Did you hear the one about the nun, the painting, the dog, the cereal, and the Christmas dinner?

I had one of the best aunts a person could have. She was one of the funniest people in the world, and she didn’t even know it. She was the classic definition of a spinster. She never married, and she worked in a library. My brother, sister, and I always thought that a sitcom could be based on her with Betty White in the starring role.

My aunt loved researching our family tree. She compiled a ton of paperwork that I now have. When my family came over from Ireland in the mid 1800’s, they settled around Morris, Illinois. Much like Bob Seger, I hate Morris, Illinois. I am starting to learn that I hold lifelong grudges for some of the silliest reasons. I’ll get into that some other time… She used to drag us to look up records in Morris. My mom would drive us all out there and spend the day looking through all of these old files. It was not the most exciting afternoon for a kid. Actually, it was rather boring. Looking back, I see why my aunt wanted to take us besides the fact that she didn’t want to drive there: she was afraid of expressways. She always included us because she never had children of her own. I remember when I was about 5 or 6, she took me with her to pick out a new car. She knew what she was going to buy, a Chevy Nova, but she let me pick the color. For whatever reason, I picked this awful yellow. She went with it though. She had that car a long time. Every time I saw it, I was so proud because I got to pick it out.

Holidays and family parties were never dull. My aunt was a constant source of entertainment. She would say something and that would set my dad and uncle off. The whole rest of the day would be my dad and uncle making fun of my aunt. They were relentless.

I will tell a few of my favorite stories and memories of my aunt. Four of the five stories I am going to tell, I actually witnessed with my wife. She wasn’t my wife at the time, but it’s easier to refer to her that way as far as these stories go. The story I did not witness was told to me on several occasions. Though I don’t know the specifics or the details very well, I do know the punchline to the story. It was always a home run of a story to me.

As I mentioned, I am not sure of all the specifics of this next story, but it is still worth telling. My aunt did a lot of charity work for the order of nuns that ran her high school. I remember her dragging me to some of these charity functions. There was nothing worse than having to go to some flower show at the convent. It’s not a fun afternoon for a 10 year old boy. Somehow, my aunt was having dinner with a group of nuns. I don’t know who the nuns were or how many nuns were there; all I know is that this particular dinner had nuns present. As it has been told to me, dinner was underway and everyone was talking through the dinner. At some point, my aunt started talking about the dinner she recently had. She went on to tell this group of nuns, “I had the most wonderful dish the other day. I never had it before, and it was delicious. Obviously, someone asked her what she ate. “I had this Italian dish called placenta.” As you can imagine, the nuns were taken aback. Someone who was at the dinner with my aunt when she had “placenta” for dinner, I am assuming my other aunt, quickly tried to defuse the situation and corrected her. “You had polenta for dinner.” My aunt replied, “Oh yeah, that’s the name of it.” She just rolled on like nothing happened. Her mixing up of words was pretty common. There was the time she told everyone about her new deodorant, FDS. For those of you not familiar, that stands for Feminine Deodorant Spray. It’s used for a lady’s privates. My aunt had no clue. She liked the smell and used it like a regular deodorant, and she had to tell everyone about it. I’m sure these mix ups happened even more than I care to know.

My aunt worked for the Chicago Public Library system for the longest time. Because she was a Chicago employee, she had to live within the boundaries of the city. After she retired, she moved about 5 minutes away from my parents’ house. She lived there for several years until her aunt passed away. When the aunt died, her cousin asked if she would like to move into the now vacant house. The rent would be virtually nothing, but it was about 45 minutes from where she currently lived. She loved being near my parents. It was a tough decision. Living on a very small pension from the City of Chicago, it made financial sense to move. Ultimately, she decided to live in the house 45 minutes away. The upside was that it was a house and not an apartment. She had a lot more room. After she settled in, she invited my wife and me over for dinner. We got to her house early, so we had time to visit before we ate. She was telling us all about the house and the people in her neighborhood. She was infatuated with the local handyman that seemed to do work for everyone in the area. I’m sure he had a name, but what it was, I have no idea. He was simply referred to by his business name: Dirty Deeds. My wife and I laughed because all we could think of was the AC/DC song. All my aunt could talk about was Dirty Deeds. Dirty Deeds did this, Dirty Deeds did that, I need Dirty Deeds to work on my lawn, etc. My wife and I were convinced that she would create jobs just so she could have Dirty Deeds over to the house. Mention Dirty Deeds to my wife today, and she will still chuckle.

