Aunt Lorene

Thursday my Aunt died.  The oldest sibling on my father's side.  Aunt Lorene.  She was 99 years old, and I kept telling myself each time that I saw her that she would hang on until 100.  I always felt like I would know.  The last time I hugged my dad I knew I wouldn't see him again.  I felt that.  I didn't want to believe it, but I felt it.  Each time I left Aunt Lorene I didn't feel it and it brought me peace.  This last month I felt it.  She was on my mind and in my dreams, and I worried.  I told myself it was because I most likely wouldn't see her this summer that I felt this way.  I told myself she would make it to 100 years, and I would make sure to come for that milestone.  But I think I knew.

Rusty, Cara, Connie, Russ, Grandma Mason, Grandpa Mason, Aunt Lorene

Both my grandmothers died before I really got to know them; my mother's mother when I was one and my father's mother when I was seven.  The only real "grandmothers" that I had on either side were aunts; Aunt Helen and Aunt Lorene.

Jo and Aunt Lorene

Her life wasn't easy.  She was the eldest child and the only girl in a family of four.  She helped raise her three brothers.  She married young, and while the marriage was hard she stayed, raising three boys of her own.  She left a good job, one she loved, to come home to care for her mother when she was dying.  She wondered aloud to me several times how different her life might have been if she hadn't come back.  "But I don't regret it," she said.  

Aunt Lorene was "grandmother" to many children.  She didn't care if they were related to her or not, if they needed a place or a hug or food she was there.  She was a mother and a mentor.  My brother and I stayed with Aunt Lorene when my parents had to travel.  We stayed in the front bedroom of her house, and she didn't care when we discovered that the closet in that room led into the closet into her room; a great secret hideaway to us.  She let us rummage around in there, pushing aside her dresses to enter and exit from either side.  While my Uncle Leo was the disciplinarian, Aunt Lorene pretty much gave us free rein to play.

She took care of her father when he couldn't be alone anymore, moving him into her house.  "It was just what was expected," she told me.  She worked with her husband selling farm supplies from her garage.  She would be in the kitchen cooking when someone would drive up, and out she would go to complete a sale before returning to the food on the stove.  She gardened.  She took care of the animals on the farm.  She worked later in a corner store that the family owned.  I can remember stopping there with my dad on the way to the farm and she would be asleep standing up when we entered.  My dad loved to catch her napping while on the job.  "Are you sleeping or reading your eye lids?" he would shout at her, causing her to jump.  She never scolded him.  She loved her little brother too much for that.  "Oh, I'm just resting my eyes," she would say in her slow drawl.

 

Family and church were important to her.  She taught us Sunday school, teaching us songs and Bible stories while we colored pictures that she would later hang around the room.  She cleaned the church and made sure that it stayed open even as people migrated to bigger churches and congregations.  She took it upon herself to bring the family together at holidays and reunions.  Thanksgiving was always at Aunt Lorene's after our grandparents died with the women in the kitchen, the men hunting, and the kids playing the many board games she kept in a cabinet in an end table.

Christmas Eve was at the farm.  Everyone would gather and eat and open presents.  Aunt Lorene always made sure everyone had something to open.  She did the shopping for our grandfather and for herself.  My favorite present ever came from my grandfather.  It was a barrette with my name engraved on it.  I still have it to this day because back then Cara was never found on any item, and I thought it the greatest thing ever.  It wasn't until years later that I realized my Aunt was the one who took care of getting me that.

Aunt Lorene came to my graduations.  She came to my wedding.  She made sure that she was there for me in things that mattered, always bringing me a homemade angel food cake that she swore was my favorite, even though I hated angel food cake.  She loved to kiss us and hug us and smother us with love, and we always squirmed and protested and wiped off her kisses.  But secretly we felt loved.

She loved to cook for everyone.  In her better days she made delicious noodles that the kids couldn't get enough of.  Her pies were always sweet and her meringue peak perfect.  She fried chicken for the family reunion every year up until this past reunion when her kids demanded she stop as she could barely stand due to back pain and a fractured hip.  I can remember many a reunion waking up to the smell of frying chicken at 5 o'clock in the morning.  "I have to get this fried so that I can go to church before the reunion," she would say each year.

If you showed up at her house for any reason, you were fed.  "Sit down and I'll make you some eggs and bacon and gravy and biscuits," she would tell you.  She was happiest when she could feed you, and she worried when you refused.  I spent many hours sitting at her round table watching her cook, telling her stories, and eating.  When I began going each summer to stay with her at our reunion time it was Darcy who would get up with Aunt Lorene and sit at the table, watching her cook and telling her about her life.  Life coming full circle for me.

As I got older, I got more curious about her life.  She outlived her parents, her brothers, and one son.  I made her tell me stories about when she was young and lived on the farm.  I was fascinated about she had to see "beaus" in the front room of the house and how they were never suppose to be alone with one another.  I wish I had recorded those conversations.  We talked about doing so, but never did, and of course I regret that as my own mind isn't so sharp anymore either.

After her son died, she wondered why she was still alive.  She said no one should have to bury her child.  She would have liked to have given her life to spare her son.  She felt she had lived a good life, been faithful, loved as often as she could.  She was content in her belief that this wasn't the end. She said she would continue on until "the good lord takes me".  I was hoping it would have been later, but I couldn't have asked for a better grandmother figure.  She will be missed by many.