Remembering a Great Aunt

We buried my great aunt Dot on Saturday in Athens, Georgia. She was almost 97 years old and, for the past 33 years or so might as well have been my paternal grandmother. It seems strange to live in a world now that she does not inhabit. She has been a fixture in my life for 48 years--always just across the street from the Nash family farm in Athens. Always just across that street from the old home place--never anywhere else. Just always there. You could count on it as much as you could count on anything in life. A constant and unwavering presence--always ready to receive a hug and to walk with you into the living room where you could sit and talk about life and the weather and politics.

It was good to be family when it came to Aunt Dot. As my father said at the funeral, "If you were her friend, you were her friend for life; but if you were her enemy, woe be unto you." I was family--and so I didn't have to worry about whether or not I was her friend or her enemy. Family meant everything to her--so if you were blood kin, then you were in like flint. Everyone else was held at a distance until she could distinguish the friends from the foes.

She had a dry, biting wit that could somehow be sarcastic and loving all at the same time.

My father recalled the time that he and Mom accompanied Aunt Dot and Uncle Sid to the mall in Gainesville. Uncle Sid must have dressed in the dark because he had on one brown shoe and one black shoe. Aunt Dot was the first to notice (of course). "Sid," she said, "You got another pair of shoes like that at home?"

She and Uncle Sid had lived through the Great Depression and managed to survive. Like many of her generation, she saved 99 cents of every dollar that Sid brought home from the Athens hardware where he worked. I guess this was why she never understood why anyone would ever leave a tip at a restaurant that was more than 10 percent of the tab. Her reasoning--"The Good Lord only gets ten percent--and nobody in this world ought to get more than He gets."

It was hard to argue with Aunt Dot.

She demonstrated that careful blend of sarcasm and love in the final comment I ever heard her make. We went over to the hospital to see her this past Christmas. Our visits had become much less frequent over the last few years what with teenage children and work schedules. She waited until we were almost out the door before delivering the punch--"See you next Christmas," she muttered just loud enough for us to hear. I was almost to the elevator before I caught her drift!

My son calls her his favorite aunt (at least of the great-great aunt variety of which he has several). He says it's because you always knew where you stood with Dot. You didn't have to wonder--she let you know. And I count that as a real gift--in a world where lots of us wear masks and act lovingly toward each other when we really don't mean it down deep.

It's nice in life to bump into someone now and then who doesn't play the game.

I think we call that "integrity"--and I'm proud to have had an aunt who had it. She gave the rest of us in the family a marker to gauge ourselves by.