Thank you, Aunt Nora

I just read something someone wrote about an elderly woman who enjoyed living next to a school playground. This reminded me of my Aunt Nora.

I am not sure what my earliest memory is. I have several of them. One of them is of being at Aunt Nora’s house, with a bunch of her friends, and she and I were singing, “He’s Got The Whole World In His Hands.” I must have been around 3 when that happened.

Aunt Nora was my father’s younger sister. She never married, never went to college, never pursued a high power career.She did have a good job with the phone company, which made it possible for her to have a nice ranch home complete with an inground swimming pool. The swimming pool was installed the year I was born, and my father had me in that pool by the time I was 3 weeks old.

Aunt Nora had 15 nephews and nieces, 10 of whom lived in the same town as her. She welcomed all of us to her pool all summer long. We could go there as often as we wanted, whether she was home or not, and we could bring as many friends as we wanted. We availed ourselves of Aunt Nora’s hospitality every single day it didn’t rain. You can imagine the noise-the noise from all the kids in Aunt Nora’s yard drove at least one of her neighbors crazy. There was some kind of long standing feud about that, but Aunt Nora just told her frustrated neighbor to jump in a lake. I have no memory of Aunt Nora ever using her own pool. Most of the time, she stayed in the house and did her own thing, but she lived with the noise all summer long. No one-not Aunt Nora, and not anyone else either-ever told us to keep it down.

Around the time I was 12 or 13, Aunt Nora retired and decided to buy a tiny beach house in Rhode Island. She extended the same hospitality with the beach house that she had with the pool. All of us had an open invitation to go there anytime we wanted.

Sometime around the time she bought the beach house, Aunt Nora was diagnosed with cancer. She fought for several years, but died when I was 17. Aunt Nora is a major factor in why I know that God exists. As she grappled with cancer, she became happier and more at peace the worse it got. I have never seen anything like it. The last time I saw her was the day before she died. I have never seen anyone look so ill-she was a skeleton-and I have never seen anyone look so happy. She knew that she wasn’t long for this earth, and she was totally at peace with that. There was a light shining around her. I mean that literally. There was literally a light shining around her, through her, because of her.

I am so fortunate to have Aunt Nora, and it is such a privilege to be her niece. Thank you, Aunt Nora, for everything.