Over the weekend, I flew to Iowa to attend my aunt’s memorial service.  As many in my family know, I don’t *do* funerals.  When you bury your baby brother, your mother and your father all before the age of 11 – any funeral thereafter brings out the pain of losing your family all over again.  But, the funerals are never-ending because God continues to call His angels home throughout your life. 

I have had the “I love you but I will not attend your funeral” conversation with some of the family members that I am very close to.  They know me, they understand my position and we make the most of the time we have together on this earth to never leave anything unsaid – especially the lovepart.  The numbers of funerals I *will* attend is well known to my husband.  I gave him a list some time ago.  He will respect my wishes, as I will respect his if he were in the same shoes.  Fortunately, my husband’s side of the family is very small and we are close to most of them.  There have been times when he will go to a funeral for a loved one (not necessarily family) without me, and I will go without him.  The only family funeral (on my side of the family) we attended together where many family members were present was my brother Mike’s….but, we were so ate up in our grief that I barely remember who was there and who wasn’t. 

My Aunt Leonard, who just passed away unexpectedly last week, was one of the funerals where I felt I needed to be there.  For myself, it was to say goodbye and begin the grieving process and mourn my loss.  I also really needed to hug my Uncle Honey, my aunt’s husband.  And her kids.  Nothing had ever been left unsaid between my aunt and I.  We were extremely close most of my life.  She almost always lived with or near my grandparents (my mom’s parents), so when I would go see them, I would see Aunt Leonard.  I often stayed with Aunt Leonard and her family because my grandparents didn’t have room in their little apartment for me. 

Aunt Leonard was my mom”s youngest sister, and she died at the age of 55.  In my book, that’s way too young.  My youngest daughter and I just spent a weekend with her and Uncle Honey in August this year.  Then, they kept my youngest daughter so they could enjoy her for about a week before bringing her to where I was staying at my foster parent’s house.  They truly enjoyed spending time with her, and she with them.  They dubbed her a mini-me and Aunt Leonard said she reminded her of me when I was 11-years-old. 

No mention of my Aunt Leonard would be complete without a story.  Aunt Leonard loved family stories, and told them every single time she got together with anyone in our family.  She was definitely the family story teller – and now?  Of course I wish I had written down all of her stories.  But alas, that’s what memories are for.

Last year when I saw her, she had all of the family photos she owned out and as we went through them, she’d get to telling a story and both of us would laugh until we had tears running down our faces, and had to get up and tinkle between stories because we had laughed so hard.

Once I was an adult and had my own car, I went to see Grandma and Grandpa about once a month during nice weather.  In Iowa, the winter months I wasn’t so faithful, but it was okay and they understood that I didn’t want to drive during an Iowa blizzard (and there were many blizzards in Iowa).  My grandma was my LOVE lifeline – I have always contributed my being able to grow up somewhat successfully, despite living in four foster homes, to my Gramma from Tramma’s love (God’s love not withstanding).  She ALWAYS loved me, and she told me so.  Others may have loved me, but not with the same unconditional love that I got from my Gramma from Tramma.  I was her favorite grandchild and she never hesitated to tell people that.  And she had a LOT of grandchildren, since my mother was one of 13 kids (though two died in infancy, so she had 11 children living at one time or another).

Aunt Leonard once lived in a little house, just a little ways from the retirement apartments that my grandparents lived in.  She drove one of those death trap Pinto cars.  Many times, I’d have to push her car down the road until it got up enough speed to pop the clutch so it would start.  Anyway, she told me she had a boyfriend and that he was coming over to meet me, have dinner and spend some time with her and her daughters.  When he got there, she sorta introduced me to him – except she never told me his name!  After a week of seeing him in and out of her house, all I ever heard was “Honey” this and “Honey” that, when she would talk to him.  Hence, once they married, he became Uncle Honey to me – and always will be.  Even my kids call him Uncle Honey, because that’s all I’ve ever called him.  I had to relay this same story to the family and friends who came to Uncle Honey and Aunt Leonard’s house after her services and lunch.  They could NOT figure out how come I called him that, since they all knew him by his given name. 

