Saturday, June 16, 2012

My Aunt Fita's Devotion to Me

Maybe because I was an only child, I never seemed to understand the weird relationship between my mother and her sister.  They were only a year apart, and my mother was older than my aunt.  My aunt always lived close to my mother, even though my mother argued with her all the time. Only once did my aunt move away to live close to the relatives of her husband, but it only lasted some months and she was back in town. My aunt always seemed to silently forgive her no matter what my mother said or did. Every morning, my aunt would come to our house before she left for work.  Most of the time she walked, but if she was going to be picked up, she was picked up at our house.  She always had some trinket or something for me, and when I started going to school, she always gave me some change.  Sometimes she even walked me to school if my mother couldn't.
As I started growing, she would be burdened with stuff when she came home about 2 or 3pm, even when she was walking. Because of her I was keeping up-to-date on all the things that were happening in the world.  She would bring me newspapers. magazines, comic books and even hard cover books. I was an avid reader and my aunt's efforts were never wasted on me, because I read every bit of all she brought me. Just how well I kept up with everything was made very clear to me the other day when I heard the news talking about Queen Elizabeth's Coronation sixty years ago when I was only eight years old and I remembered it so well, having read so much about it when it actually happened, even though we didn't have a TV.  At eight years old, I knew what was happening in the world, and in faraway England.
I feel so guilty for for not staying close to my aunt in my later life after I got married, although I did write often and called her all the time. My life was too complicated and had too many problems and i wanted to spare my aunt worries.  I did not want her to feel that she had to help me with my problems, especially the financial ones. But she always sent me boxes full of things, and in my effort of looking out for my kids first, I came to rely on her to provide my own personal underwear and things such as purses, . combs and brushes.
After she died, I realized that she had never stopped trying to help me in any way she could. She left me two huge trunks full of blankets, tablecloths, sheets, towels and even trinkets to decorate the house.  She left everything  to me, including her washing machine, which was the first I ever had. But she left such an empty space in my heart and I have missed my Tia Fita so much.  She died in 1993, I still wake up sometimes on Sunday mornings thinking about calling her!

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