Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 19, 1995 TAG: 9503210008
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: ELIZABETH OBENSHAIN
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The death of Aunt Annie, a family matriarch with a crown of white hair and a blunt way of speaking, had shaken all of us who thought we had years more to share with her.
Only last June she and the family's other dowagers had posed on the lawn in the June sunshine, surrounding my father on his 90th birthday.
She was one of a phalanx of aunts who guarded and helped define my world as I grew up. As I headed through my 40s, their presence protected me from becoming "the older generation."
Today only two aunts survive, gamely battling their ills and still exerting their gravitational pull, along with my father, on our widespread family.
This day, the church's wooden pews and warmth dispelled the stark, clinical reality of the hospital room - the sense of quiet desperation when someone to whom you are inextricably bound hovers between life and the unknown. Death becomes only more unfathomable with proximity.
I think of Aunt Annie, of the incredible changes her life encompassed, growing up when horses and buggies traveled the mud track that was U.S. 11 in front of the family home. She remembered picking vegetables on the farm near Fincastle for my grandfather to drive by horse and wagon to the Roanoke City Market - usually a two-day drive.
When she left for her first year at college, her father gave her $25 to carry her through. She made it - and became a teacher. Years later, I'd still hear stories about her from former students or younger teachers she had helped. In the family, she was an equally redoubtable personality, famous for speaking her mind. "You always knew where Annie stood," summed up one elderly relative.
Annie, and before her Aunt Millie, the World War II nurse; Clarice; the twins, Elizabeth and Lucy ... our memories, our mannerisms, our beliefs, our looks, bind us among generations of our family. Their photographs, their books, even their clothes still fill the family homeplace.
From those who lingered after the funeral to talk, I also gained a renewed appreciation of the little kindnesses of life. A baby gift, a thoughtful gesture at a husband's death, the words of a fourth-grade teacher had brought people to the funeral - I'm quietly amazed at how our smallest actions can affect other's lives.
On this day also, it was the kindness of this small community of Mill Creek in Botetourt County that touched our lives. Cousins and long-time neighbors brought coconut cakes and fried chicken, homemade rolls and gelatin salads and then served dinner to the crowd of family and close friends - a traditional Southern gesture of comfort.
Annie lies at rest in the quiet cemetery beside the little church, next to her sisters, her mother and father, her nephew and cousins. But I don't want Annie to drift away, to ease from our memories and thoughts.
As we leave Mill Creek, I realize I will always yearn to hear the voices of my aunts once more in the big kitchen on a Christmas morning, yearn to catch the sharp aroma of coffee and country ham drifting up the back staircase - carrying with it a sense of security, of a world bound by family ties.
Elizabeth Obenshain is the Roanoke Times & World-News' New River editor.
by CNB