My favorite aunt

Spent a long time talking to Aunt Shirley last night. What a woman! Talk about "more than meets the eye". She's visually indistinguishable from thousands of white-haired, soft-spoken, yearly-more-fragile ladies.

And yet...and yet. Look a little more closely at the picture to the right. Her kids took one look and titled it "Busted".

Shirley and her husband raised five children. They are the kind of people you want by your side watching a sunset and at your back--definitely not in your face--in a bar fight. As those kids grew up, they got into fights and broke arms and made bad marriages, and made good marriages and bad ones again, and got into brawls at each others' weddings and had husbands die of electrocution, and went undercover as narotics cops and raised children of their own and played in rock bands and got addicted to downers and drove Trans Ams and Harleys and Corvettes through twisty country roads at 125 MPH.

(The family patriarch, Shirley's husband, died this spring, and after the service the family gathered at Shirley's house to remember him. I got a work-related call on my cell, and after a few moments the scientist on the other end paused, listening to the background racket, knowing that I'd just attended a funeral. "This...um, this would be the Irish side of your family, wouldn't it?" I smiled, thinking of my departed uncle and his brood, and told her that yes, yes it certainly was.)

The cop is retired from the force now, and lives quietly in a lakeside cottage. The rock musician will play sometimes, if we really twist his arm, but he drinks only to be sociable, and he lives a stone's throw from his mom, with his wife of thirty years and his two beautiful daughters. The sister whose electrician husband died on the job has long since remarried and seems to be making a good life for herself.

And, do you know, in all that time, I cannot recall Shirley ever once raising her voice. And yet she ruled--hell, still rules--that sprawling, obstreperous mob with a brand of steel that any tinpot dictator could only envy. It's a cliche to talk about people with a "wiry core", but by God, that woman has got one. Gold, I'd say, but gold is a soft metal. Titanium, that's what she's got, strong and light, jewel-toned highlights and all.

It's funny, when I hear her talk I am frequently reminded of her sister, my mom...and yet not. They were very close, and shared so many mannerisms and speech idioms that when Shirley talks, I sometimes hear my mom's voice. But where any conversation with my mom sooner or later turned to how miserable she was, Shirley usually gets to talking about what she's planning, what the kids are doing, what project she's taking on next. With my mom, it was always all about her. With Shirley, it's about you, or her kids, or perhaps her church. It's not that she has a low opinion of herself--you can tell that in five minutes' conversation. It's just that she rarely brings the subject up.

I know she derives great solace from her religion--characteristically, though, she usually doesn't speak of it. And perhaps she also draws strength from her unwillingness to dwell on her problems. Instead, she is focused outward, on doing for others. The picture above was taken the morning after her husband's funeral. Refusing our offers to help, she was doing our breakfast dishes.

I also have an indelible mental image of her from the day before, at the church. Her lover, her partner, her best friend for decades had gone, and they'd just made it official and taken away his casket for cremation. Shirley spent time talking to people, cried some. She confided to me, though, that she was done with the hugs--"These old bones can't take that much". Then, as people headed for the parking lot, she levered herself upright. And started putting away the folding chairs.