My mom and aunt were inseparable. They shared everything. Aunt Rose was her younger sister, as playful as mom was stoic. Together they sort of balanced one another out. Aunt Rose never married or had kids, so she adopted us. She always had her own apartment; small but cozy with a warmly lit kitchen and fragrantly burning candles. Her living room was a jungle of hanging plants.

     Mom and Dad met and married while Rose was still in college, studying to be an Arts Therapist. It was the perfect career for her. She was wonderful with introverted and traumatized children, helping to bring their free spirits  out with movement therapy, music, painting and all the arts. As playful as she was, she also had a fiercly maternal side that advocated for those who could not do so themselves.

     It was a few years after her retirement party. Aunt Rose had always hosted our family Thanksgiving. I noticed she needed help to set the table the year before, but assumed she was jurst tired. Mom asked me if I noticed anything "different" about Aunt Rose, like was she more forgetful? I did notice that when I told her about a family event, she would repeat it to me as if she had just heard about it and needed to share it. When my brother went away on business trips, and I would tell her, she repeated back to me the same comments. Would he be flying back with his wife? she wondered. How long would he be gone? Did he need to be picked up at the airport?

     Anyway, as I said, Aunt Rose loved to put on Thanksgiving dinner for all of us. She would roast a turkey and stuff it, cook fresh veggies and several pies. Candied yams, the whole show. Little chocolate turkeys by our plates. This past year, when Aunt Rose insisted on hosting, mom tried to gently talk her out of it. "No way!" Aunt Rose insisted, and mom took her to Whole Foods to shop.

     Thanksgiving Day, Mom, Dad, my brother Robert and sister in law Linda and I arrived at her place, as usual, at noon. Aunt Rose was in her living room in her nightgown and bathrobe in her rocker.

     "Rose!" my mother called. "You need to get dressed because it's Thanksgiving!" She looked at us in delight and answered "Wonderful! Where are you taking us?" 

     "Rose, remember when you bought the turkey and planned on roasting it?"

     Don't be ridiculous, Jean. You know very well that I can't be trusted to cook anything!. I turn on the stove and don't remember it's on!" she spoke with so much clarity it seemed that earlier Aunt Rose had returned. But right after that she asked me if I had finished college. I said yes, But didn't tell her it was thirty years ago. 

     "Let's all go to the Four Seasons! Dad suggested, and we pretended it was the most brilliant idea ever.