Auntie

There are those few people in your life that mold you and make you into the person you become. The people that take the time to invest in you, pass on tradition to you, gentley nudge you toward values, and model character to you. If you can say you have had one of these people in your life, you are blessed beyond measure. I have had so many I lose count. But Auntie is in that number. She died this week at the age of 84.

Auntie was born in the fall of 1923. She was painfully shy and never married. She spent over 40 years never stepping foot off the farm except for a car ride with me in 1994 to see the ''neighborhood''. I was a Senior in high school and it was a miracle we survived. The farm and her family were her life.

Her farm house was next door to ours and her and Grandma were the only neighbors I ever knew. She was ''organic'' before that was the new buzz word. She made her only cloths, grew and canned her own food, butchered her own meat, and wrung her own chickens' necks. Yeah, Auntie and I are a lot alike. As a read that sentence I thought wow. That is just like my daily life, but minus the sewing, cooking, cows, and chickens. But if you take those minor details away, we could have been twins separated at birth. She gathers eggs, I crack them. She sews cloths, I shop for cloths. She rings chickens' necks, I wring my twerps' necks. Just minor details. But Auntie and I do share the same passionate love for the farm. And I am the person I am today because she had time to invest in me. If she were here right now, I would take her face in my hands and tell her how much I love her and can never thank her enough for loving me in return. And she would say, ''I know, I know.''