Growing up, my family looked a bit different than how TV shows liked to portray. My parents split before I was even 5, and I spent most of my formative years living with my mother, sister, and grandparents (perhaps this explains my predilection for Full House as a kid with its uncommon parental structure). My mom was more or less single through my school years, my father would be able to say that he had been married three times (and three times divorced) by the time I was 31. And though I was fortunate enough to spend so much time with my grandparents who indeed loved each other and were each others’ lives (they were married over 60 years), seeing a couple in love in their 70s and 80s looks different than those in their 20s, 30s, 40s. Or maybe I was just too young to really see and understand their love, or maybe I just simply wasn’t paying attention.
My maternal grandmother was the oldest of eight siblings, so we have quite a large family, a family that was tight-knit way back when. Many of the siblings got married and had kids around the same time. With my grandmother the oldest of the bunch, her kids (my mom and her older brother) were also the oldest cousins, but not by much; my mother was close with her cousins, some of whom could have been classified best-friend status. When it came time for my mom’s generation to start having kids, many of them did so before her. Not having children of her own until her mid-30s put my sister and I in this weird age-range compared to the rest of the family: Our first cousins were at least 8-15 years older than us, the next batch of cousins were being born when we ourselves were about 9 and 12. So we didn’t quite fit in, perhaps part of the reason we drifted apart from the rest of the family, especially after our grandparents died.
Enter in my mom’s best friend and her husband, our honorary aunt and uncle. My mom and aunt have been besties for almost 60 years now. And as our time with our blood-relatives started to dwindle, we spent more and more time with them and their family. My aunt and uncle had 5 children between them, my aunt 2 boys from a previous marriage, my uncle 3 girls. They married in 1974, though had no children together (I mean, probably for good reason: 5 kids is an awful lot to start with!). Those kids have grown to have children of their own (my aunt and uncle have 9 grandkids in total), the oldest of the grandkids just had a baby a few months ago, making my aunt and uncle great-grandparents. This number excludes my other aunt and uncle’s kids, this aunt and uncle brother and sister to my mom’s friends (2 brothers married to 2 sisters if you are closely following along). Theirs is a BIG family, theirs is a close family, with each of their exes making regular appearances at family functions without any bad feelings or awkwardness.
My aunt and uncle’s house has been the place to go for the Super Bowl, Thanksgiving, big boxing matches, the last episode of American Idol, and countless birthday celebrations (obviously). They are the type of people who never lock their front door, the type of people who say “Just come over whenever if you’re around” and mean it. All the years we’ve been going there, it's the only address I know (besides my mom’s) without having to look it up, their phone number stamped into my memory, my fingers punching the keys without me even having to think of them. They come over for Christmas and New Year’s Eve, they always send birthday cards—even thinking of you cards (I have received many with all the different places I’ve lived) to check in and send love. They welcomed us into their family with open arms. Their kids and grandkids and extended families all know who we are and greet us with big bear hugs and kisses on the cheeks whenever we see them. We are asked about if only my mom shows up to said events.
In all the years we’ve been showing up, one thing has stood out: The love between my aunt and uncle. Until recently, I don’t think I ever even gave it a second thought or even acknowledged it in general, but when I got news that my uncle suffered a heart attack last week, I knew it wasn’t going to end well, and I couldn’t help but wonder how my aunt was going to handle it.
And you know, anyone who’s spouse suffers an intense, perhaps life-altering threat to one’s health will clearly be upset and scared, but for my aunt, well I (and most of our family) feared that it was a threat to her own life line, too. For 40 years, they have done everything together: go on vacation, weddings, visit each other at work, shown up at the hospital when their grandkids were being born, showed up to high school graduations and other milestone celebrations. It was a very rare thing to see my aunt by herself—sure, she and my mom go out for dinner to catch up, girl-talk style, but my uncle had been known to accompany her on said girl-talk dates.
Perhaps because to look at my uncle, you wouldn’t really get an idea that he was just a big mush with an even bigger heart. He was a big guy, tall with a nice large belly, his cleft lip lent to his hard-looking face. He was a gentle giant who had a thing for motorcycles, which you could tell just by looking at him (the motorcycle bit, that is). My aunt is dainty-looking and proper, small and sweet. Exact opposites if ever there were, but so perfect together.
Maybe because their love was so strong yet so subtle, I didn’t even realize it or even stop to think about it all these years until things got really bad last week, how inseparable they were, how supportive of each other they were, how caring and doting and generous they were to each other. My uncle used to kid me about my hair and all its unnatural colors it moved through (“What, no purple hair this time?,” remarks that I continued to receive whenever we saw each other, even though I haven’t dyed my hair in over 12 years), but he also used to ask me about boys. “Got a boyfriend?” he would ask. If the answer happened to be yes, he would ask why I hadn’t introduced the guy to him yet. He wanted to screen them. Other times he’d ask, “When are you going to get married? How long are you going to wait to invite me to your wedding?”
