My great aunt passed away a little over a week ago, and it's got me pondering over life's fleetingness and all the deep issues that go along with it. Winnie Lee Caldwell was a lady of irrepressible personality, quick-witted and seemingly always optimistic, cheerful and generous.
Aunt Winnie Lee had a little country store - I think it had one gas pump though there may have been two, right on the highway situated between all of her flowers. There was a rusty old ad sign on the screen door you opened to go in- it squeeked like the Walton's door, remember that? And I thought it was really like Ike Godsey's store. Rustic and historic- and if you went through the door in the back of the store you walked into her living room. She liked to give us firecrackers and candy- and you pulled your soda pop from the ice case- I remember glass bottles- but then I'm nostalgic by nature.
Aunt Winnie Lee was the last relative that I had from that generation that I was close to, and even though it had been over ten years since I had seen her (she'd had a stroke when my son was still a baby and moved where her daughter could better care for her) her loss now has driven the desire to instill my son's heritage into his memory. Am I telling him the old family stories- does he know the story behind the proposal picture and the old clock in my parent's house? And also, am I giving him memories like the ones I have of Aunt Winnie Lee? Something that he can tell his own kids? Does he know that even though he doesn't remember her that she held him and loved him when he was newly born?
I can almost taste the orange soda pop I drank in that old store, and I can hear Aunt Winnie Lee's laugh and see her smile. Somehow, I'm going to pass on memories just as tangible to my son, memories you can see, taste and hear.
Comments