Sisters

I looked back through my blog posts over the years, and there were quite a few in which I wrote about my mom's sister, my aunt Helen. I'm trying to think of a story that I haven't shared yet, but nothing's jumping out at me.

My grandmother had been a cook at a logging camp when she met my grandpa. And Aunt Helen followed in her footsteps, becoming a cook herself, but instead of at a logging camp, she worked in the kitchen at the Tripoli School. I don't know which would be more challenging – feeding roughneck loggers or voraciously hungry teenagers. She worked in that kitchen with a few other ladies for over 20 years.

During those two short years I attended that school, I was always reassured, knowing she was close by. And if she wasn't in the kitchen, she was at her house, which was the length of a couple football fields away.

I'll always remember the taste of her baked chop suey and the nummy chocolate bars she made. 

Even though they were seven years apart in age, my mom and Helen were always close, or at least once they started raising their families. Between the two of them, they had five kids all within four years, or something like that.

When Aunt Helen passed away, suddenly and unexpectedly, in 2005, I thought that Mom would fall apart. But she handled it with the family's usual German stubbornness.

When my best friend, my sister Pat and I were little, I always imagined that we'd get married and have kids the same age, cousins who would play together and grow close, have stories to tell until they were old.

God took Pat at a much earlier age than He took Aunt Helen. And we never did have kids together, but Aunt Patti sure loved my two babies. But I can't complain; I've been blessed with a great family, and I have lots of great memories to hold on to.

 Above - Mom and Aunt Helen getting ready at my first wedding in 1985. Below - Pat and I should be getting dressed for my wedding, but instead we were laughing coz we were wearing the same brand of shirt.