There’s really no good or easy way for me to say this, so I’ll just say it, and then we’ll work from there.
My Aunt Rosalyn died on Sunday.
Aunt Rosalyn, or Roz as we all called her, was my great aunt, dad’s aunt, and Mema’s baby sister. Roz was a shining gem of a human being; She was an infectiously-happy, first-class conversationalist who I was blessed to know. Her stories and Roz-isms have long been treasures of the family. She lived in Colorado Springs, Colorado with her husband Darrell, and when we were younger, mom and dad would take us on family vacation to Colorado to see them about every other year. I have very distinct and vivid memories of the times when we visited them.
Roz and Darrell own a two-story house with a finished basement in the heart of Colorado Springs. For four kids who had always lived in a single-story house, there was nothing greater than the prospect of having not two, but THREE floors in your house. When we went to visit her for the very first time, I was 7.5 years old. I’m sure about my age because Boo was only 3 months old. Dad was already in Colorado working a job installing furniture at Focus on the Family. He had been gone for the better part of 2 weeks. At the end of the job we drove to meet him and have a mini-vacation.
The night before we left for ‘The Springs,’ as the locals are wont to call it, David and I played in the forested edges of our neighbors’ back yard. I didn’t realize while we were playing that I was, for the very first time, being introduced to my life-long-nemesis, Poison Oak. I can remember my face starting to burn that evening, hours later, while mom was trying to pack clothing and prepare for a 13+ hour journey in a mini-van with 4 small children, one of whom was going to be breast-feeding for the majority of the trip. As I started to swell, my mom pieced together the facts and came to the conclusion that my entire face (with the exception of my left eye) was covered with Poison Something. My untimely illness didn’t stop our trip, though. After loading a lot of Benadryl and Calamine Lotion to the pile of “Things To Take,” mom piled us in the car, and headed Northeast on Highway 287.
The Calamine Lotion, though it burned when freshly applied, was the only thing that could provide me any relief to the constant facial burning and itching. The only good thing that came from my (screaming and moaning about my) situation is that it landed me in the front seat of the Dodge Caravan, where there was better access to the A/C vents I was relying upon for pain prevention, for the entire trip to Colorado. When we arrived on Rosalyn’s doorstep, I had been staring at the inside of that vent for 750 miles.
To say that I was ecstatic to see another human, and not just any human, but the very human with whom my dad had been hanging out for 2 weeks, is an understatement. I was insane. I was the most excited-about-life 7 year old that you have ever seen. Rosalyn and dad came to the door as we pulled up into her driveway and I BURST out of the car to run to them. Dad caught me mid-stride, hugged me, and then introduced me to Rosalyn for the first time. She said hello, and that it was really nice to meet me, giggling under her breath at me the way adults giggle when they recognize a piece of themselves in someone young. I promptly, and now very famously, informed Rosalyn that, “This isn’t what I normally look like. Well, this part is,” I said, as I covered all my swollen, itching face with my hands, leaving only my left eye exposed. From beneath the ‘L’ of my hands I finished, “This eye, this eye is what I really look like. You’ll just have to imagine the rest.” I knew from the way that she laughed that we would be instant friends, regardless of the years between us. And we were.
She never let me forget about the time that I bounced up on her doorstep and diagramed for her which parts of my face were and were not normally poisonous. Even in September when mom and I flew to Colorado for a long weekend to visit and say good-bye, she recalled the story during one of her moments of lucidity. She smiled at me, making the famous ‘L’ with her hands, and then, 10 minutes later, we had to re-introduce her to my mom, who she didn’t recognize despite the fact that mom had spent the past 48 hours with her, caring for her, taking her for Frosties from Wendy’s and listening to her talk about how much pain her leg was in (from the bone cancer), and how she couldn’t figure out why it hurt.
I spent the majority of that very first vacation curled up on the bed in her guest room, staring out the window at Pike’s Peak, listening to the sound of my mom and dad downstairs in the sitting room laughing as Aunt Roz zig-zagged her way in and out of an arsenal of stories at one time, her ‘rabbit trails’ looking more like the of roots under a well fed plant. She was a woman of many, many talents, the profoundest of which might have been her staggering ability to tell ten stories at one time, never forgetting her place as she wove them all together into one piece. I remember being angry during our stay, upset that I wasn’t able to go downstairs and play with my brother and sister, upset that I was practically banished to the infirmary of “my woom.” Now I wouldn’t change anything, not even to remove the rash that forced me to sit still upstairs alone. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have stopped to listen to hours of story-telling by one of the most enchanting people I’ve ever known.
Candid Photo of Mom and Aunt Roz Laughing. 2001 (?)
