Orphaned…again.

When my sweet mother died seven years ago, I was heartbroken but at peace.  She had been frail for several years and I knew it was coming.  When my father died three years ago, I was devastated.  Not only would I miss this funny man who had been the best of fathers, but with his passing I became an orphan.  I no longer had a parent with whom I could share my joys or my troubles.  There was no family home I could run to for that feeling of security and stability—the closest thing to an anxiety free environment.  But, I still had Uncle Hap and Aunt Leah.  They had always been like parents to me.  They and their nine children lived one block away from us when I was a child, and we felt as comfortable in their home as we did in ours.  They scolded us and loved us just like Mom and Dad did.  When Mom got frustrated with her eight, less-than-perfect children, she would run away.  I always knew that she was hiding out at Holmstead’s, because we always got a call from Aunt Leah telling us to be nicer to our mother and to get busy doing our chores.  We always thought the food in Aunt Leah’s fridge was better than what we found in ours.  We spent every holiday together.  It was a great way to grow up.

When I left for this mission, I was pretty sure that Uncle Hap would not be there when I got back, but my Aunt Leah…she was going to outlive all of us.  I talked to her in May when Uncle Hap died.  I couldn’t comfort her because she was too busy telling me that everything was going to be all right.  She had lists of things to accomplish yet and no one doubted that she had the will and energy to complete everything on her agenda.  When I received word yesterday that she had died, I felt as though I had been orphaned a second time.  Now my siblings, my cousins, and I are left without a generation smarter and wiser than we are.  No one there to reassure us and tell us that we are doing all right, and that things will be okay.

No one in New Zealand ever uses the word “aunt”.  They always speak of their “Auntie”, and aunties have a very special place in kiwi culture.  The word does not always denote a relationship of birth, but always indicates a person of great importance in one’s life.  Aunties are strong women who love, support, lead, and protect.  Their influence is second only to parents.  Auntie is a wonderful term of endearment.  I will miss my Auntie Leah.  She taught me how to sew, how to play the flute, how to organize my home and my life.  She was the voice of calm and strength in every difficult situation.  Nothing phased her.  “Life gets difficult sometimes, but “by gad” you just keep going”, and “go” she did.  She never stopped.  She did more genealogy, performed more acts of service, and fed more people than anyone I have ever met.

When Auntie Leah’s son Lee emailed me about his mother’s stroke, he said that there would be a position of power open when I got back.  I don’t know of anyone who can fill her shoes.  We are all mewling children compared to this powerhouse of a woman.  We will all miss you Auntie Leah.

I have been reading ‘The Wind in the Willows’.  In Kenneth Grahame’s book,  Mole, becoming bored with his life, leaves his home to spend time with Water Rat in a more exciting world.  While on a particular adventure, they come within sniffing range of Mole’s old home.  At first he didn’t understand the smell that affected him as an electric shot.  “Home! That was what they meant, those caressing appeals, those soft touches wafted through the air, those invisible little hands pulling and tugging, all one way!…it was sending out its scouts and its messengers to capture him and bring him in…The home…wanted him back, and was telling him so, through his nose, sorrowfully, reproachfully, but with no bitterness or anger; only with plaintive reminder that it was there, and wanted him.”

Mole could feel a “big sob gathering, gathering, somewhere low down inside him, to leap up to the surface presently…in passionate escape”.  The “wafts from his old home pleaded, whispered, conjured and finally claimed him imperiously.  He dared not tarry longer within their magic circle.  With a wrench that tore his very heartstrings he set his face down the road and followed submissively in the track of the Rat”.  

I can feel those “caressing appeals” from home this week, and I feel a “big sob gathering” as I think of my extended family being together sharing tears, laughter, and much remembering.  I’m picturing Auntie Leah’s resolute face and her fearless voice, “It’s going to be all right, honey, really it will”.  And I’ll do as she would do, put my face down the road and complete the work I’ve started.