My Aunt Emma died this morning, well past the age of ninety. She was quite a woman, and I was more than a little afraid of her during my childhood. So I didn’t know her very well until last July when she shared her life history during an interview.
Aunt Emma was a dare devil as a child. She rode her bike up one side of the outbuildings on her Iowa family farm, over the roof and down the other. She scaled their windmill. During country school, she went to sharpen her pencil and to spite her teacher, climbed out the window instead. She was on a state champion girls’ basketball team in high school. She went to college and then taught in a country school.
Emma grew up Church of the Brethren and was quite devout. Still, she married my mom’s brother Wayne. They met playing cards, which is pretty funny since Emma thought cards were an evil pastime. Her husband was a special pal to my mom. Emma blessed the bond between them by taking Mom, then a teenager, with them to movies, asking her to babysit and employing her for a few summers.
She was the wife of a dairy farmer and the mother of six, grandmother and great-grandmother of a whole passel of kids. She was a fabulous cook, a good housekeeper and a woman who did not keep her opinions to herself.
Emma was a brave woman, as her last few days prove. For her last few years she lived in a care facility, undergoing dialysis every few days. But a few weeks ago she fell and after enduring several days of considerable pain, she quit taking dialysis. Last week her children and grandchildren said their final good-byes, either in person or on the phone. A sports fan to the very end, she and her youngest son watched the Minnesota Twins on TV the last evening of her life. About three this morning, she took a turn for the worse. By the time her kids reached her, she was already gone.
I’m pretty sure she was riding her bike full speed all the way home. When she rode up the side of the outbuilding and reached the roof, she didn’t come back down the other side. She went straight up to heaven before her kids could get there and cheer her on the way.
That’s my aunt Emma. A dare devil to the very end.
