Aunt Emma

Emma died Saturday.

I used to sit at her kitchen table and cut out paper dolls with my cousin. I remember her porch, dark with old furniture and blinds, houseplants wherever the was a flat spot to put them. Colored glass on radiators to hold water and humidify the rooms to that stuffy warmth that matched the furniture.

There were steep stairs and cockeyed ceilings on the top floor. I always wanted to prowl around the upstairs but never dared.

The postcard came from my mother Monday night. The funeral was Tuesday. Three thousand miles is too far. I cannot go and I have no time for flowers. I will send them later.

It was not unexpected. It is not something to grieve. She is, at least, at peace.

I am trying to tell my sons about this aunt of mine they seldom saw and do not remember. Who was she? The fragments are scattered and few. I lived with her --- off and on. Funny how I hadn't remembered that so clearly until now.

She had three husbands but I never knew the first two. It was long before I was even thought of. She had a son I have a vague memory of having met but can't recall. He died before her as did his son. A branch of the family lost to me and mine.

She had a daughter by her third husband, born when her son was already grown, but she too is infrequent in my life. Like her mother, she's had three husbands and her first-born was a son. Born when my cousin was only 16, the mother rejected and the grandmother raised. I don't know him either nor he I.

I had my two children close together compared to the gap between Emma's children and I am perfectly happy planning their eventual departure. Emma raised three generations. It took strength to do that. Perhaps it was a natural occurrence for she herself had conceived at 16 and her son had been raised by her own mother. Sixteen seems to be a common thread.

Emma was the daughter of a nurse and a house painter. She was the eldest of eight children whose names I don't know. Her mother died when my mother, the youngest, was just sixteen. A story my mother told and retold, an open window, a careless nurse, her mother dead of the cold and complications.

When Emma had her first child at 16, the father was forced to marry her. That was the honorable thing to do. Her husband's family owned a knitting mill. I can remember knitting mills, a visit somewhere a long time ago. Ghosts.

Emma never finished nursing school. When she had no choice, she studied and passed the exam for RN, but she had been working as a hospital supervisor for years by then. Bravado in a determined package.

Her second husband beat her, or so my mother says. The story too outrageous to relate, the truth somewhere within. There is mention of an ice house. A term that comes up from the past but too shadowy to catch hold of.

Her next husband was my Uncle Bill, a small man who worked at the mill all his working life. He came home and sat. In front of the TV once there were TVs. His grandson was named for him. I can't remember much about him, just that he was a typical man of that era. His meals must be on time, his lunch put up, his clothes washed. The old time rules followed. Children didn't talk to elders even when eating the nightly bowl of ice cream. He did not outlive her by very long.

I remember Emma in her kitchen making loaves of potato bread, putting dishes in their precise places in her crowded kitchen, bleaching everything with Clorox until it frayed, since no respectful housewife would allow anything but blinding white to be the color of the clothes pinned to the revolving clothesline.

My underthings did not last long when I lived with her. She also starched them.

Her family had never been wealthy. My mother claims that Emma was always seeking it. I think they all were.

I remember taking dimes to Woolworth's to buy paperdolls. One set a week. A dime each time. Bargain hunting. I would sit and cut them out piece by piece and play with them with my sister and my cousin. Hours of summetime. They were pretty, I was not. They were the fantasy lives we would lead before TV could tell us or real life show us.

My mother always threw them away.

Calling my mother for information and I hear the quarrelsome echo of my mother's voice. She can never bear for another to be the focus of a conversation. I have to prod her for information.

My mother was the baby. Emma was the eldest. Driven to survive what life was dealing her, they fought all the time when my mother was young. They fought all their lives. It was why I never saw the others very much, hadn't seen most of them for 30 years.

It is probably why, when my mother wrote her occasional notes about the illness that I read between the lines. Real or imagined abuse by an older sibling remembered.

I remind my sons not to fight. They will have only each other when I am gone.

There is a feeling here of loss that I cannot explain. My Aunt Helen dropped dead earlier this year. Face down in her dinner they tell me. Quick. I was shocked but not moved in the same way. Perhaps because her death was fast. A broken hip, recovered to go home, dropping dead at dinner. She did not suffer. The man she lived with was at her side.

Emma lingered. A broken hip just like her sister. But her mind had slipped and she never recovered. Senile dementia. Kept secret until the fall. She was living in a different world, knew different people, rambled on about things long forgotten and did not know her family.

She called for my mother, insisted that she come.

My mother went, and then wrote her postcards to the rest of us.

Emma. A strong woman who had run a hospital for 51 years. Who had been a private care nurse, an RN on the side. Who raised palominos in the middle of the city and ran them on a hill. Who was always there for medical emergencies. Always called and always came. When my sister ripped her stitches out after her tonsillectomy. When my brother almost died from pneumonia. When all the babies were born.

Emma lay in a room by herself and dropped to 58 pounds.

I want east on business and I would not go to see her.

I did not choose to go. I wanted to remember to battle ship, the strapped up nurse in her bleached white starched uniform who seemed to be tough enough to survive anything.

Instead, I toured cemeteries with my Dad. I photographed my ancestors. I visited the truly living. I choose to hold her in my mind as I had last seen her, full of life.

My mother's comments about a ghastly, drooling ghoul haunt me. I make my children promise to smother me.

I overcome the revulsion and call for information.
There was a family bible, but the sisters ripped out the pages. By prodding I find the names and the order of birth of the seven aunts and uncles. I discover that Emma was nearly 90 or maybe 91.

I find the names of some relatives, but not all. I find the pieces I have filled in. And I find I will need to ask more questions.

For now, I am remembering. And I will not forget.

After all, I still buy paper dolls.

Copyright © June 1996 Donnamaie E. White