Saying Goodbye to my Aunt

I went and saw my Aunt Flo tonight. I've been stopping by on a semi-regular basis to see her for the past two months or so. When I was a kid she lived in this very, very tiny house on 8000 West and the North side of 21st. Kennecott bought the property from her and my uncle about 10, maybe 15 years ago and destroyed it. But I see it in my minds eye every time I drive by that corner. Everyone called it The Farm. It wasn't really a farm, at least not in the full definition of the word. They had some chickens, peacocks, sheep, goats, rabbits and even pigs once in a while. My uncle Ernie was a sheep farmer and he had this old dog that was black and white and had two different color eyes. The dogs name was Blue. He was an old sheep dog and he followed my uncle everywhere he went. He was a great dog. My uncle had spent so many hours in the sun over his life time and he had such a wonderful face. All wrinkles and leather. He was a tiny, skinny man and always wore an old blue baseball cap, blue jeans, a plaid work shirt tucked into his jeans and belt to hold his pants up. If I remember correctly, his pant legs were often rolled up too. I hardly remember ever seeing him sitting inside, whenever we went over there he would be sitting outside with his legs crossed at the knee and old Blue was laying next to his feet.

My Aunt Flo is my dad's sister and my parents would go over there and sit around the kitchen table, drink gallons of coffee, smoke cigarettes and talk and talk and talk. I loved sitting there and listening to them talk about growing up and all of their kids and the "good old days" and gossip about other family members and whatever is was they were talking about. My aunt had this head of hair on her that I will always remember. She had such thick, white hair. I don't remember ever seeing her with a different hair style. On my dad's side of the family they all get this amazing white hair. As far as I'm aware, pretty much all of the kids hair turned white at a young age. I know one of my uncles had told me one time that his hair turned white at the age of 25.

Anyway, back to my aunt. She's always been one of those people that would talk to you. You know how sometimes you have older relatives and they lived by that code "Children should be seen, not heard", well she was not one of those people. She talked to us. She cared about us. She was interested in everything about us. She loved us and all kids.

The last few years I haven't seen much of her. I feel really bad about that. There are no excuses really, you know how it is, you get caught up in your life and the day to day living. You think about visiting, but then say something like, "oh, I'll go tomorrow or the next day or next week." Because even though you could go right then, you say to yourself, "I'm too tired. I need to do laundry. I don't want to miss that show on TV." or some other such nonsense and before you know it years have gone by.

The last few months Flo has been on my mind and I was driving by her house one day (because the sad truth is that she only lives about 3 miles away from me and has for the past 10 or so years) and I said to myself, I should stop. Then thought of a ton of reasons why I didn't want to stop, but then overcame them and did it. I stopped. I went and saw her and it was great. She was as happy to see me as I was to see her. She was pretty much bed ridden, on oxygen and morphine drops, but altogether she was doing good. We had a great conversation that first visit and I promised I'd be back.

And this time, I was back. I went back and saw her about every week and a half to two weeks or so and it was great. Two weeks ago I went and saw her and spent about two hours with her and we had a great time together. She had copies of some letters that my grandfather had written to his mother during the depression. Of course I had never known my grandfather, he died at a pretty young age and my own father was in his 40's when I was born. During that visit I asked "So, what's wrong with you, anyway?" She looked at me and said, "Honey, I was a smoker." Turns out she had COPD, which is like a chronic type of bronchitis and emphysema together. I asked her how old she was when she started smoking and she told me she was 13! By my calculations she had smoked for about 67 years. She quit a few years ago, but the damage was done.

During that visit I read a few of the letters out loud to her and asked if she remembered any of the things her father had written about and she did. We talked about some of those things, and sometimes we just sat quietly with each other in a companionable silence. I'll never forget those few precious hours together and will always be glad we shared that time together.

I didn't go to visit her last week, I had a terrible cold and I had planned on going this week. But during this time, Flo took a turn for the worse. One of my second-cousins had noted it on her Facebook page that she was not doing well. This made it even more important in my mind to go see her tonight. I called my sister Polli and asked her to go with me. I think that I kind of made her feel a bit guilty and really that wasn't my intent, but I didn't want to go there by myself tonight. I was a bit anxious about it.

It was so sad. She was hardly recognizable laying on her bed. She was guant and looked like she wasn't really there. But I went over to her and kissed her and told her I was there and brushed her hair a little bit away from her face. Polli and I stayed in the room with her, talking quietly to her daughter, my cousin, Dora. We were there for about an hour. Before I left I again went to my aunts bedside and kissed her again and told her I loved her. In my heart I was saying goodbye to her because I know that I will probably never see her again.

Seeing her tonight was really just a chance for me to say goodbye, it's not how I will remember her. I know that I will always have good memories of her and I'll remember her as my beloved Aunt Flo.

I'll miss her a great deal, but I know that I will always have her in my heart and I hope I'll always remember to treat other people like she treated us...with unconditional love.

I love you Aunt Flo.