Certs and Fruit Striped Gum

Sometime during the week between my birthday and Easter in 1996 my Aunt Sara died. She had a stroke and was in the hospital recovering, when she had another one. I got the news on a Friday and was sitting in the Louis E. Jones Funeral Parlor in Alpharetta on Sunday. Sara had just called me five days earlier to wish me a happy birthday and to make me feel guilty for not visiting her in the hospital. Her call took me by surprise. She had not called me on my birthday in years and I sensed weariness in her voice. She wanted to meet my new girlfriend and I promised to bring her over the following weekend. We talked a while, and with every word I realized that I was not a good nephew. She deserved better. I can still remember her saying goodbye and the finality in the clicking of the dial tone.
I saw Sara’s husband, my Uncle Bud, in the lobby of the Louis place. He seemed small and awkward in his suit.

“Hey Bud, how are you doing?” I asked just to have something to say.
“I’ve been better Doodle”
“I’ve been a whole lot better.”

I sat through the service, which was identical to every family funeral that I had ever attended. The aging Reverend Hatfield presided and improvised a speech about a woman that he hardly knew. The same old songs were played by a funeral home supplied stock organist.

“It is weh el, it is weh el…with my soul” some old lady belted out, a little too happy for the occasion.

It was a bright sunny day, and I took my place alongside the rest of the pall bearers and loaded my aunt into the back of a station wagon for dead people. It was a short ride from the funeral home to the Greenlawn Cemetery in Roswell. She was buried next to her oldest son Butch, who was killed in a car wreck when he was twenty-one years old, and her mother and father. Her youngest son, Keith was there as well as her grandchildren, Jason, Ryan and Reed. We all stood around in the bright heat of the afternoon, trying to make each other laugh. Guys do that. I watched as my Uncle Bud walked away and seemed to grow even smaller as he climbed into a shiny car to go back to his empty house.
My Aunt Sara loved all the children in her family but I think that it is safe to say that I was her favorite. Being the favorite is something that you know without ever being told. Sara’s son Butch died when I was three years old back in 1969. He misjudged a curve on Hard Scrabble Road late one night, left the road, and rolled his car over in just the right way to break his neck. I think that night, I became her Butch. She spoiled me endlessly and took me everywhere. We watched movies on Sunday when the rest of the males were knee deep in football games. Her eyes lit up when I walked in her door, and I was always privy to the latest gossip. She loaned me money, knowing that I would never pay it back, and let me get away with murder. I was an ungrateful child at the time and my heart aches knowing that I can’t change the past.
Each year when the Bradford pears bloom and the white snowflake blossoms blow in the air like snow, I know that I am getting older and that my Aunt Sara is already waiting for me on the other side. I hope that I am still her favorite and that I make her wait for me a long, long time.