When My Aunt Went Around the Bend and Never Came Back − 2 April, 1991
All my aunts were very good to me, but I had a favorite aunt, my dad’s oldest sister. She was quite a character. She smoked like a chimney, and was quite tall and heavyset. I’ve heard many stories of her being quite the tough girl when she was in school. She had a reputation for beating up boys. She was a good sister, if not a very nice classmate. She loved my dad very much.
She married twice, and at least one of her marriages was abusive. My dad and his parents drove from Pittsburgh to somewhere in Michigan to “rescue” her from one of these men. By the time I came along, she had been divorced for a long time. She lived by herself in a row house, working at the local school as a custodian.
She and I were especially close. I would sometimes stay at her house overnight. I remember sitting on the couch with her watching TV. I kept asking, “What did he say?” and “What does that mean?” until she finally had to tell me to quit asking questions so she could hear the dialog. She only had one bed, so I shared it with her after the TV program.
I was awoken by a terrible droning noise. She was snoring heavily. I didn’t know what to do, so I went into the living room. There were no blankets, and it was winter. I found my winter jacket, and curled up on the couch under my jacket. That is where she found me in the morning. She and my parents would remind me about this story from time to time when I was older.
When I was in junior high, she began sharing Sunday dinners with us regularly. My little brother was still a baby. She’d bring over a bag of Italian bread fresh out of the oven from her local bakery, Mancini’s. That was the best bread I’d ever had. I’d pull a fat round warm crusty bun out of the bag when she arrived and eat it without butter, it was that good.
She took up cake decorating and began making fancy birthday cakes for me and my brother. I think my mom was kind of horrified. To her, the cakes were very “tacky” – baroque, but not in a sophisticated way. I like them because I have always loved cake, and no one else was baking me cake on a regular basis. She also brought gifts every time she came. They were cheap trinkets that I didn’t really want. She was in a lot of clubs and contests through the mail. These trinkets were the things that she’d won or earned. I appreciated the gesture, even if I didn’t want the bling.
When I entered college in the city I grew up in, she’d write me long rambling letters. Parts of some of the letters were very interesting. She’d recount stories from her childhood. Mostly, the letters didn’t say much. But I enjoyed them, and appreciated getting mail at college. I had earned money over the summer, and had begun to understand, as I got older, that she was kind of poor. I offered to start sending her $50 per month, but she refused. She thanked me, but said that I needed that money for other things.
She had always sent me money for my birthday, as did my grandparents. I had grown up relatively well off. As a young adult, the irony of this struck me. Although at any given time my parents might not have been flush with money, they had been very much on their way up, and I had gone along with them. I felt that I could thank her by giving back, now that I had money of my own. But I suppose that she wouldn’t take the money out of pride.
I went away to graduate school, and we still wrote letters back and forth. When I’d come home, I’d visit with her. As I became more educated and destined for upward mobility, we had less and less in common, yet we remained close. We were blood, and our relationship was built on a lifetime of her nurturing attention.
Then her and my dad’s father died. She had taken care of him for years. My dad was at the hospital with her and his other brother and sister when my grandfather passed into mortality. My dad told me that my aunt had a massive breakdown. All of the children were bereft, but my aunt broke down sobbing and could not stop. My dad thinks that something inside of her snapped at that time, that she changed.
She moved into his house, the house he and my grandmother had lived in for as long as I’d been alive. It was the house where many of my childhood memories were made. At the beginning of 1991, I visited her in her new home. She was very happy to see me, and urged me to take some things from the house. I took a rocking chair that I liked. Then she gave me her mother’s engagement ring. I took it in my hands, but immediately, questions began forming in my mind. I was one of fifteen grandchildren. My aunt had a sister. How could this ring be mine? Surely it belonged to someone else, perhaps my other aunt.
Although I accepted it, I turned it over to my father as soon as I got home. He was upset. He agreed with me that my aunt should not have given it to me. He was the executor of my grandfather’s will, so he had more than a little to say about how heirlooms such as this ring were to be distributed.
He telephoned my aunt and chewed her out. They had a shouting match. After that, things got very strange. My dad turned the ring over to his other sister. He told my mom and I that my aunt had behaved very strangely at a family meeting in which he played the role of executor and distributed my grandparents’ belongings. She seemed to be squirreling things away for herself without giving her siblings a chance to see them and express interest in them. My grandparents had not left much. Anything my dad, aunt, and uncle would have wanted would have had sentimental value.
