Aunt Helen

I wrote this a while back and posted it on a different site. I thought I would share it with all of you.


Aunt Helen


The other day, I wore a pair of knee high stockings and for some reason, they wouldn't stay up. It wouldn't have been too bad if the slacks I was wearing were full length, but they were a high water type slack. I looked down at one point and thought.....OH MY GOODNESS, I LOOK LIKE AUNT HELEN!!!!
I got to thinking about Aunt Helen, what a character she was.

Aunt Helen was a Great Aunt of mine, and as a little girl, part of the visiting rounds with my Mother included a stop at Aunt Helen's. She would always be sitting in her rocking chair, with her hosiery rolled down to her ankles with those black oxford shoes that nuns always used to wear and a black sweater with the little black buttons. She would always be sitting there rocking, praying the Rosary. First thing Mom would ask is how she was. Aunt Helen would always say: "oh not good, not good at all." She was ALWAYS dying or sick or had some ailment or another. Mom said that childbirth did her in. For Aunt Helen, it was a major thing, like having some terminal disease. She had a daughter, and then a few years later, got pregnant again. Mom said she was so mad at Uncle Frank, calling him a heathen and every other horrible name in the book, after all ...it was ALL HIS FAULT she got pregnant. She even threw him out of the house, Mom said, and forced him to live in the garage the whole nine months, putting out dinner on the back steps, he coudn't even come in the house to eat.
Aunt Helen ended up out living every member of the family from her generation. She even ended up living with her daughter and at one point was caught running nakid through the neighborhood. She had gone somewhat senile. From devout to the extreme. Her daughter put her in a nursing home, and with one visit, even noticed she had a pair of men's shoes under her bed.
Funny how things end up sometimes. I miss Aunt Helen.


MSM 7/21/06