This post is in memoriam
of a truly great woman.
My world is a bit
thinner now. I always knew her as Aunt Bea.
In my childhood she was a fixture, in my youth a reference standard, in
my adulthood a power-player in the realms of reclaiming those parts of my
childhood lost. She passed into history
on Friday, and she will be missed.
Among many, many
things she gave me back was the year of 1968.
It had been lost to folding memory to conceal the events of that
year. Some of them I now have in clear
focus, others are still a bit foggy, but they’re there because of her. It was not a good year for me, but even a bad
year is still a year and needs to have it’s place in the chronologies of life. She and the wife got to comparing notes and
realized the truth, between them they convinced me. What a gift.
There are so many
stories I might tell of her, and I know only a tiny fraction of what there is
to tell, but this one perhaps gives the deepest clue to the woman. Once upon a time quite by accident she ended
up serving as the justice of the peace for her town. The fellow who’d had the job wanted to go on
vacation and needed a two week stand in.
He took his vacation, while on vacation suffered a heart attack and
died, Aunt Bea was stuck with a job she really didn’t want for several years.
Close to our home
town is an Indian reservation, and the Indian folk were the most peaceful of
people when sober, and some of the rowdiest when drunk, needless to say Aunt
Bea as justice of the peace saw a great many of them in the state between,
which is to say hung-over. Now Aunt Bea
was first and foremost a pragmatic woman, one of the last daughters of the
frontier, and she was a most tidy woman.
Litter just did not sit well with her.
If the crime was simply being embarrassingly drunk in public she really
didn’t believe in fines, her standard was to make an apology by cleaning the
town square and park. When both were
immaculate you were done, go home. Within
the first year she had them pretty well trained: it didn’t matter if you’d been
in trouble or not, come Saturday morning pretty much the full crew of drinkers showed
up midmorning to help clean the park… so their buddies would get loose earlier
in the day.
Probably her
biggest gift to me though was a phrase, and the attitude that goes with
it: “Do what ya’ can where ya’ stand…” I do try.
Farewell, Sunbeam.
i'm sorry for your loss, 'nos. you were lucky to have her, especially for so many years. we might be surprised of how many of us have never had anyone who said, "whenever you need anything, or just want to talk, call me", or have simply always been present.
ReplyDeleteaha! maybe that's the real necessity of prayer: someone to talk to...
;) pip
Thanks Pip. She lived a long and adventurous life, raised many children, left a legacy of the sort few ever match. She'd run her race, and run well... it was her time to go home. I don't mourn for her, but I will miss her.
ReplyDeleteShe sounds a little like my mother, who this year celebrated her 100th birthday but is now in a nursing home, pretty much immobile below the waist. Yet my mother was one of those who, if you needed her, she was there, or pointed you to the ones who could help.
ReplyDeleteMay your every memory of your Aunt Bea be joyful.