My aunt, too, would ask about my love life when she knew I was dating someone. I specifically remember one particular conversation we had about the guy I was dating 10 years ago. I was going to dog-sit for my aunt and uncle while they were away on vacation somewhere and we were going through everything I needed to know about where the food was, where the treats were, where the toys were, where the vet’s number was in case there was an emergency when she suddenly went off-topic. “So your mother tells me you’ve got a new boyfriend,” she said. “Are you in love?” The question caught me off-guard. This particular relationship that I was in at the time was definitely a rebound after getting my heart broken by the long-term boyfriend I had had before him. I definitely wasn’t in love with the guy I was dating, and knew I would never love him. I was basically dating him for the attention, and because I knew there were a lot of girls out there who were attracted to him—at the time, it felt good to be dating someone that made other women jealous, as terrible as that sounds right now as I own up to it, but it’s the truth. I might not have been able to put it in so many words then, but there was a hesitation in my voice when I responded: “I don’t know, it’s too soon to tell.”
I made plans to travel back to my mom’s in New York last Thursday evening—my uncle passed that morning. My mom and sister had visited him in the hospital before he died, and it hurt so much that I couldn’t be there with them to help try to will him back to us. Since I hadn’t been able to be there throughout the nightmare of the week, I wanted to see my aunt as soon as possible. On Friday, my mom left work early, came and picked me up, and over to my aunt’s house we went. A few of my cousins were there, and we all hugged and cried and were so grateful to see each other. I sat talking with my aunt and mom and a couple of my cousins, who soon got up to find something for my aunt to wear to the wake and funeral service, leaving me and my aunt by ourselves.
Still overcome with grief, still in shock, we talked about my uncle and how great the family and friends of the family were stepping up to help her. “I can’t believe he’s gone, I just can’t believe it,” she said, shaking her head and staring out into space. And all of a sudden, she snapped out of it and looked over to me. “So how is DC? Do you like it there?” (Side note: I moved to DC in June with my current boyfriend, who got a job there, hence the move.) I said that I was still getting settled, but so far so good. “How is your boyfriend?” she asked. Good, I said, recapping what he’d been up to recently and that he sent his condolences.
In all honesty, I should have seen that one coming, but I didn’t, and it caught me just as off-guard as it did when she asked me 10 years ago. This time, though, I had a different, more honest answer. I smiled and shook my head yes.
She leaned in close with a smile and a twinkle in her eye. “And you’re happy?”
At this point, tears started to flood my eyes as I shook my head and said yes.
She started to cry and hugged me closer. “I’m so glad that you are happy. It’s the only thing that matters: That you find love and that you make each other happy.”
Her words, so simple, hit so hard, and I realized how true they were, and started to flash back through the years to times when I had see them together, how happy they looked, how genuine their smiles, how their faces would light up whenever the other one entered the room. When my uncle teased me about getting married, I would nervously laugh and brush it off, but right then I realized he had been completely serious each and every time. He just wanted me and my sister to find love, to find The One so that we could share in the joy and happiness that he and my aunt shared and had been role models to all of us kids and cousins of how to act and respect the ones that we love.
At the wake on Saturday, my mother was asked to read a letter to those gathering to celebrate him. One of the grandkids, now 17, had written it to my uncle, and it pretty much summed up everyone’s feelings toward him, how much he meant to us all, how much we’d miss him. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house as my mother read it to a packed room that overflowed into the hallway. “I hope that I find a man that makes me as happy and loves me as much as you did Grandpa. Then I will know I have found true love.”
That was just how they rolled: My aunt and uncle loved each other with every fiber of their beings. So much so that anyone who knew them or even met them just once could attest to this burning, unconditional love that they had for one another. It seemed a rare thing, something that, though there were many couples in the room, few truly felt or shared with their other the way they did.
It takes courage to love like that. It is a brave act to open your heart and give, promise to literally cherish someone else. And as much as my aunt is hurting right now, I am so grateful for the bravery her and my uncle displayed to be fully present, fully true, fully honest with the feelings they had for one another that kept them rock solid for over 40 years. May we all find the strength and desire to love someone other than our selves with everything we’ve got.
A friend of mine posted a link to some Eleanor Roosevelt quotes the other day. I posted one ominously to Facebook the day of the wake, her quote about how we grow stronger from every experience that forces us to look fear in the face. But there was another one that also seemed appropro to the situation:
"It takes courage to love, but pain through love is the purifying fire which those who love generously know. We all know people who are so much afraid of pain that they shut themselves up like clams in a shell and, giving out nothing, receive nothing and therefore shrink until life is a mere living death."
My aunt and uncle were not afraid to love each other utterly and completely and were probably the happiest people I have ever known. All relationships end, either by someone breaking it off or by losing your person to death. Heartache is unavoidable no matter who you are, no matter who you lose. But the JOY, the joy you experience while loving your person, your lobster, that is worth more than all the money or jewels or all-expense-paid vacations in the world. Which is why, with a nod to my aunt and uncle, I promise to live and lead with my heart, to experience the happiness that they felt, that they shared, and hope that you can find the courage to do the same.