My dad bestowed a heavy, engraved bedstead upon me. It had belonged to him and my mother when they were first married. It had been my grandfather’s for years. My dad wanted me to have it, since it had been his first. I couldn’t take it back to my place with me at that time. Although liked it in a sentimental fashion, I wasn’t eager to take it into my home. It was big and bulky, and would require some work to assemble.
This act of my father’s further infuriated my aunt. She believed that the bed should belong to her. She was the child who had nursed their father for years while he was sick. She essentially declared war upon half of her family. She would no longer speak to anyone in my dad’s family, nor anyone in her sister’s family. The latter alienation was the culmination of a lifelong bitter rivalry between two sisters.
After the many years of closeness to her, we were shocked. I didn’t feel that I could have done things any differently. I would still have given my father the ring if I’d had it to do over again. If I hadn’t, she’d have kept it rather than it going to my other aunt. We tried to make peace with her. We’d send her cards and letters, and she’d return them unopened. I’d try to call her but she’d just hang up on me.
It must have been even worse for my aunt and those of her children who still lived in the same city. My Aunt Ethel would tell us that she’s seen her sister at the grocery, but Aunt Betty would glare at her, turn on her heel, and march in the opposite direction. Over time, I slowly let go of her. There wasn’t much to hold onto. I never felt angry with her, only bewildered. She remained close to her other brother and his family, but they lived three hours away. From time to time I’d hear news of her through them. She seemed to be doing fine. At one point, she’d even asked about me.
As time passed though, her health deteriorated. She was losing her vision, like her father, and had become even heavier, and was now bent over. I had not seen any pictures of her in years, so I was left trying to imagine how she must have looked. I heard that she’d shrunk in height quite a bit. This was hard to imagine. She’d always been such a tall, imposing woman.
I often wondered whether I would see her before she died. I finally came to the conclusion that unless someone else died before her, and I saw her at that person’s funeral, I would probably not see her until her own funeral. Then came the news, she had died. It was fall of 2006. I had not seen her in 15 years. I felt very little emotion. I had ceased to love her long ago. Not suddenly, but just like water ebbing from a slow leak.
I was sure that I would go to the funeral. But then my mom told me that it was just going to be a short memorial service on a Monday morning, and that there wouldn’t even be any food. She didn’t think that many of the family would be there. My aunt had already been cremated. I felt let down. I wanted to go, but for a ten-hour round trip drive, I could see how it might not make sense to go under the circumstances.
The night after the service, I talked to my dad. He said that the service had been wonderful and that many of my cousins had been there. My cousin the priest had given a very nice service. He’d asked everyone, if they wanted to, to offer up a remembrance of her. Many of my cousins remembered her as being an unkind woman, always yelling at them. My own brother (who hadn’t attended) certainly remembered her that way.
It was then that I realized that she really hadn't liked children. The reason that she liked me so much was that I was a very good child. I did not make trouble, so she never had to yell at me. The other children were normal. They made trouble, so she yelled at them. All those years of closeness, all that special treatment was about her inability to relate to normal children. I was the one child she could be around without lashing out.
One of the strangest things about this story is that all along, when she had quite speaking to her brother’s and sister’s family, I had imagined her as being miserable, and couldn’t understand why she did that to herself. Later, I heard about how she’d avidly followed the story of Princess Diana, and had even written to her. She probably continued with all of her hobbies and through-the-mail clubs and contents.
People had looked in on her, although they weren’t her people, since she’d alienated those of her family who lived near her. When family care was needed, my poor uncle had driven the three hours from his home in Ohio to take care of business, since she wouldn’t let any of her home-town family come near.
When I was home the Christmas after she died, my father handed me an unopened letter. Its inscription had been typed, and read, “To be given to Pea Eye Parker upon my death.” I felt a sense of dread. My father had received a similar envelope. Inside had been an incendiary letter making many scathing allegations against my father. All the love she’d given him as a child, as a young man, and even as a middle aged man had turned to hate and resentment.
I read the letter in disbelief. Her words sounded like the ravings of a lunatic. And yet the same part of me that felt guilty for what I’d done wondered whether some small shred of what she’d written could be true. When I read my letter, what sorts of accusations would I find, and would some of them be true? I read my dad’s letter five or six more times before I put it down. I felt very badly for him. I didn’t think it would break him apart, and yet how could it not tug in some way on his heart and conscience, even if he’d done nothing wrong?
With trepidation, I opened my letter. I knew it was risky. It was bedtime, and if what I read was anything like my father’s letter, I could face a night of insomnia or nightmares. But my letter was very short and to the point. There was no raving, and there were no accusations; simply a statement. I’d “told on her” one too many times. The last time was enough. “No more”, she wrote. That was it. No love, no hate, no emotion of any kind.
