Family Part 3 - My Aunt Mary K
Aunt Mary K (my Mom’s sister) and Uncle John McCall were two of my favorite people and often visited my Grandma’s house whenever we did. Aunt Mary K was a practicing nurse at the time. My Uncle John was a university professor of English, specifically Shakespeare. Aunt Mary K very much wanted to have children but was unable to conceive. This was back when there were no fertility specialists. Her doctor told her too bad, so sad, but there is nothing we can do. She wanted to adopt but Uncle John refused. I’m not sure my Aunt ever forgave him for that. She considered her inability to have children as one of the worst tragedies of her life. So Mary K did the next best thing and that was to be involved in her sister’s children. She and my Uncle John were very often part of our holidays and vacations, especially camping vacations.
Mary K was a witty and playful Aunt. She was named for her great grandmother, Mary Haas, at her father’s insistence. She was the second of the four children and from what I hear, one of the bigger troublemakers in the family. One of the most commonly shared stories as we grew up was about how one night she and a truckload of teenage boys rode down the street and threw rocks at the streetlights breaking them all along the way.
Mary K married John in 1953 and they were together until his death from esophageal cancer. Although they never had children I think most of the nieces and nephews would agree that she and John were the “fun relatives”. Visiting in Oshkosh always involved trips to the zoo, brat picnics on the lake, card playing in the evenings and an Aunt who was genuinely interested in what was going on in my life.
She received her nurses’ training with the Red Cross in the late 40’s. One of my most vivid memories is visiting her once when she was taking an anatomy class. The class was dissecting fetal pigs and she had hers at home at the time. It lay on its back on a cookie sheet, cut down the middle and stretched open. She proudly pointed out all of the different body parts, veins, arteries, etc. I was rather young and I think it was the first time I realized I could be both fascinated and totally grossed out at the same time.
As a nurse she was quite a bit cleaner and more concerned about germs and hands getting washed than our mother. She worked in a physician’s office for a number of years, then the maternity floor of a hospital and finally geriatrics. I asked her once how she could ever work with old people – what could you possibly talk to them about, what could you possibly find in common? She said to me “Well Laura, they are the same as you and me, just older.” That has always stuck with me and was a great help to me when I worked in a Long Term Care Facility.
John and Mary K had many different homes before they finally settled in Oshkosh but it was their big pink house in Oshkosh that they seemed to love the most. Mary K was quite the hostess whenever we visited. One summer when I was about 9 I was allowed to ride the train up to Oshkosh by myself to visit John and Mary K. She told me much later that she was so afraid she just didn’t know what we would find to do for a week together. She did tend to worry a lot. The first night I was there when I went to bed, she set up an ironing board at the top of the stairs. She placed cans on the edge of the ironing board. Mom had told her that I might sleepwalk and she was afraid I would fall down the stairs – thus the booby trap. We went to Copps the next day and found a kit for making tissue paper flowers and that was the beginning of our week together. After making all of the flowers we could with the tissue paper in the kit, we bought more tissue paper and made more. Then we decided to buy white tissue paper and dye it ourselves which turned into another full day project. We had tissue paper flowers everywhere!! She told me many years later that she was so relieved that we found that kit and that it entertained me for so long. Up until the week she died we laughed about those paper flowers.
Aunt Mary K’s Christmas torte was the stuff of legends. Her first torte was baked in 1970. It is a nine layer cake, every layer a different flavor with a ginger, date and nut filling. Frosted and decorated it was the biggest cake we had ever seen. It took her two days to bake and construct and every year the big question was whether or not Mary K’s torte would lean. More often than not it would and no matter how we raved over it, she would be bitterly disappointed. But the next year she would try again.
Once I went away to college I kind of lost touch with Mary K and John. I would hear from Mom how they were doing but I just didn’t take the time to visit or write or even call. I was raising you boys and just got caught up in my own life. I deeply regret this however, and at some point realized how much I missed her. I started flying across the country to visit her once a year and then sometimes twice a year. At first I wondered what I would possibly talk to her about and how could we have anything in common. But then I thought about what she taught me years ago “that she was the same as me only older” and we got along just fine and had some truly memorable visits.
We would always go OUT to dinner. She tried cooking for me one evening and we laughed at how bad it was and decided we wouldn’t be doing that anymore. We frequently went clothes shopping at the Outlet stores. This was when I first noticed her brutal honesty when she would tell me exactly how something looked on me. No mincing words. She wasn’t unkind but you certainly did not have to guess how she felt about something. Which is why I loved her. Our running joke was, “Gee Mare, tell me how you REALLY feel.” I was impressed with how knowledgeable she was about politics and we had some good lively discussions about that. Luckily we were on the same side as I can only imagine how those conversations would have gone if we were not. We usually ended days with a glass or two of wine compliments of Phil who was always leaving a bottle with her here and there. These visits with her in her later years gave me so much joy.
This is what I learned from my Aunt Mary K:
If at first you don’t succeed, keep trying.
Be honest, no drama.
Old people weren’t always old.
Learn to laugh at yourself.
A glass or two of wine is almost always the answer.
You can never have enough flowers in your life.
As she got older she started falling a lot and I didn’t feel like she was getting the care she needed. After much discussion and with Dave’s help I moved her out to California to be closer to family. By that time she was pretty forgetful and frail but I have to hand it to her she did it! She was trying to remain calm but I could see that while we waited in the airport for the second leg of our trip she was getting visibly anxious. She turned to me and said, “When will you be going back to California?” I said “What do you mean?” She said “After you drop me off. When will you be going back to California?” I said “Mary K, I’m taking you to California with me. You’re going to live very close to me.” Well her whole face lit up as if this was the first time she had heard this bit of news. She said “I am?!!” “How wonderful!” I said “What did you think? That I as just going to drop you off somewhere?” She said “Well, yes.” We both got a kick out of that. She had such a good sense of humor about her situation. She knew she was failing and sometimes she would get scared but mostly she would just take it a day at a time and kept laughing. She was such a feisty thing and I loved her sarcastic wit. She never seemed to appreciate how much she was loved. Everyone at the residence where she lived would say hello to her in the hallway and all I heard was what a sweetie she was. And yet she would say to me “I wish I was a more likeable person.”
I was with Mary K to the very end. She died on July 10th just as the sun was setting. She wasn’t in any pain or distress and died exactly how she lived – feisty and strong. I sat with her every day the last week of her life and although people tell me how lucky she was to have me there, I say to them that it was an honor and a privilege to be with her and to watch someone so gracefully pass on to the next realm. She struggled with her faith for many years but I think in the end she had resolved that in her heart. Although I miss her, I felt she was truly ready to go.