My aunt recently passed away. Her death was quite sudden and although it’s been a couple of weeks, I still am unable to wrap my mind around the fact that she’s gone. I still think of her sitting by the window or on the porch of her Idaho home, watching the snow piling up. I still expect there to be a random Facebook message telling me about the beauty of the snow or reminiscing about our family’s lake house.
It’s an unsettling emotion. For me, despite the dysfunction on that side of the family, I’m still one of them and I always have been. My personality, the blood flowing inside of me making me who I am has always been from them. I’m more like them than I ever realized. I’m proud of it.
With the holidays slowing creeping around the corner, I’m thinking heavily on my family. My children are essentially the only children left. At Christmas time they have no cousins to play with and fight with. We live a drama free, peaceful life but sometimes…just sometimes…I’d love to go back and experience the Christmas’s of my childhood.
My brother and I would be jumping for joy, excited to spend another Christmas at the lake house. My mom would spend hours cooking for the party knowing fully well nothing she cooked would ever get touched. My family had food quirks. They refused to eat food that other people made. We’d pile into our old car, head a mile up the road and arrive at the lake. My grandmother and aunts would be hovering in the kitchen full of family drama.
My grandfather would be tucked away, watching TV in the cabin (The house was built attached to the original lake cabin). My brother and I would run around the house with all of our cousins, wondering in silent whispers if our estranged uncle would show up. The presents would be stacked a mile high into the air, covering up the most horrid fake tree I have ever seen. The house was full of elementary aged children all the way down to little toddlers. There was usually at least two dogs running around.
This one Christmas in particular there was a mangy puppy my aunt had brought, some mongrel that she had rescued. I fell in love with the puppy and all the kids spent the entire day playing with it. When dinner came, we all sat down to eat. There had already been plenty of fighting and bickering. Dinner was going great until my estranged uncle walked in halfway through our meal. Instantly, the air in the room was sucked out. Like most Christmas’s, his presence wasn’t appreciated. He and my grandfather would usually get into it and a shouting match would ensue. This time was different, he ended up staying much to the horror of his children.
That holiday, my poor cousins, had to sit at the table, with a heaping plate of food that he had served them and choke down every bite. I don’t even think he allowed them to have desert. The fun sort of died with his arrival. We open presents and the chaos continues.
My grandmother rolls her eyes and goes to clean up the kitchen. The living room is covered in wrapping paper, bows and junk. There are kids running through the house with nerf guns. At least one toddler, has stripped naked and is running around in a diaper. My little cousin is still sitting at the counter in tears with a plate of food in front of her. Apparently she never left.
My grandmother is barking orders to my grandfather who is sitting in his easy chair reading a book, ignoring her and the rest of the family. Every other adult had fled to the safety of the cabin. The dogs are barking and chasing each other. That’s when the puppy decides to crawl under the fake tree and barf. My Aunt starts yelling at it and rushes over to help. She wedges herself in between the wall and tree, bends down and the entire tree tips over, crashing to the ground.
I’m standing in the entryway, looking like a deer caught in the headlights. I know better than to laugh, especially when a stream of expletives comes rolling out of her mouth. My grandfather looks up from his book, surveys the scene and promptly goes back to his book without a care in the world.
I race through the kitchen and back out into the hallway. I run straight to the cabin where the smart adults have all hidden. I tell them what I witnessed. They all start laughing and congratulating me on being smart enough to run away. We spend the rest of the Christmas day tiptoeing around the fighting family members and embracing the ones we get along with. Smartly, no one mentions the tree or the dog barf.
By the time we leave, I’m practically asleep on my feet, buzzing with the excitement of Christmas and unable to keep my eyes open. Eventually, as I grew older, the dysfunction only deepened and we were no longer able to spend the holidays as one family. We ended up in fractured little groups, no longer functioning as one. We were okay with that. The fighting stopped. But…sometimes I wish I could go back. Especially to that one Christmas because it was so iconically us! It epitomized every dysfunction our family held and yet stands out in my mind, becoming a memory. One of the very best and last Christmas’s that I can remember at the lake house.
With my aunt having passed away, I think about those days now more than ever. I know she appreciated them. I know the days we could function as one meant something to her as they always have to me. It’s a bitter sweet reality, knowing that she is gone but with her passing, so is her earthly pain. There is a comfort in knowing that I’ll see her again.
