This week’s prompt was almost too easy for me, because when I saw the phrase, I knew who to choose without a second’s hesitation.
I don’t remember when I first heard of Aunt Pat, but I was very young. She was my mother’s young maternal aunt, and she had died at 17 of leukemia. My mom was greatly impacted by Pat’s death, as was the rest of the family (her bedroom was kept as a shrine, untouched, for many long years). It’s not an exaggeration that her short life led her to be nearly sanctified by those who knew and loved her.
Pat was born in October 1937 at St Mary’s Hospital and came home to a family of 6 doting siblings ages 13 to 7. All of her siblings except her next oldest sister were named for close family members, and my grandma told me that as the oldest, she was chosen to pick out the new baby’s name. There are several pictures of Patty in dainty little blue dresses, and I now own the little wooden doll cradle that was a gift from my grandma to her little sister.
Patty was just starting school when my grandma and grandma got married, followed in rapid succession by her next 4 siblings, soon leaving only the youngest 2 at home. I also have in an album a lengthy school report written by Pat, full of what at the time were pretty run-of-the-mill social observations regarding what was being taught in school about people of other cultures. To today’s reader, nothing less than horrifying. Pat’s parents, my great grandparents, had grown up in the South and her father was openly racist.
As Pat grew to be a teenager, she became an aunt to a large number of nieces and nephews and often baby-sat. My mother was the oldest grandchild, and she spent a lot of time with her aunt and grandparents (she was 9 years younger than her aunt). She remembers that Pat would play dress up with her, that Pat’s favorite record was the Tennessee Waltz, which she played until she wore the record out, and that Pat would take me mom on her dates with her, Mom riding along in the back seat.
I don’t know what happened when Pat became ill, or how the news was shared with family. I do know that in the 1950’s, there wasn’t a great deal to do for leukemia, and that Pat wasn’t ill for terribly long before she died. She went to prom, and a lovely portrait of her was done in her floor length blue gown. Her boyfriend, Chester, gave her a ring and the family story is that he would not take it back after her death and that she was buried with it. It’s unclear if he had asked her to marry him or if it was a promise for later.
Pat’s death was the 2nd relative in my mom’s life from leukemia. A little cousin on my grandpa’s side had stayed with them the year prior for some hospital visits, little Joey had died at age 6. I later learned that My grandma and Pat’s cousin Flo, from Tennessee, died in the 1970’s of leukemia. I don’t know enough to know if this was genetic.
I do know that my mother’s experience and the rest of the family’s grief didn’t ever really allow many of them to lay Pat to rest. She was talked about frequently, and as mentioned, her bedroom kept as a shrine for many years. It had been cleaned out and was a guest room when I was a child, but I knew that it was a sacred space, not to be entered without permission. I don’t believe anyone ever gave those instructions out loud, we just knew. As I write this, I wonder: would Pat have married and had 9 children like one sister, or been unable to have children and adopted two, like another? Would she have married Chester at all, or would she have chosen a career first? It was the mid-50’s after all. Her 4 sisters were tiny, slim and more than a bit anxious. Would she have been like them, or very different, this youngest sister? Most of all, my grandma and her next-oldest sister recently passed, both in their 90s. Would Pat, who would be 86 this year, still be with us, and I could tease her like I teased my gram, taking her to Mass, out to dinner and asking her to tell tales on the younger version of my mom?
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