Aunt Nora

"A sibling may be the keeper of one's identity, the only person with the keys to one's unfettered, more fundamental self."  ~Marian Sandmaier

I've been thinking a lot about my Aunt Nora lately. Aunt Nora was my mom's sister, just one year younger than my mom who was the eldest of four.  She married in her thirties to  a widower who had two teenage daughters and a young son.  While there were always tensions with her stepdaughters, she raised her stepson as her own.  Aunt Nora and Uncle Bud lived in Detroit.  She was a fixture in my everyday life.  My mom's two youngest siblings died while in their fifties, just a few months between their deaths. Aunt Bea lived in Phoenix and Uncle Ray in Montreal.  He was mostly estranged from the family.  I saw him only once during my adult life.  For many years, my sisters and I visited Aunt Bea in Arizona.  And most years, she visited her sisters in Windsor.  We even enjoyed a couple of vacation days as the junior sisters and the senior sisters.

Merv and I married in 1989.  By the time our third wedding anniversary came around, we had lost Merv's dad, my dad's sister Aunt Sadie, Aunt Nora and my dad.  It was a lot of loss in a short time.  Aunt Nora passed suddenly just six weeks before my dad.  Two days after her funeral, my dad was admitted to the palliative care unit at the hospital where he died.  It was a hard time for my family and we barely had time to mourn the unexpected loss of Aunt Nora.  Lately, I've been feeling an aching loss, a void in my life in the place that she filled.  And I've been wondering if things would have turned out differently had Aunt Nora not passed when she did.

Aunt Nora wasn't there to comfort and support my mom when my dad died.  At a time she most needed her sister, my mom found herself alone.  We tried to fill the void but it truly wasn't enough.  No one but a sister can provide a certain kind of solace.  I've been wondering if my mom would have made the terrifying descent into Alzheimer's that soon followed the death of my dad if Aunt Nora had still been around.  I can't seem to shake the notion that mom went to that dark place because it was where she could still connect to her sisters.  In the days when she could still communicate with us, she would often ask if Aunt Nora was coming over.

My Aunt Nora was special.  She had an infectious laugh and she loved to tease people.  She always took an interest in even the minutia of our lives.  When I was eight she gave me my very first book of poetry - A Little Treasury of American Poetry.  It's on the bookshelf in the guest bedroom.  I miss all my absent family members.  Aside from my dad, it is Aunt Nora that I miss the most.  I miss her laughter.  I miss seeing her chatting with my mom.  I miss witnessing the fun they had together.  Twenty-one years later, I am grieving.