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Aunt Thelma 12/26/2016 10:38:12 AM
As a child, I was full of pranks and not a few of them backfired. I was roughly five or six when my parents parked me with my maternal grandmother. I had an aunt who took care of me. God, she was ancient. At least nine years older than me. I decided I would frighten her by playing monster so I took a couple of short tubular pasta noodles and stuck one noodle up each nostril so they would look like fangs. They were supposed to hang out of my nose.
That would have been superlative if only I had not inhaled. Sucked the noodles right up into my nostrils. But the joke worked when my aunt saw me standing there with blood running out of my nose. Amidst giggles and suppressed laughter, she cleaned the broken macaroni out of my nose. We never spoke of the incident again and she never told my parents.
In later years I learned my aunt was a bit of a kleptomaniac. I couldn't go anywhere with her because she insisted on stealing silverware from restaurants or catered events. Even at her brother's retirement dinner, she cleared half the table. Virginia went to eat her appetizer only to find that she had nothing with which to eat it. My aunt was calmly munching away on her food. I was eating mine and conversing. Virginia pointed out that I had taken her silverware and there was nothing else on the table to use.
My aunt giggles when I asked her if we could borrow the fork, at least, and we'd return it. I mean, she was an inveterate collector of silverware. Even at her own wedding, she snatched at least three sets of silverware from the table. Napkins were also not exempt if they were quality linens. I don't know what she did with these items. I never saw them again.
Aunt T and I had one of those unique relationships. When I was a child, she was the sitter who took me to Levine's for a black and white soda (vanilla ice cream with chocolate soda). She also walked me past the best back yards in the area where we pinched peaches or apples from the trees. I always got to do the pinching.
Thelma didn't marry until her 40s. She wasn't an attractive woman and frequently broke out with bumps all over her face. She married a man who had been married before, a Dutchman named Bill, who was the finest man I have ever known. When he died of a sudden heart attack, Thelma handled it well and I didn't see her again until my dad's funeral.
I was sitting there with my face buried in my hands, hiding the tears so I wouldn't disturb people when I felt a sharp poke in my back. I ignored it, thinking it was an accidental nudge. The poke came again. I turned and there was Aunt T, looking sternly at me.
"You're getting too serious!" she said. God, it was good to see her again, to remember all the kindness and love.
Thelma lasted a few years longer, developed heart problems and underwent surgery. I was in Kentucky then and she was living in New Jersey so I could not get away to visit as I was undergoing chemotherapy. I spoke with her on the phone and told her that she better not die as I was writing about her in one of my books. She laughed, sounding in good spirits.
Then she started accumulating water in her system, a condition that plagues our family. The doctor ordered dialysis. Evidently the strain was too much for her. My uncle told me she died peacefully, just as she had lived.
I don't know a lot about Thelma, age, date of birth, early life, that kind of thing. I only know she cared for me when I was young and all my happy memories are of aunts and uncles who made me feel loved. She is one of them.
A few weeks ago I was attending Sunday Mass. They were singing my aunt's favorite hymn and a few tears began to shed. Suddenly I felt a pointed poke in my back. When I looked around, there was no one behind me. Just a voice that said: "You're getting too serious!"
