"See you later" auntie...

My wife's aunt, Marlene Hanson passed away in May just six days shy of her 75th birthday.
"Auntie" was an amazing lady in so many ways that it would be hard to describe her love, generosity, and care in anything shy of several chapters.

We celebrated her memorial service last weekend in southern California.

I'm not sure I could have remembered her name the first few years Lib and I were married. She was always just...Auntie. (Auntie as in the light switch position: "On-tee"...NOT as in the tiny picnic pest: "Ant-ee")

Auntie's kitchen was the first place I met Libby's family and her home instantly became associated with my in-law's clan.

She never visited us without wanting to help decorate or landscape or extend her gifts of hospitality to our home.

She LOVED taking people out to eat and DISLIKED letting them pay.

She will be dearly missed by all of us until we have the chance to meet again in heaven.

Aside from the obvious grief at missing our dear Auntie I was struck by something unexpected as we spent time with family and friends last weekend. I had probably been to her house less than a dozen times in 18 years of marriage to Libby so it seemed odd that I should feel such a sense of attachment to her home but I was sad to drive away from it for what may be the last time.

I think it may be that I always knew I had a "safe place" there and now my world has one less safe place.

Oh we still have family in southern Ca., and we'll still have many reasons to visit, but not to visit Glendale. No reason to visit the house on the hill.
I think I perhaps knew, without knowing, that if I found myself anywhere within a tank of gas of Auntie's, or anywhere in southern Ca and in need, there was a place I could go where I would be welcomed and cared for and...safe.
Again, it isn't that those places don't exist...there are a number of them in somewhat close proximity...but there is now one less.

When my mom moved to Oregon from the house we grew all grew up in in Sunnyvale we lost that location...but we gained a location up north. Sad to see the house go but excited for mom's new adventure. But this is different. This time the person and the place are gone.

It makes me wonder what part this "geographical component" plays in many of our relationships. Maybe I'm just getting old but I don't like having one less friend and one less safe place in the world.

Could it be that her gift of hospitality was so strong that we not only miss the person, but the influence of her gift on the body, or in this case the family, as well? And that her home was an embodiment of her gift?
That has a familiar ring to it. I think I have felt THAT before.

We do know that Auntie has gone ahead of us to get her garden ready so that she can have us all over when we get to heaven. Maybe, until then, we need to step up our own gifts, and in particular our own hospitality, to make up for her being gone.