3-10-2018 MY AUNT BECKY

The text came too late. We had already crossed the border. I had sent a message to our cousin Gail, telling her we were on our way. "When you reach the border, call us and we'll sing the song", she had said, but I didn't get the message until we were already in Malad pass. Still, when we had approached the big blue sign at the state line, my sisters and I had ceased our car conversation, mid-sentence, and began to sing:

It is tradition to sing the Idaho state song when we cross the border. It's almost sacrilege not to. I don't have any idea what the Utah state song is. Or Pennsylvania, for that matter. But everybody I know who is from Idaho knows the Idaho State Song. It has wonderful harmonies. I consider myself lucky when I cross the border with my sisters and we split into parts. I always think I can hear my mother's voice singing along when we cross.

When we received word that our Aunt Becky was in labor, the kind that delivers spirits back to Heaven, my sisters Ann Marie and Libby and my brother-in-law Michael cancelled all other plans and hopped in the car, heading northward to Idaho Falls. We reminisced through the three-hour drive, cinching the ties that bind us to the people and the place we love.

We spent the whole afternoon, until the sun began to fall, around the bed of my mother's younger sister,Rebecca, the last of the seven Parrish girls. Woven into that bedside circle were our cousins, Becky's children, who feel like sisters to us. The Miskin girls were the only cousins our age. Mom and Becky were the youngest in their family. By the time I was old enough to make memories, my other cousins were grown. Even though there was no one exactly my age or my grade in school, we were close enough in age to go fishing and listen to music and do chores together when we visited each summer. 

Because we lived thousands of miles away from all of our cousins, we did not have the regular interaction of Sunday dinners and shared holidays. But there are real advantages to seeing each other only once a year. When we did make the cross-country trip to Idaho we were able to stay with our cousins, 24-7, for a week or two in the summer. Sharing the wee moments in someone's space binds you to them in unique ways, and I am grateful for it.

There is a rare recipe of aesthetics - physical, emotional, spiritual- that converge when I remember pulling up in front of that little brick house in Ucon, Idaho, where the Miskin family lived. Hot and weary from a 2,500 mile drive, we climbed out of the back of our station wagon, our legs all rubbery, our hair  matted and sweaty, our cotton travel clothes wrinkled. My cousin Mary Lou said yesterday she remembered running barefoot across the gravel road to greet us. Every stop at the home of every one of our aunts felt safe to me. But the stop outside the home of my Aunt Becky was joy. We felt not only loved, but wanted. We were wounded ducklings, waddling in the safe shadow of our mother, and being wanted was as fresh and renewing as ice-water on a dry summer day.

Sitting at Aunt Becky's bedside, yesterday, playing music and sharing familiar stories, one of my cousins pulled out a book of poetry Aunt Becky had written. This one holds our truth.

As my Aunt Becky's breathing became more shallow yesterday, we gathered our broken hearts and hugged our cousins, knowing it was their sacred hour now, where the inner circle gathers-in and huddles, giving her strength to rise. We allowed each other a holy moment to be with her alone, in her little space. One by one my sisters and I kissed her forehead, then her cheeks, then her forehead again, our tears falling on her snowy hair. A kiss for her, and one to spare, and one for her to give our angel mother.
We took the quiet journey southward, back to our homes, back across the Idaho border. Around midnight the call came. 
The last of those seven Parrish sisters leapt into her heaven place. My sorrow at her passing is surpassed by the thought of an awesome family reunion taking place. My Uncle Richard has his bride, my mother has all her sisters, and my Grandma Lizzie, who had passed when Becky was only nine years old, finally has her whole dynamic brood under her wing.
These are tears of joy.  

For the next week, until we lay our Aunt Becky's body to rest, I will dedicate my Lent writing to snippets of memory that include her.