Heartbroken

My  Aunt Dorothy died last weekend.  My head hurts, my heart aches, and I have a lot to do before I leave for her funeral, so this is going to be kind of raw blogging – a stream of consciousness focused on what comes to me in the moment. 

She was the last of my elder family members. I no longer have any aunts, uncles, grandparents, or parents. It’s a strange feeling. I’m not alone though. Most of my cousins (really first cousins once removed) are in the same boat. So it seems appropriate to leave the familiarity of my life here at home for a day to be with them, commiserate, reminisce, and honor the memory of this wonderful woman. 

Last year I wrote an article for Catholicmom.com about my Aunt Dot and Spirit Radio contacted me to do a phone interview about it. I think those two pieces capture the Aunt Dot I knew and loved so much. 

Her obituary is here, but it’s really the comments on the page and on Facebook that truly capture the essence of the woman. They say things like sense of humor, warm, loving, fun! She was all those things and she also had such a strong faith in God. 

Aunt Dot lived by herself until just a few years ago. She shoveled her walk, brought in wood for her wood heater – she really enjoyed robust health. When she started to fail, she went down fast. Her family quickly moved her into a nursing home setting and she wrote me letters about how much she hated it. Mr. Pete and I went to visit her last summer and the home seemed safe and secure. They had her pictures and momentoes all over the wall in her room. 

She tried to convince us that she could take care of herself. “I can make myself peanut butter sandwiches. I’ll be fine! We tried to convince her that a diet of pure peanut butter and bread would get old pretty quickly. I think from the twinkle in her sightless eyes, she knew that she was trying to get a response from us – and she did!


When Rosie was born, I wanted to name her after my mother, but I also wanted to honor Aunt Dot too. So Rosie’s middle name is Dorothy.  Aunt Dot LOVED that!  She boasted at the reunion that year about how the newest baby was named for her!  And she always called Rosie – Rosie Dot!  Now Rosie is starting to call herself that. 

When Rosie was two years old, we went to the family reunion (like we did most years) and the older kids climbed on a hay wagon for a ride. Rosie was so upset that she wasn’t with them. She pulled away from me and started running after the tractor and the wagon, screaming all the way for them to stop. Aunt Dot wrote an account of this later and said that “Rosie Dot’s legs were going so fast they looked like a couple of egg beaters!”  I loved that.

Rosie has been running ever since. 

I’m running short on time, but I’ll leave with this. 
Yesterday, my daughter-in-law called me. She had heard about Aunt Dot and she wanted to see how I was doing. I love her for that. I wish she could have known Aunt Dot a bit better for a lot longer because I think in 65+ years or so, they’ll be saying these things about Sarah – that she loved, that she cared, and that she had a great faith. 

Somehow, that makes me feel a little better too. 

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