That was how the story ended.
She married twice, and at least one of her marriages was abusive. My dad and his parents drove from Pittsburgh to somewhere in Michigan to “rescue” her from one of these men. By the time I came along, she had been divorced for a long time. She lived by herself in a row house, working at the local school as a custodian.
She and I were especially close. I would sometimes stay at her house overnight. I remember sitting on the couch with her watching TV. I kept asking, “What did he say?” and “What does that mean?” until she finally had to tell me to quit asking questions so she could hear the dialog. She only had one bed, so I shared it with her after the TV program.
I was awoken by a terrible droning noise. She was snoring heavily. I didn’t know what to do, so I went into the living room. There were no blankets, and it was winter. I found my winter jacket, and curled up on the couch under my jacket. That is where she found me in the morning. She and my parents would remind me about this story from time to time when I was older.
When I was in junior high, she began sharing Sunday dinners with us regularly. My little brother was still a baby. She’d bring over a bag of Italian bread fresh out of the oven from her local bakery, Mancini’s. That was the best bread I’d ever had. I’d pull a fat round warm crusty bun out of the bag when she arrived and eat it without butter, it was that good.
She took up cake decorating and began making fancy birthday cakes for me and my brother. I think my mom was kind of horrified. To her, the cakes were very “tacky” – baroque, but not in a sophisticated way. I like them because I have always loved cake, and no one else was baking me cake on a regular basis. She also brought gifts every time she came. They were cheap trinkets that I didn’t really want. She was in a lot of clubs and contests through the mail. These trinkets were the things that she’d won or earned. I appreciated the gesture, even if I didn’t want the bling.
When I entered college in the city I grew up in, she’d write me long rambling letters. Parts of some of the letters were very interesting. She’d recount stories from her childhood. Mostly, the letters didn’t say much. But I enjoyed them, and appreciated getting mail at college. I had earned money over the summer, and had begun to understand, as I got older, that she was kind of poor. I offered to start sending her $50 per month, but she refused. She thanked me, but said that I needed that money for other things.
She had always sent me money for my birthday, as did my grandparents. I had grown up relatively well off. As a young adult, the irony of this struck me. Although at any given time my parents might not have been flush with money, they had been very much on their way up, and I had gone along with them. I felt that I could thank her by giving back, now that I had money of my own. But I suppose that she wouldn’t take the money out of pride.
I went away to graduate school, and we still wrote letters back and forth. When I’d come home, I’d visit with her. As I became more educated and destined for upward mobility, we had less and less in common, yet we remained close. We were blood, and our relationship was built on a lifetime of her nurturing attention.
Then her and my dad’s father died. She had taken care of him for years. My dad was at the hospital with her and his other brother and sister when my grandfather passed into mortality. My dad told me that my aunt had a massive breakdown. All of the children were bereft, but my aunt broke down sobbing and could not stop. My dad thinks that something inside of her snapped at that time, that she changed.
She moved into his house, the house he and my grandmother had lived in for as long as I’d been alive. It was the house where many of my childhood memories were made. At the beginning of 1991, I visited her in her new home. She was very happy to see me, and urged me to take some things from the house. I took a rocking chair that I liked. Then she gave me her mother’s engagement ring. I took it in my hands, but immediately, questions began forming in my mind. I was one of fifteen grandchildren. My aunt had a sister. How could this ring be mine? Surely it belonged to someone else, perhaps my other aunt.
Although I accepted it, I turned it over to my father as soon as I got home. He was upset. He agreed with me that my aunt should not have given it to me. He was the executor of my grandfather’s will, so he had more than a little to say about how heirlooms such as this ring were to be distributed.
He telephoned my aunt and chewed her out. They had a shouting match. After that, things got very strange. My dad turned the ring over to his other sister. He told my mom and I that my aunt had behaved very strangely at a family meeting in which he played the role of executor and distributed my grandparents’ belongings. She seemed to be squirreling things away for herself without giving her siblings a chance to see them and express interest in them. My grandparents had not left much. Anything my dad, aunt, and uncle would have wanted would have had sentimental value.
My dad bestowed a heavy, engraved bedstead upon me. It had belonged to him and my mother when they were first married. It had been my grandfather’s for years. My dad wanted me to have it, since it had been his first. I couldn’t take it back to my place with me at that time. Although liked it in a sentimental fashion, I wasn’t eager to take it into my home. It was big and bulky, and would require some work to assemble.
This act of my father’s further infuriated my aunt. She believed that the bed should belong to her. She was the child who had nursed their father for years while he was sick. She essentially declared war upon half of her family. She would no longer speak to anyone in my dad’s family, nor anyone in her sister’s family. The latter alienation was the culmination of a lifelong bitter rivalry between two sisters.