One of my aunt’s favorite things to do in her spare time was paint. She was very artistic. She could paint, draw, sew, etc. She was very crafty. She had set up the spare bedroom as her studio. She did all her arts and crafts there. She was excited to show us some of her new paintings. She must have brought out a dozen paintings. There were all different types of subjects: flowers, fruits, people. You name it, she painted it. She described all of them to us. After she was done, she told us she got all of her ideas from art books. She said that since she didn’t copy them exactly and made her own slight changes, it wasn’t polygamy. My wife and I looked at each other with disbelief. Did she just say what we thought she said? She did. After processing things for a few seconds, we both started laughing. I asked my aunt, “Don’t you mean plagiarize? Not polygamy? Polygamy is having multiple spouses; plagiarism is copying somebody’s work illegally.” “Oh yeah, that’s what I meant. No wonder the ladies at the garden club were looking at me funny after I told them about my paintings.” I said to her, “You mentioned polygamy to a bunch of old ladies?” She in fact did. The great thing about my aunt is that kind of stuff didn’t embarrass her at all. It simply didn’t faze her.

After a year or so of living in this house, my aunt got sick. It was best that she didn’t live alone anymore. She wasn’t so bad that she needed to be in assisted living, but she was not well enough to be alone. My dad told her that she could come live with my him and my mom. It took some time for my mom to get used to having my aunt around. It’s not easy to all of the sudden have your sister-in-law as your new roommate. It was comical to watch at times, but everything eventually worked out. It was a good situation for everyone.

One summer. my sister was going to Great America and needed a dog sitter. My dad loved her dog so he volunteered to watch the dog. Roxie was a medium/small mixed breed dog. I’m guessing she was 25-30 lbs, max. She was black in color and was an all around good dog. She made it easy for my dad to watch her. My aunt was an animal lover. She was more of a cat person, but she loved dogs too. She was always excited when my sister brought the dog over to visit. One weekend afternoon, my wife and I stopped by to visit my parents. We walked into the house and the only one around was my mom. She was upstairs watching TV. I asked where my dad was, and she told me he took the dog for a walk. I asked where my aunt was. My mom wasn’t sure, but thought she was in the backyard doing some gardening. We went downstairs and headed outside. My parent’s house backed up to a park. There was a playground and a walking path that led to some tennis courts. The path must have been 400-500 yards long. My dad would walk the dog from our house to the tennis courts. The courts were around a bend, so you couldn’t really see them from our backyard. My wife and I walked out to the patio and my aunt was not around. We decided to take a seat and just wait for my dad. After a few minutes, we saw my aunt coming from the park. She was pulling a dog by its collar and struggling to do so. She was probably about 79-80 years old at the time. As she was approaching the house, I asked her what she was doing. She said that she was bringing Roxie home. My wife and I looked at each other. We told her, “That’s not Roxie; that’s an 80 lb German shepherd.” Soon after that, my dad walked back with Roxie. He saw my aunt holding this dog and asked her what she was doing. “Well, I thought this was Roxie. I thought you were having a heart attack, and she was like Lassie trying to get a message to me.” My dad said, “If you thought I was dying, why didn’t you come looking for me instead of dragging that dog home?” My aunt had no answer. My dad told her to get rid of the German Shepherd and return it to where she found it. Luckily, no one seemed to notice their dog was missing for 15 minutes.

