Thursday, May 24, 2012

To Hear Her Laugh...

She talked about Uncle Gary regularly. He was quite handsome, and she loved him dearly.

Twice a week she gets her hair done. She felt it was important for a woman to look good.

She would tell me to eat right and get my sleep. And she meant it. She knew what would happen to a body if it wasn‘t cared for. And she would tell me at least twice a day, “you know, you’re not getting any younger”. She would laugh every time.

We share a love of books. How they look on the shelf, the feel of them in our hands, the smell of the pages as we turned them. We agreed that reading a book was the best.

Her precise and well designed quilts are beautiful. She inspired me to create quilts of my own.

Guaranteed she would tell me she loved me at the end of every phone call. I am so thankful she is a part of my life. Our visits were wonderful. Spending time with her made me realize how much I love her, and wish I would have taken the opportunity to develop a relationship with her when I was younger.

I pulled the photo albums from off the top shelf and took them to the kitchen table. As we sat there looking at old family photos she would tell me about relatives I never knew, and about ones I remember as a child.

She would tell me stories of when her and my mom were growing up beginning in the late thirties.

When I was in Hadley the first week of May we began to write out our family tree. With Mom's help I hope to  fill in the rest. My Aunt Louise passed away May 25, 2012.

Oh, what a joy to hear her laugh.

Pencil drawing I did of Aunt Louise
when she was young