My Aunt Carolyn

Christmas in Kentucky
Originally uploaded by SarahorNicholas

Last Saturday, my great-aunt Carolyn passed away. She was 73, and her loss was and still is profoundly felt.

I flew to Kentucky the next day to be with my family as we all celebrated her life and mourned her passing. We told stories and distracted ourselves when the stories were too much. I learned things about her that I had never known, but mainly had my notions of her strength and compassion confirmed.

She was a lot of things to a lot of people but here is what she was to me.

Growing up, so the story has been told to me a hundred plus times, my Uncle Joe (as in "Uncle-Joe-and-Aunt-Carolyn," one word) would call up my mother and matter-of-factly inform her that she needed to drop me off at their house. They had not seen me in a couple of days and she could go off and do any old thing she wanted, as long as it involved dropping me off first.

I would spend hours to days being doted on and fed. Aunt Carolyn doing the former and Uncle Joe the later if memory serves. She would buy me Barbies, Barbie Vans, Barbie Salons, Barbie Pools. She would read me stories or play the piano while I sang along. I was taken along on anything from basic errands to church revivals. When they moved to Florida, going to see them became a trip in itself.

It would be almost 10 years before they had grandchildren of their own , and I gratefully filled in as a surrogate until Courtney and Zach showed up. Aunt Carolyn loved me unconditionally and I felt that love no matter how far away she was or how long it had been since we'd seen each other. Whenever I thought of all the people praying for me - praying me safe, praying me successful, praying me happy - Aunt Carolyn was the first person I always thought of.

She valued family above all else and undertook to preserve and protect it in her own way. To say she liked to take pictures is to say Shakespeare liked to write. She preserved the present with a dedication unmatched in our family - a sisyphean task in a group where the commandment to "Look this way and smile!" elicits only groans and complaints, if not full out sprints and dodges.

She also protected the past. She knew the story of every great-great grandparent, aunt, and even cousin. If that weren't enough, she could point them out in the antique photos she carefully kept and cataloged. When others in her generations couldn't tell a CPU from a JPEG, Aunt Carolyn scanned and labeled hundreds of family photos - understanding the power of new technology to safeguard these images.

I inherited my love of ancestry from her and I am so grateful that I spent several hours with her last summer learning the connections and stories that otherwise would have been lost. Of course, I know her knowledge went beyond those few hours but all I can do now is piece it together from notes on the back of pictures and more traditional sources, instead of hearing it from her.

Her love of family was not limited to her own blood and I learned at her funeral how many other lives she touched. She was always anxious to find a connection with everyone she met and if it wasn't there, she forged it herself.

I still giggle at the memory of her first interaction with Nicholas. She sat down beside him at a family gathering and asked him, "Now, Nicholas, where are your people from?" To say he was confused would be a vast understatement. He offered that his mother and father lived in Atlanta. She persisted, "Now, I know some Hollands over in Caldwell County. Are you kinned to them?" More befuddlement from Nicholas.
No matter. If his family weren't from her neck of the woods, she wanted to know where they were from. She continued to question him about his family and his life as if knowing Nicholas better was all that mattered. In that moment, I suppose it did.

I hope I inherited far more from this woman than a love of family history and the lyrics to "I Shall Not Be Moved" and "I'll Fly Away." I hope I can be as faithful as she was to the values of God, family, and compassion. I hope I can give passionately to my marriage and my career - racking up decade after decade to their service. Above all else, I hope I can become worthy of my Aunt Carolyn and all those prayers she sent my way over the years.