Aunt Tique was my great-great aunt, which is to say that she was my great-grandmother's sister. She was born in the northern Midwest in 1911, and died just a few days shy of her 103rd birthday.
That entire branch of the family moved to the West Coast in 1912 for the sake of my great-great-great grandmother's ill health. They established a furniture store and undertaking business in which many members of the family were employed over the course of the ensuing decades. She attended the local high school, and subsequently the local college. She was an avid dramatist in her younger years, and a popular performer due in no small part to her furniture dealer father's provision of properties for the school's productions. During her secondary education, she studied Latin and Anglo-Saxon.
Aunt Tique attended the nearby university, and was a member of the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority. The university was smaller in those days, and she took courses from the professor who would become my great-grandfather. She also held the distinction of having been the university's homecoming queen. She graduated and became a social worker before being sent to Colorado to get her master's degree under the auspices of establishing a new chapter of her sorority.
She was courted by and eventually married a man named John, and they had a son and daughter. John worked as an undertaker, but died very young from stomach cancer. My Aunt Tique didn't remarry until she was in her late eighties. Her second husband, also named John, died a couple of years later, leaving her twice-widowed. She spoke fondly of both men, and unquestionably treasured her time with them.
Aunt Tique raised two children, and also lived with her mother, my great-great grandmother Hazel, who died in 1983. I'm sad to say that I don't know much about what she did in those intervening years. I think she may have worked a bit as a substitute teacher or something of the sort, but I can't say for sure.
I sort of discovered Aunt Tique by accident in my late teens or early twenties, having barely known her or who she was for most of my life. I decided to do an independent study project for my history degree about the family and the family business, and she was my primary source. Over the course of the Summer of 2002, we met once per week over the course of a month or two, and we sat and talked about her life growing up, the various members of the family, and how the family business had operated. This became a very special relationship, and we became very fond friends despite our seventy-two year age difference. One of my fondest memories of this friendship was taking my Aunt Tique, then in her nineties, to see a performance of Shakespeare's The Tempest at the university she and I had both attended.
Aunt Tique took good care of her health, and she was very careful with her money. In her nineties, she was still living alone in her own home. In her early nineties, she received a knee replacement and a rod in one of her legs, and her physician was convinced to authorize the surgery once he admitted that she had the constitution of a woman twenty years her junior. It wasn't until her late nineties that she moved into a residential-style assisted living home. I visited her several times, and each time the staff made a point of saying what a sweet woman she was. Additionally, she remained particularly mentally sharp until very late in her life.
My great-great grandparents and my great-great-great aunt had six children between them: two and three daughters of comparable ages, and a son who came later to my great-grandparents. The siblings and cousins were extremely close. After the last of the three cousins died in 2003, her brother around 2003 (I can't find an obituary online, but it was while I was in college), and her older sister in 2005, she was the last one left. She was upset by this, and despite the love and admiration of the family, I know that she felt lonely as the last surviving member of her generation.
Aunt Tique was a lifelong Presbyterian, having been raised in the beautiful church that originally drew my great-grandfather's attention when scouting for a new home on the West Coast. She attended that church until she couldn't (although she quietly admitted to feeling bad for missing church on Sundays when she decided to sleep in). Until late in her life, she was still walking the two or three blocks to get there. I remember a conversation she and I had about how many modern funeral services are billed as "celebrations of life", and she was distressed at such an idea; instead, she preferred that when she died, that the funeral would be a service reminding those in attendance of "the promise of the cross."
My Aunt Tique was one of my favorite people, and I've never heard a disparaging word said about her - perhaps my only relative who holds that distinction. Whereas her sister, my great-grandmother, was a pillar of the community but somewhat aristocratic in her demeanor, Aunt Tique was always kind, humble, and hospitable to everyone she met. She was the picture of Christian grace, a testament to the dividends of lifelong education and prudent living, and the sort of person with whom every second spent was of great value.
The last time I saw Aunt Tique was in April of 2012. By the time I reached Scotland, she was unable to correspond by post, and upon my return I was told that she would be very different from what I remembered, that her health was failing, and that I should be prepared for this. I decided that it would probably be best not to visit her, as I didn't expect that doing so would be of much benefit to either of us. I'll miss Aunt Tique, as I've essentially missed her for the last several years. Even so, I count myself unequivocally fortunate to have developed such a special friendship with such a special woman under such peculiar circumstances.
Goodbye, Aunt Tique. Your eternal reward is richly deserved, and I look forward to the day when we meet again.
No comments:
Post a Comment