A Family Reunion

We buried my Aunt Louise a few days ago. It was a cold sunny day, one of the few we’ve had in this new decade. I hadn’t seen much of her in recent years. When I did see her, I wasn’t sure whether she knew who I was or not. Dementia had slowly stolen her away from us piece by piece so that instead of the warm hug and kiss on the cheek she had always greeted me with, she was quiet and reserved with an unsure look in her eyes.

My daddy’s sister was a pretty lady. Petite and always neatly dressed. She loved to have a perm in her fine brown hair and lipstick on her lips. Toward the end though, she would take a hairbrush to her freshly styled hair until it was flat against her head. The care and attention to her appearance lost with so many other things.

Aunt Louise was big on family. If there was a family event, a reunion, Christmas dinner, or a family member in the hospital, she was there. She, my uncle, and a couple of cousins even made a quick trip from Alabama to New York by car so that she could be with her sister on her eightieth birthday.

Sometimes in the summer when I was a young girl, Aunt Louise would drive from Opelika one county over to our house in the sticks. Her big sedan, she preferred Buicks, would pull up in our drive crunching gravel beneath the tires. She was there to pack us up and take us back to spend a few days at her house “in town”. I would be so excited as my brother and I loaded our stuff into her car and drove away giggling and cutting up with my cousins in the backseat.

Turning into their subdivision was like entering a different world where houses were lined up neatly down asphalt streets. There were street lights and gas lamps, and each house had a cement driveway reaching down to meet the pavement. This was vastly different than the red dirt road we lived on where the houses were separated by acres of pasture.

Over the next few days we played with my cousins and their friends who lived next door or across the street, while my aunt sunbathed on a towel in the backyard. Our sunbathing was done while we were in the garden picking beans, and our playmates, all of them our cousins, lived at least two hundred yards down the road.

I know now that she came for us because it was important to her that we had a relationship. She wanted to be part of our lives and wanted us to be a part of hers. I never felt in the way or like a burden when I visited her. I felt at home.

It is hard to lose her, but in truth, we lost her a long time ago. I’ve been told that toward the end she would ask to be taken to her long dead parents. That longing has been satisfied. She’s been reunited with them, her sisters and brothers, and a whole host of other family members and friends that have gone on before her. That feeling of loss and confusion that I know she must have perpetually experienced has been replaced by a joyous familiarity. She’s been made whole.

I have no doubt that when my time comes, I’ll find her sitting in a folding lawn chair beside a table full of reunion chicken and casseroles surrounded by family. When she sees me, she’ll give me a hug and a kiss.

She’ll know who I am.

In Memory of

Angie Louise Royster Hodge

1939 - 2020