After the many years of closeness to her, we were shocked. I didn’t feel that I could have done things any differently. I would still have given my father the ring if I’d had it to do over again. If I hadn’t, she’d have kept it rather than it going to my other aunt. We tried to make peace with her. We’d send her cards and letters, and she’d return them unopened. I’d try to call her but she’d just hang up on me.
It must have been even worse for my aunt and those of her children who still lived in the same city. My Aunt Ethel would tell us that she’s seen her sister at the grocery, but Aunt Betty would glare at her, turn on her heel, and march in the opposite direction. Over time, I slowly let go of her. There wasn’t much to hold onto. I never felt angry with her, only bewildered. She remained close to her other brother and his family, but they lived three hours away. From time to time I’d hear news of her through them. She seemed to be doing fine. At one point, she’d even asked about me.
As time passed though, her health deteriorated. She was losing her vision, like her father, and had become even heavier, and was now bent over. I had not seen any pictures of her in years, so I was left trying to imagine how she must have looked. I heard that she’d shrunk in height quite a bit. This was hard to imagine. She’d always been such a tall, imposing woman.
I often wondered whether I would see her before she died. I finally came to the conclusion that unless someone else died before her, and I saw her at that person’s funeral, I would probably not see her until her own funeral. Then came the news, she had died. It was fall of 2006. I had not seen her in 15 years. I felt very little emotion. I had ceased to love her long ago. Not suddenly, but just like water ebbing from a slow leak.
I was sure that I would go to the funeral. But then my mom told me that it was just going to be a short memorial service on a Monday morning, and that there wouldn’t even be any food. She didn’t think that many of the family would be there. My aunt had already been cremated. I felt let down. I wanted to go, but for a ten-hour round trip drive, I could see how it might not make sense to go under the circumstances.
The night after the service, I talked to my dad. He said that the service had been wonderful and that many of my cousins had been there. My cousin the priest had given a very nice service. He’d asked everyone, if they wanted to, to offer up a remembrance of her. Many of my cousins remembered her as being an unkind woman, always yelling at them. My own brother (who hadn’t attended) certainly remembered her that way.
It was then that I realized that she really hadn't liked children. The reason that she liked me so much was that I was a very good child. I did not make trouble, so she never had to yell at me. The other children were normal. They made trouble, so she yelled at them. All those years of closeness, all that special treatment was about her inability to relate to normal children. I was the one child she could be around without lashing out.
One of the strangest things about this story is that all along, when she had quite speaking to her brother’s and sister’s family, I had imagined her as being miserable, and couldn’t understand why she did that to herself. Later, I heard about how she’d avidly followed the story of Princess Diana, and had even written to her. She probably continued with all of her hobbies and through-the-mail clubs and contents.
People had looked in on her, although they weren’t her people, since she’d alienated those of her family who lived near her. When family care was needed, my poor uncle had driven the three hours from his home in Ohio to take care of business, since she wouldn’t let any of her home-town family come near.
When I was home the Christmas after she died, my father handed me an unopened letter. Its inscription had been typed, and read, “To be given to Pea Eye Parker upon my death.” I felt a sense of dread. My father had received a similar envelope. Inside had been an incendiary letter making many scathing allegations against my father. All the love she’d given him as a child, as a young man, and even as a middle aged man had turned to hate and resentment.
I read the letter in disbelief. Her words sounded like the ravings of a lunatic. And yet the same part of me that felt guilty for what I’d done wondered whether some small shred of what she’d written could be true. When I read my letter, what sorts of accusations would I find, and would some of them be true? I read my dad’s letter five or six more times before I put it down. I felt very badly for him. I didn’t think it would break him apart, and yet how could it not tug in some way on his heart and conscience, even if he’d done nothing wrong?
With trepidation, I opened my letter. I knew it was risky. It was bedtime, and if what I read was anything like my father’s letter, I could face a night of insomnia or nightmares. But my letter was very short and to the point. There was no raving, and there were no accusations; simply a statement. I’d “told on her” one too many times. The last time was enough. “No more”, she wrote. That was it. No love, no hate, no emotion of any kind.
That was how the story ended.
Comments:
intrepideddie (April 19, 2008. 05:04pm)
Wow. Powerful story. Sorry things ended the way they did. The good memories are always there, though.
peahayes (April 19, 2008. 06:31pm)
Yeah, I was just thinking about that last night. I have so many good memories from childhood family affairs... my poor brother missed most of that by being born 11 years later than me. He'll never know what that was like!