I Still Sleep With My Baby Blankie.

Now you know something about me that people really shouldn't know but there's a reason I'm telling you this sensitive piece of information.  My Grandpa's sister, my aunt Janey, made me my baby blankie.  It's so soft and comforting and you can totally see through it if you hold it up to the light.  Aunt Janey died this week. It was unexpected and quick.  She's a Christian woman so we know that she's in heaven with her husband and her baby sister who died when she was only nineteen.

Viewings and funerals make me very uncomfortable.  Not because of the body or because of death but because I have absolutely no idea how to act, or what to say in those situations.  That's pretty unfortunate in Brian's line of work and I had a professor say one time that no one remembers what you say but that you were there.  I hope that's true because I am a bumbling fool during these times of grief.

What I can do is make a casserole, bake a pie or toss a salad. So I contacted my Aunt Dawn to see if there was something I could bring since she was heading up the dinner.  During the course of that correspondence she told me she was holding up o.k. but that Aunt Janey was her favorite aunt.  And, that's when it hit me.  Aunt Janey is my great aunt and my papa's sister but she's my aunt's aunt.  I love my aunts desperately and thinking of loosing one of them really strikes me to the core. It brings Aunt Janey's death home a little bit more. I'm still more of an observer here because I really didn't know her well, but I do hurt for her children and for my mom and her siblings.  To wonder how papa is holding up; there's only three of them left now; how strange that must be how sad.

My aunt's have been there for me and been part of my life all along.  I've spent the night at their houses and played with their children.  They can give me advice in a way that my mom can't. I know they root for me because they root for my mom they love me because they love my mom.  The feelings I have for my sister's child are really sweet and complex they feel that for me and Aunt Janey felt that for them.

My family is HUGE papa had five brothers and sister's he then had six children of his own and I have no idea how many kids his siblings had.  After seeing all of us (some I don't even know by name) it made me think of how we're each like a thread that gets woven into this big family blanket. And our threads are all integral to the integrity of the blanket and maybe some of the threads don't touch but we still influence and effect each other.

My Oldest, whose aunts adore him, with my blankie.

Thank you God for my aunts for their continued love and support and thank you God for Aunt Janey and the different threads that she wove in and out of the fabric of my "family blanket" even when I was unaware.