Memories Of A Favorite Aunt

About ten years ago I flew East to visit my Aunt Helen, who had been my mother’s best friend as well as my favorite aunt.  She was in her nineties, and was failing.  None of her friends were alive any longer, and her husband of sixty or seventy years had passed away a few years earlier.  Not only did I want to see her before she, too, died, but I wanted to spend time with her while she would still know who I was.  When I walked into her living room, my Aunt’s face broke into a huge smile, which totally startled her caregiver who said, “She doesn’t usually know  anyone who visits anymore!”  I still wished I had flown East sooner.    “Who are you?” the caregiver  asked me.  “I’m her niece,” I told her, adding, “And Helen’s my favorite Aunt.”  “You’re obviously her favorite too.  How amazing!”  Stories I remember about Aunt Helen.  She always made brisket, a favorite dish of my mom’s as well, though Helen couldn’t cook much else, at least according to my mother, and indeed, I don’t remember eating anything else at her house.  Another tale: she and my parents went away for the weekend together, with two or three other couples. The men were all taking showers and shaving in one of the bathrooms when my aunt burst in with a measuring tape, happily declaring, “Natey’s is the biggest!” and racing back out of the bathroom before any of the men had the presence of mind to say a word. (I still can’t believe my mother told me that story.  I must have been in my late teens at the time.)  When I would occasionally drop by her home after school, she would sit me down in the kitchen and talk to me while she unpacked groceries, prepared her brisket, or completed another task. It couldn’t have been cleaning, since she had a housekeeper as long as I knew her.  My mother always told me Helen was the most lively of their women friends, and seemed bored.  Unlike my mom she wasn’t interested in committees to save anyone or anything, so she had few outlets that engaged her.  Helen should have gotten a job my mom said, but that would have demeaned her husband, my Uncle Nate, at least according to her.  I picture my aunt at an office, writing, as I do, though I don’t know why I’ve chosen that sort of job for her in my mind’s eye.  I actually can see her being an editor for a book company or a magazine.  Like everyone in my family, she read widely.  And I can still clearly see her, at ninety-three or four, smiling happily at me in her favorite chair, though we couldn’t have a conversation.  I talked, she listened, nodding her head as if she understood what I was saying. I hope she did, though I have no idea what I shared with her that day.  I know I gave her an afternoon of pleasure, and for that I will always be grateful. Now that I am older (and aging), I appreciate even more the gift of that afternoon many years ago for us both.