Remembering Aunt Helen
The world lost a good woman a couple of weeks ago, a few months shy of her 104th birthday. Born the youngest of nine children, Helen entered a convent for nuns in Erie, Pennsylvania, at age fourteen. She was just a child. After graduation, she taught at a Catholic school within the community for 31 years and then in the Erie Public School System until age 72. That’s fifty-four years of teaching kindergarteners and first graders! Who does that!? That’s nearly double my teaching career! I can’t even do the math on how many children she must have taught to read and write. What a contribution to society.
Aunt Helen told me she learned to drive after she left “the community” at nearly 50 years of age. Having lived part of her childhood and the first half of her life in a convent, Helen had much to adjust to when she opted to teach in the public schools. Endless firsts such as buying a house, learning to drive, opening a bank account, paying bills, furnishing a home, shopping, cooking, etc. for teens and twenty somethings are challenging enough. Can you imagine what it must have been like for her to learn the systems of the world at the age of 50? Yet, at 101, when she told me about it, she acted as though nothing bothered her. Helen said her brother Tom built a duplex so Helen, Tom, and their mother could live together, making her transition to “the real world” easier.
After her mother and brother died, she rented out the other half of the duplex until a few years ago when it became too much trouble to be a landlord to people who didn’t live up to her conservative/moral standards and who didn’t want to pay their rent. At 99, Helen gave up driving. Though it might have been perfect to have a friend or family member live in the other half of her duplex, it remained empty the last few years of her time in Erie. She relied on a few friends and neighbors to take her places and do things for her, but she insisted on compensating them for everything they did, even if she paid them with food or gifts.
Her neighbor Roy shared a story with me about the two of them arguing about her paying him to mow her lawn. He wanted to do it for free, yet she insisted on paying him. One day she gave him a brownie. When he got home and unwrapped the treat, he found a twenty-dollar bill taped to the underside of the wrapper. He just had to laugh.
In my first blog about Great Aunt Helen, I wrote about her giving me a Benjamin Franklin during my visit with her in Erie. She told me to put it toward my writing, so I bought an editing software program. Last fall, as we celebrated her 103rd birthday in Detroit, I thanked her again for her generosity. She said she loves her family, and loves to help people, and she was joyful to help. All she asked in return was for a copy of my book Finding Joy in the West. It breaks my heart that I was too slow. I couldn’t give her a copy.
Aunt Helen believed in me and my visits with her will be told in book #2 Finding Joy in the East. But she will not see that book in print either. Tomorrow I am supposed to get my manuscript back from my editor. I plan to clean it up as quickly as possible. Even in her death, Aunt Helen is inspiring me to get my book finished before the end of this year.
To all of you, like Helen, who have supported me from the day you found out I was writing, I say thank you. Thank you for reading these blogs and thank you for supporting me as I trudge forward on my second career. Your support means the world to me. It’s what keeps me writing. And thank you for remembering our dear Aunt Helen. May we all learn from her example to encourage each other in the pursuit of our dreams.