Hello and good-bye

This exercise has been cathartic.

When my aunt died two years ago, it was a shock. She had told us she was dying, but we didn’t believe her. With the exception of needing gallbladder surgery, she recently had been given a clean bill of health.

Aunt Jean had always been part of our lives. She had never married and lived with her parents until she was about 60. She lived only blocks from where I grew up and was a constant presence. At times, it annoyed my mother that she always was there. There are more pictures in my baby book of her holding me when I was born than there are of my grandparents. My father used to complain that she always called just as we were sitting down for dinner. Maybe just wanted to feel a part of it.

It turns out she was right about dying. She had an aggressive form of cancer and was dead in three months. I called her when she went to the hospital, but the morphine was making her hallucinate, and she was afraid. My ofrenda would calm her fears and make her smile.

In a tissue paper arch over my ofrenda, I taped blue musical notes. Blue was her favorite color, and she loved to sing. On the left, there’s a CD of Bette Midler singing Rosemary Clooney songs. When I stayed with my grandparents when my mother was in the hospital having my sister, Aunt Jean and I would sing “Hey, There,” complete with hand motions. I still do them when I hear the song. There’s also a Four Tops album to which we all would dance on the Pavilion on the shores of Little Traverse Bay on Lake Michigan. The skeleton leaning against the CD is dancing. And there’s a Neil Diamond album, since she liked to sing “Sweet Caroline.”

Below the arch is her picture, program and holy card from her funeral, as well as a picture of her holding me when I was a baby. The candles on that level are to remember my grandparents.

On the ledge below, I’ve included a clock. She collected clocks, and this is one of hers. There’s also a statue of Mary that was hers. She particularly venerated Mary and used to leave a bouquet of flowers under her statue at our church in northern Michigan. Under Mary’s statue is a family picture. The part you can see is of my grandparents, Aunt Jean's long-time boyfriend who died this year, Aunt Jean and my father’s mother.

Although I didn’t include marigolds, on the right is a bouquet of pansies. The bouquet reminds me of one she might have left by Mary’s statue. Also, frost can beat pansies down, but they spring back. They’re resilient. They seem in keeping with the Mexican idea of the cycle of life. I didn’t have coxcomb, but sprinkled red geranium petals on the altar. They’re representative of blood, both the Aztec and Christian sacrificial blood and the blood of life, a duality that’s consistent with the Mexican view of life. Another of Aunt Jean's clocks reminds us that our time on earth is measured, but the hands keep going around, and life does not end, just changes form.

The four votive candles are the traditional Mexican ones representing each compass direction, and incense is in the front. The blue candle is for Aunt Jean and is the only one that’s scented.

At the front is food and drink she would have liked: pork loin, croissant, chocolate and drambuie. I left a chair for her spirit to sit and enjoy the smells to nourish her soul. As I write this, I realize I forgot one other thing she would have loved: a picture of Little Traverse Bay that she would have seen from her room at Sandrift, the home my grandparents build in 1932. There were countless paintings of the bay all around her house. Now, they hang in my house and those of my sisters. It's a view I love, too, and is the one at the top of my blog.

I like the old Aztec cleansing ritual of “Sweeping the Way.” How wonderful, if every year instead of making new year’s resolutions, we swept out our homes, threw our doors open, lined the way with flowers and welcomed the spirits of both our loved ones and lost souls. Every week when I dust the furniture Aunt Jean left me and those paintings of Little Traverse Bay that she loved, I think of her. I never said good-bye. Now I have.