I dunno: maybe it’s the weather, grey and dreary rain all week. Maybe it’s the red-and-green Christmas stocking she gave us years ago, now displayed on the entrance to our kitchen. All I know is, I’m missing Aunt Betty today.
My family is half-Catholic, half-Protestant. Betty, my mother’s second-oldest sister–there were six daughters–was a teaching nun at a school in Pennsylvania. When I was a little boy, her old-fashioned black-and-white nun’s habit used to make me uneasy. I once told her that the present I wanted most in the world was a woolly mammoth (I didn’t understand that there were no mammoths anymore). So she made one for me, cut out of an old fur coat. It wasn’t the real thing, but it cured my uneasiness.
I had a lot of growing up to do before I learned to appreciate her kindness, her wit, and her scholarship: she knew her Greek and Roman classics. And then she died; and now I miss her. So many wonderful conversations we could have had! But I do miss my mother and her sisters. They’ve all passed on.
Appreciate your loved ones now. While you can still tell them so.
