff? Trust your gut instinct, your sense beyond your senses, your natural inclinations.

The poem is a "meditation on death." Some students were not thrilled about the topic, but I assured them that transcendentalists have a positive outlook on death, so it wouldn't be too depressing.

So, they read it stanza by stanza in groups and wrote down what they thought he was saying. They did a keen job interpreting Bryant's "cycle of life" attitude that we are all part of nature, and when we die we just take a different form so we can feed other living things, like oak trees. (Yuck, they said.) They saw that he was advising comfort in death because it is something everyone experiences, and there is an equality in it, with no preferences given to wealth, race, or gender, kind of like when you join the armed forces. And, in death we are not alone because we have been preceded by many; in fact, more people have died, than are now living. (I'm not sure if that's true, but that's what he says.) Life for others will go on after we die, and then they too will die: the circle of life, as in "The Lion King."

The last line of the poem states that when death comes we should welcome it, wrap ourselves up in a blanket and lay down for a much-deserved rest.

"What do you think of that last line?" I ask them.

"Well, it's not true---at least not for everyone."

"What do you mean?"

"Some people die horrible deaths, wasting away from cancer and suffering, or being blown up by a bomb in Iraq," one students says.

"Yeah. And sometimes even babies die. They don't need rest. They haven't even had a chance to live."

I tell them about my grandpa who went to bed one night in his own bed and never woke up. He was about 75. Too bad it couldn't be like that for everyone.

This opens up sharing time for death stories. I hadn't realized that that's where this would go. I had intended on ending class with students rewriting The Pledge of Allegiance, putting it into different words, coming up with their own versions, just to be transcendental, thinking outside the box.

But, here we were talking about death. One relates a story about an aunt, another about a cousin.

"This is depressing," some said.

I tell them it is important to talk about it, otherwise no one will ever know what you want when it happens. We talk about the "60 Minutes" segment that told about how many old people lay in hospitals waiting to die, kept alive by machines. In the last three months of their lives, megabucks are spent trying to keep the inevitable from happening.

This leads to me telling them how our son passed away four years ago. It is a sad story, but an important one. I thought I could pull it off with no tears. I couldn't. It wasn't horrible, just a few trickles down the cheeks, but I left them with sadness right before Thanksgiving after telling them that transcendentalists have a positive outlook on death.

I don't know why I chose to share that story; maybe because Thanksgiving was our son's favorite holiday, and he was on my mind. My guess is that even Bryant shed tears over loved ones after tucking them in the blanket and laying them to rest. It's hard to eliminate the "depressing" out of death. The trick is not to let it overwhem you and make the most out of your own life while you're here.

As Robin Williams says in "Dead Poets Society, "Seize the day!"

Sad

It's been a tough few days. A beautiful boy left us, and his mother is bereft---no---knocked down flat---whammied.

He was artistic and sensitive, and, probably, the world became too much. It can do that sometimes.

There is no sense in a young person dying. None at all. It should be prohibited. No one under seventy-five should be able to leave us. I suppose that's selfish, for there are worse things than death, I guess. Like suffering. No young person should be allowed to suffer either, mentally or physically.

But, that would be fair, and we know that life isn't. Maybe death will be. We can only hope.

You are loved, Eddy. Say "hi" to Kelly for me.