On my recent trip to Iowa, I called my cousin Debbie, my Aunt Rosalie's daughter, and Betty and Elmer Stearns, the sister and brother-in-law of Leo Lindberg, my mother's second husband. Although I didn't go to see them, and it's been a long time since we spoke, they greeted me so warmly and fondly, as if we'd chatted every day for years. Those family ties I held so loose and slack now seem mixed skeins of relation that hold me closely wrapped - I am grateful to find them in place after all, one of later life's small gifts of recompense for past sins of omission.
Deb told me that Aunt Ro had been placed in hospice, and I do know what that means, but I was still taken aback when she called a few days after I had gotten home to tell me that my dear, funny aunt had passed at 98. She was the artistic one. Uncle Roger, too. I saw their paintings as a child when I went to their homes, one of my clearest bell-tone memories. Though I felt very alone as I defined myself as artist and art teacher, I think Ro and Roger were there, offering me that path when my mother, bless her soul, wished for me a secure and functional life of homemaking, teaching, maybe nursing. (A vocational test I took in high school suggested I might be a drill-press operator.)
That day on the phone I asked Deb to tell Aunt Ro how much I felt her spirit in my life, and how glad I was that I had and have this work. She told me later that she had told Ro this, and I was comforted to know that one small last connection had been given to me.
I also remember when my Aunt Bruna renounced me for a teen-age incident. I had "shot my mouth off" over her endless grieving, not realizing how troubled a person she really was.
Even 35 years later, Bruna would never speak to me or see me, and before she died, I wrote her a letter telling her that I was sorry and asked her to speak to me once again. She refused. But Aunt Ro had read the letter (shared with her by my mother) and she told me that it was a good letter and I felt her tough brand of regard directed to me for what this had cost me.
I knew in some way, I'd made it right anyway.
Now, my parents are gone, my beloved uncles are gone, and all my dear aunts but one, my Uncle Roger's wife, Berniece, who lives in Cedar Rapids, alone, doing very well, living a quiet, blessed, and kindly life. I don't think about it so much, that the generations have switched places and I'm now the one moving close to the horizon's end. The perspective shifts; acceptance and a sense of privilege grows. My own children and grandchildren fill my heart and days with immediate joy and rejoicing gratitude. That's me, in full being, so fully part of life's ongoing stream.
Aunt Rosalie was frequently published in the local papers.
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