The Last Time I Knew You

These days, she wears a watch on each wrist. Almost all of her fingers have rings. She wears two necklaces.

My aunt always loved jewelry.

Some things do not fade the way that memory can.

When I was a young girl, my Aunt Pat was formidable. She had a deep booming voice, broad shoulders, the frame of a Scottish warrior-woman. Her hair was the color of dark rust—parted in the middle and swept away from her wide forehead. Her eyes stared with the intensity of an Old Testament prophet.

She worshipped at a Pentecostal church, attended tent revivals, claimed to have been healed more than once (sometimes, for the same ailment). She quoted Scripture in conversation and commonly proclaimed, “God bless you” or “Praise Jesus!” She spoke in tongues. She could be overbearing. Even to my family—Fundamental Baptists—her zeal could be wearying. She doubted the salvation of others and did not mind telling them so.

My aunt never slipped quietly into a room. She charged into the room. One Christmas at my grandparents’ house, years and years ago, she thundered from the front room all the way to the kitchen to kiss one of my cousins who had found himself under the mistletoe. The house erupted in laughter.

My aunt never hesitated to make her nieces and nephews feel loved. You never doubted that Aunt Patty cared about you. She attended weddings, graduations, funerals, reunions, piano recitals, nothing was too small. She was tireless in her travels to make each of us feel special. If there was a family function, my aunt was there with a large smile on her face and her commanding presence. You couldn’t miss that red hair in crowd.

She loved to paint. In fact, I own a couple of her paintings. She had such a smart eye for detail and color. She started the hobby late in life—probably too late as it turns out.

I don’t think she has picked up a brush in several years. If she did, I do not think she would know how to use it.

My older brother had a lot of emotional problems growing up. After he attempted suicide in 1987 and he returned from the mental hospital, a slovenly smoker whose medications dulled him into a paunchy zombie, my aunt would visit him at the house. My brother could be a charmer, especially when he was in one of his friendly, manic periods. I think my aunt adored him. He was her little sister’s first born, intelligent, talented, so full of potential.

She came over to the house one afternoon and spent several hours talking with him. She wanted to sketch him. So, there they both sat in our living room discussing religion and death and life. My brother owned the sketch until seven years later when he finally finished the job he started in 1987. I do not know where my mother keeps the sketch now. I have the feeling it might be lost among some boxes in the attic.

In 1994, when my mother called my aunt to tell her Matt had killed himself, I could hear Patty’s mournful howls through the phone. She just kept crying, “No, no, no, no, no.”

I’ve never witnessed such a display of raw pain and grief.

I always loved and appreciated my aunt, but her stark religiosity did not jive with what I read in my own Bible. I only engaged her on the topic of Christianity a few times. But, she was right—no matter what the discussion. I honestly believe she thought she was a prophetess capable of knowing more than anyone else. As long as we kept conversations to lighter topics, my Aunt Pat was a lot of fun.

I have not lived in Ohio for several years. Even the last time I did live in Ohio, I was not close to my family for a number of reasons, and I kept a careful self-imposed exile.

But, from time to time, I would hear about my Aunt Pat and her “forgetfulness.”

“Oh, Patty’s not doing so well,” my mother would sigh. “She can’t seem to find words or finish sentences.”

“Sounds like Grandma,” I would respond.

My Grandma Moor suffered from dementia in her later years, and it was not kind. Her daughters have lived in fear of who might “end up like Mom.”

I would not truly spend time with my Aunt Pat until my Grandma White’s funeral (my father’s mother) last fall. Patty smiled and hugged me, but she did not know me. My uncle introduced me, but my aunt just smiled and nodded. It was sad, but there was even sadder business that day—the mourning of my last remaining grandparent.

We had a family reunion a few weeks ago. For once, I was able to attend. I was excited by the prospect of seeing cousins I had not seen in at least a decade or more. Among the family faces were the unmistakable red hair, high forehead, and beaming smile of my Aunt Pat.

I sat across from her at a picnic table. She looked blankly and smiled. A few people told her that I was “Sarah, Marsha’s daughter” to which she would nod or just keep smiling.

I caught up with my cousin, while my aunt sat silently, from time to time being preoccupied by some water droplets left behind by a water bottle. I looked her and thought she seemed bored.

“I like your watch,” I said, tapping the face of the blue one on her right wrist.  The other one had a tarnished silver face.

She lit up. “Yes, it’s pretty. You see, look, you can do things that make, I know that I like…but…” She ran her fingers over the band and kept speaking in her unfinished rambling way.

“I like your necklace, too.”

“I got that, the roses sparkle, and what’s good is that you can make it your own…”

Suddenly, in the midst of her confused soliloquy, she looked up at me, knitted her eyebrows, and said, “Because I don’t want to hurt anybody.”

All this time, I had stifled the heart break inside at seeing her this way. I think she can sense how much pain her condition brings to those around her.

I reached out and took her hand in mine.

“Of course not,” I said. “I know you don’t.”

Briefly, after all of these years and experiences and miles apart, I touched Patty in a deeper way than I ever had as a child or young adult. She was not my aunt anymore. She was another human being in need of someone to simply hold her hand and tell her that everything was going to be okay.

And, then, just as quickly, her eyes went blank, and she smiled.

“Oh, God bless you,” she said.

I nodded and gave her hand a firm shake.

“And God bless you, too,” I replied.

I would cry when I got into my car and drove onto the highway. I cried because it was hard to see my aunt that way. I cried because she wore two watches—like a sweet child who liked the “neatness” of the faces. I cried because neither watch had the right time, and I knew that such thing did not matter anymore.