This is Robert posting on my wife’s website. I was unable to make it to my aunt’s funeral back in Ohio. If I was there, this is what I would have liked to share. You can visit her Obituary page here.
What Aunt Norma meant to me: Norma understood what I cared about.
donuts
I remember Norma as one of the most understanding people I have ever known. I feel bad as an adult how as a child I would take her for granted and not really be concerned about running through her house whenever I wanted. My family, which comprised 4 boys and a girl, lived next door and it seemed like for a very long time we picked up our mail at Norma & Gene’s. We would check the mail box, bring in the mail, sort it, and then cut through the kitchen and then the living room, out the back door and then back home. We did this 6 times a week for years it seemed. I’m not sure why Dad never got a mailbox, but her door was always open.
One time I remember running in to find her making donuts. I was staring at the potatoes on the table. They were part of the secret ingredients. She gave me a taste and I agreed they were very good! Norma understood what I cared about.
Baseball
I don’t remember Norma ever confronting us kids in our childish ways. One time she came outside to say how she didn’t appreciate Tom and me hitting the ball toward the house in fear of us breaking a window. We used the old barn as a backstop and the roof of the house as a homerun. The side of the house wasn’t an out, but a double! I think we said if we hit a window it is a triple. Anyway, our reply to her was, “We won’t break it” and we continued to play. She didn’t stop us. I can’t say I would do the same if I were in her shoes. Norma let me be a kid. Norma understood what I cared about.
Dogs and Cats
Norma loved animals. We had three cats and they all died in a very short time. Norma had Tippie and Felix and they were over a hundred years old if I remember right! I remember her feeding them. I remember her petting them; she noticed that they were there, unlike our treatment of cats. We never paid that much attention to cats. Dogs, on the other hand, were a different story.
I loved dogs. I raised Al from birth. Al’s father was Mac and his mother was Fluffy. When Mac left, I stepped in and helped raise Al to adulthood. I loved Al and was heartbroken when I learned I could not take him with us when we moved to New Mexico.
It was Norma who wrote a few months after we moved to New Mexico to tell me that Al had run away and was found dead a mile away alongside Route 6.
Aunt Norma understood what I cared about.
My Special Connection
My attachment to Norma, and Gene, and Lon and Lori is unique to say the least, even more so than my own family in a way. This is how that came to be:
The Impressions
I was an atheist. I was 2 months shy of being 16 and I made my choice and that was that. One of the reasons I went to get the mail so much was I had a weekly subscription to Science News, a monthly subscription to Scientific American, and a quarterly subscription to Omni magazine and I belonged to a record club! Anyway, I had been getting these impressions that someone close to me was going to die and I had better get to know them before it was too late. This feeling of dread haunted me a few times and one of those times it was so heavy, I almost began to cry, like someone had just died. It didn’t make any sense. And what can you possibly say to others about something like this? I pushed it to the back of my mind. And then the phone rang.
That night getting the news
One dark night in March I was lying in bed listening to a new album I had recently got in the mail. We had been waiting on a phone call to give us an update on the status of Kenny who had been in a car accident. I gave up waiting and went to bed. As I lay on my bed listening to this album, this thought shot across my mind: “How are you going to tell Gene that you will help him on the farm?” I was so surprised by this thought that I talked back to myself and said, “Where did that come from; why are you thinking such a thing?”
At that moment the phone rang. I heard my Mom walk over to the phone to answer. She instantly began crying. I jumped out of bed to run upstairs. Along the way I realized my mystery was solved. The unknown person was Kenny! I felt as if I had been prepared for this moment. I felt as if someone had been looking over me. Although I would say I did not believe in God, I had no other explanation for what happened to me. I was the first to reach my Mom as she was crying. In a rather cold tone I said, “Why are you crying? Kenny is in a better place than we.” She turned to me rather surprised and said, “What?” So, I repeated it. “Why are you crying? Kenny is in a better place than we.” She and I had argued many times about my unbelief in God in the past. What I said surprised her.
For me to say this was a surprise to me as well. I crossed some sort of portal. I was no longer an atheist. I began to believe in God again. My little scientific mind could not handle what had just happened. It was as if someone was looking over me, watching me, and preparing me. And now most certainly God was sustaining me. I did not feel sadness; I felt His comfort.
God used that tragedy in Norma’s life to redirect the ENTIRE COURSE OF MY LIFE. Instead of me thinking I knew so much – that there is no God – I began questioning things again. This eventually led me to the Bible and the message in the Bible. When I believed that message, I was given a new life. Up until that point I did not know what life was about. I was planning on remaining single. I wanted to live by myself. I wanted to be a geologist, or chemist, or physicist, or astronomer, or an electrical engineer. I didn’t really know what I wanted. But after meeting Christ, I found meaning, purpose, and direction. I got married and now have a wonderful wife and 3 kids and a grandchild who I look forward to seeing every chance I get. How I dread what my life would have been like if Norma had not lived next door to me.
Do you understand what I mean?
I can tell you I know one person who understands what I mean.
Sometime after I became a Christian I wrote to Norma and Gene to tell them what happened to me. Sometime after that, Norma and Aunt Mary came to New Mexico to visit. As we were talking, Norma interrupted and said, “Oh Rob!” and pulled out her pocket book and said with her half-smile and eyes of interest, “I have something to show you! I found this picture exactly like this, but I don’t remember ever placing it here.” It was a picture of Kenny and at the bottom of the picture and behind it was a Scripture taken from my favorite Psalm; the Psalm that describes what happened to me – Psalm 116. The verse that peeked out underneath Ken’s picture read, “I shall walk before the Lord in the land of the living.” I busted out in tears.
Norma understood what I cared about. She knew I would be interested in seeing this.
I remember talking to Norma at her kitchen table when I came back to visit. Her eyes and her smile told me again she was very interested in me and what I had to say. I can’t remember the subject we were talking about, but I do remember her suggesting that I read Brave New World.
None of my aunts went that deep with me.
Conclusion
Like I said, my attachment to Norma is unique. That attachment extends to Gene and Lon and Lori as well. It is as if the tears of their sorrow have fallen down into the ground of which I am planted in. They have given me life, the most precious life.
God bless you every one and may God comfort you in this time of loss. Remember, it is heaven’s gain.