There are no two ways about it: my aunt drove my dad crazy. She and he living together in the same house was a volatile situation. She would say or do something that would drive him bananas and all hell would break loose. My dad loved my aunt and would do anything in the world for her, but she also made him crazy. He would ask her to do something simple, and she would do the complete opposite. She wasn’t doing it to be defiant, she just did whatever she wanted to do. One of my favorite stories was when my dad sent my aunt to the grocery store to pick up a few things for dinner that night. My wife and I pulled up to my parents’ house, and my aunt was sitting in her car in the driveway. I looked, waved, and proceeded to go inside the house. I saw my dad in the kitchen. He was not happy. I asked him what was going on. “I gave her a list of 5 things I needed from the store, and she came back with all this crap that wasn’t on my list.” He opened up the pantry and said, “Look what she bought. This could feed the Russian army.” Now, the only way to describe what she bought is to think of those huge bags of popcorn that you see at stadiums when you go to the circus or some other kind of family event. They are the big clear plastic bags about 3 feet tall. Instead of being filled with popcorn, it was filled with some crappy breakfast cereal. It barely fit in the pantry, it was so big. My dad went on to tell me that he was going to make her eat every last bite of that cereal until it was gone. “She can’t throw out any of it. If it’s stale and 2 years old, it doesn’t matter; she has to finish it.” My wife and I wanted to laugh so hard, but we chose not to. We didn’t want to upset my dad even more. I tried to smooth things over. I went outside to talk to my aunt. I asked her how long she had been in the car. “Over an hour.” I asked her why she bought such a big bag of cereal since my mom and dad didn’t even eat cereal. “It was only $3.00.” I told her to just buy what my dad has on the list. One of my aunt’s favorite sayings was, “But, it was on sale.” I used to tell her that she would save more money if she didn’t buy stuff. That was a foreign concept to her. She was a compulsive shopper. It wouldn’t matter what my dad or I said, she would do the exact same thing the next day without blinking an eye. I eventually helped broker a deal to get her back into the house. My dad was pissed at her for a long time after that one. I have no idea if he followed through with his threat of making her eat all of the cereal. He threatened to kick her out of the house a thousand times, but he never did. Thinking back, it would have been good reality TV.

After my dad passed away, my aunt moved into an assisted living facility. She was too old to help care for my mom, who had just gone through some health issues. Also, I think my mom and aunt would have killed each other without my dad present as a buffer. They were best friends, but my mom had less patience for her, let’s call them, idiosyncrasies than my dad. My cousin found a great place about 25 minutes from our house for our aunt to live. She had her own apartment in this senior assisted living facility. It was great. She quickly made friends and acclimated to her new living situation. On doctor’s orders, she could no longer drive, which was a good thing. She was a terrible driver to begin with, plus she was 80 years old at the time. Because of this, I would drive out to her new place and pick her up for holidays or any other special occasion. My wife and I were married at this time and were expecting our second child. We were also in the process of trying to sell our townhouse. We moved into my mom’s house. We helped take care of my mom and saved a ton a money at the same time. We were looking all over for places where we could build a new house. This went on for close to two years until we finally settled on where we live today. While at my mom’s house, we still did Easter and Christmas like we did when my dad was around. The Christmas before our second child was born, I went out to my aunt’s place and brought her over for dinner. I was making a turkey and some sort of beef roast for dinner. As an aside, my wife and I had decided that we did not want to know the sex of the baby. We wanted to be surprised. I had a feeling it was a boy, and my wife thought it was a girl. She was around 6 months pregnant at this time, so the topic of what we were having came up during dinner. My aunt asked my wife if she had a preference towards having a boy or a girl. She gave the old cliched answer, “As long as it’s healthy, I don’t really care.” Since we already had a son, my wife then said, “One of each would be nice, I guess.” With that, my aunt proceeded to say, “I’d like one of each too, please.” My wife and I looked at each other, really confused, and said, “What? You want one of each?” My aunt replied, “Yeah. I’d like one slice of turkey and one slice of roast beef.” We just started laughing and couldn’t stop for quite a while. We just shook our heads. She made the transition from babies to what she wanted on her plate without telling anyone. That’s just how she operated.

My aunt passed away about 7 weeks after my second child was born. She was 85 years old. She got to at least meet her and hold her. As much as she drove me crazy, I miss her terribly. Holidays are not the same without her. She always made us laugh, even when she didn’t intend to. We still talk about all the good times we had with her. There are so many great memories that I will never forget. They always bring a smile to my face. You might not think these stories are as funny as I do, but it sure was fun recalling them and writing about them. I was cracking myself up the whole time I was writing. She’s been gone over 8 years and is still making me laugh. That’s impressive. I will have to go back and watch some old family videos. I’m sure there are some hidden gems in there that I have forgotten…

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