Tired and worn-looking, she sat among the many grandchildren she so patiently babysat, now that she had retired from teaching. Her hands were spotted with the yellow paint she had been working with. The children babbled and jostled, asking for food, telling long-winded jokes, looking to get attention paid to them. This was the last time I would ever see my Aunt Kay, but at the time, there was no way to know it. We were visiting Indiana family, and she had not let on to anyone that she suspected she was gravely ill.
She had always been a patient, quiet presence in the family. Her marriage endly badly many years before our visit, her husband leaving her for another woman. Alone, she finished raising her daughters and son and then helped raise their sons and daughters, rarely if ever complaining, never allowing anyone to criticize her brood, not even my mother, her sister and best friend. Mother always said Kay was a banty-hen of a mother, ready to scrap to defend her chicks. And her chicks had often needed defending.
Now she was asking us about our doings, chatting amiably about the local news, offering us a soda, the usual pleasant time in her company. We left after an hour or so. Goodbye until next visit!
Three months later came word that the mysterious knee pain that had plagued her for some weeks was disseminated cancer. Within days she was dead. Mother sat with her at the end, hours at a time, holding her hand. She said Kay rarely opened her eyes, just smiled sweetly when anyone spoke to her. She died peacefully, medicated, leaving behind stunned grief among her loved ones.
I was unable to go out to Indiana, but my mother sent me the eulogy my cousin delivered at the graveside memorial, held in lieu of a funeral: simple, heartfelt words of memory and appreciation. She spoke them to the large crowd of people who attended out of affection for a woman whose life, quietly and selflessly lived, had touched so many. I will not feel the weight of her death until the next visit home, when I go by her house and know that she is not there. She is gone.
2/2/99