I don’t get to come home very often. I live 6 hours away from where I grew up, so when I come home, it’s for a holiday or some other family event. Today, I’m home for a funeral. My grandmother’s sister, my Aunt Hassie died. She was 95 years old.
I don’t have many stories about Aunt Hassie, but I felt the need to honor her memory with a few words.
Aunt Hassie had gravely smoker’s voice for all of my life, but I can’t remember if she actually smoked cigarettes. She wore a Jheri Curl in her yellowing salt and pepper hair and she had big round glasses that magnified her already large eyes. She never gave birth to children, so I feel a special connection to her because I too, will never birth children.
I spent a lot of time with Aunt Hassie when I was a kid. She and my grandmother worked at the local YWCA as cleaning women. I used to follow them up and down the steps all day long and at lunch, we would sit in the kitchen to eat and if I was lucky, I’d get a soda out of the “coke-cola” machine.
In her later years, I would pick her up and bring her to our Thanksgiving dinner. She was always fun to have around.
