Aunt Nellie

This afternoon my Aunt Nellie died. She was 88, and the oldest in my father's family, spouses and all. Her husband, Edwin is my father's oldest brother.

It's easy to think of this as a deliverance for her, since she was in a serious health crisis several times during the past week, with two abdominal surgeries. I don't know many details, but she was apparently on a ventilator since the most recent surgery. She seemed pleasant and reasonably comfortable whenever I saw her over the past months, and had been in church fairly regularly until the past few Sundays. Hiromi often went to pick her and Edwin up at their home so they could be there for the church service. He and LaVerne, our deacon, shared the pick-up schedule.

In the past week I've been thinking back a lot to happier days when I spent a lot of time with Valetta, Edwin and Nellie's daughter who was less than a month younger than I, and my first close friend. We loved to do many of the same things--most exasperatingly for our mothers--climbing trees and investigating birds' nests. We also worked in the field together sometimes, sometimes switching off driving the same tractor, and at other times, each driving a tractor in the same field. Her dad and mine farmed some land together for a while, so there was a lot of working together.

Occasionally I got to go with my dad when he went to work at Edwin's farm for the day. I remember him doing that when it was time to fill the silo. On one of those all-day stays, I learned to ride a bicycle, with Valetta and occasionally Marlin helping along by holding on to the seat to keep the bike upright while I was getting the pedals coordinated. They cheered for me when I finally got good enough to go a short stretch on my own, after they stealthily took their hands off the seat and kept running alongside as though they were still supporting me.

I remember another very good time of playing in the stock tank on a hot summer day. Our grandpa came along and smiled at us, and stopped long enough to tell us the story of when Uncle Mahlon nearly drowned in that stock tank (or another in that spot) when he was three years old, and Uncle Edwin pulled him out and saved his life. I know I heard that story again later, and maybe I've conflated the two events, but that's how it seems to me. Edwin's farm used to be Grandpa's farm.

I also remember a mini crisis at their house when Valetta and I were returning from the loft in the "shohp" where we had gone to check out some bird nests. We were barefoot, as usual. When I got close to the bottom of the ladder, I jumped off, right onto two nails protruding from a board.
That necessitated a trip to town for a tetanus shot the next day.

I spent many a Sunday afternoon at Valetta's house. We usually had hamburgers for lunch.

Nellie had a green thumb, and I loved seeing what was growing in their yard and garden. The heady scent of those voluptuous pink Cabbage roses by the outhouse was reason enough to go there. We played sometimes too in the sandbox by the windmill, with the hollowed out trunk of a nearby Mulberry? tree providing one of the props for our imaginative pastime.

Nellie brought back maple seedlings from her parents' yard in Indiana, and planted them around the house. They were the first maple trees I learned to know up close and personal.

Laddie (or was it Taffy?--or both, at different times?), the dog, was always part of the scene in those earlier years at Valetta's house. He was a good dog, and I was never afraid of him.

In Edwin's family and ours, Valetta and I were not the only age mates. Omar and Carol, Orville and Myron, Leanna and Lowell, and Howard and Dorcas each formed a cousin pair in their grades at school. Orville and Myron were the closest pair, since they were of the same gender.

Nellie was an unusually creative person, I realize now. She was always thrifty, and did not pursue hobbies as zealously as people do nowadays who have more disposable income and fewer scruples against spending it on their own pleasures. She loved a bargain and knew how to place her own bids at auctions she went to. Yet she did not accumulate incessantly, and certainly did not live extravagantly. Much of her creativity was turned to making do with what she had instead of doing "crafty" things with things she bought for that purpose.

In the past few years, Nellie's memory was almost gone. She could still fry eggs for breakfast if Edwin was nearby to tell her when it was time to start, and to guide her through each step along the way. She had an amazing degree of self-awareness, cheerfully admitting to her memory failures, especially with names. "Oh I know you. I just can't remember your name," she told Grace, who was in Valetta's grade in school, and a lifelong acquaintance and friend. Edith, who helped look in on Edwin and Nellie when Leanna was on a trip, was one of Nellie's favorite people, of late. But she always called her Millie because she couldn't remember "Edith."

In a well-functioning community, every child has people other than their parents who help raise them. Nellie was one of the people who helped raise me. I'm grateful to God and to her for doing that. I'm glad she's getting a well-earned eternal rest.

Still, I realize that Nellie's death creates stress and sorrow for the family she leaves behind. I'm praying for them.