In the coming days, months and years – I know that my Aunt Leonard will be another angel on my heavy shoulders.  I will still want to call her regularly, just as I still want to call my Gramma from Tramma and my brother Mike.  She, too, loved me unconditionally.  And she loved my husband and our kids.  But, I wish her Godspeed on her journey to the great promise of an eternal life.  And those of us she left behind will now have to tell her stories, and laugh until tears are running down our face and we have to tinkle just to catch our breaths.

I am reading a novel at the moment, sorry but I do not even recall what the name is or who the author is.  But, it’s fictional novel about a husband and a wife and their trials and tribulations of trying to have a family when they cannot naturally have one.  The first big thing that popped out at me was the husband, Sam, who had lost his natural parents to them passing away and he was sent from family home to foster to family homes over and over again.  It has not been easy for me to read, and if you’ve read about my 100 FAQs, you’ll understand why this book has been a bit difficult for me to process.

One of the things that really struck me was the fact that Sam had trouble with adult relationships (wife, family, etc.) and how he needed them but was unable to truly put his heart and soul into them becasue of the way he was raised – always feeling unloved or unwanted.  Because that was all he’d ever known.  He even had a brother who was adopted by a family who didn’t want him. 

My ‘birth’ family – a few years before the end of our original family life

Man-o-Man, reading Sam’s early life struck a big knife in my heart…I knew exactly how he felt.  Mind you, none of my “original” siblings were ever adopted by anyone they lived with and neither was I.  But, the part about not being wanted?  Yeah, that was me.  Totally.  While my siblings got to live a life with various family members [my three brothers basically grew up together, even though two were raised by an uncle (my dad’s brother) and my older brother by the same uncle’s daughter’s family and our sister was raised by cousins (on my dad’s side of the family)].  THEY stayed in one place throughout their childhood, while I went from foster home to foster home and eventually to an aunt and uncle on my mother’s side of the family the day I turned 15, who finished raising me.  Four foster homes from the time I was 11-years-old until I turned 17 when I was on my own.  The first two were bad – awful, frankly.  I was actually removed from the first one by the police so that should tell you how bad that home was – and it wasn’t because I was a juvenile delinquent.  The second was where our sister lived, and there wasn’t a day that went by that they didn’t tell me they didn’t want me there – everyone in the house reminded me that I needed to find someplace else to live, from my cousins and expecially by our sister.  The third was a great family, they just had bad things happen while I lived there when they lost their youngest daughter to cancer.  Their grief was too much for me to bear, after having already buried my baby brother and both of my parents.  I barely knew how to handle myself, let alone the grief of others – which also included my own grief over their loss.  Things were fine at my aunt and uncle’s house, though I never truly felt like I fit in with them.  I still don’t, even though we have a good relationship.  They have their natural daughters living close to them, and have access to their grandchildren (by their daughters) close, too.  We live over 1000 miles away, so our relationship is basically via email and (very) occasional visits.  We live this far away by choice, of course, because my home will always be where my husband is and right now, that’s near his mother.

The thing is, I never really realized how I, throughout the years, looked for love.  My aunt will say I’m loyal to those who love me, unless they really hurt me or my family in some way.  Through that loyalty was love, in my mind’s eye.

I knew I didn’t really fit in with any family that I lived with – because I wasn’t their natural children.  I was treated differently by ALL of the families I lived wtih, because I wasn’t “theirs” – and to this day, I continue to feel like I’m floating in nowhere-land because I have nothing but love-ties to the two families that I am still in touch with.  That division of mine and ours was a very fine line in the sand, but I knew that line and was unable to cross it.  I also know that in the last foster home I lived in, I had a fear EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. that I was going to do something wrong and they would send me packing, too.  As I read about Sam’s life, I realized that I still felt that way…like everything I have now could be gone any minute. 

But now, I have my own family to love.  A husband who would AND DOES take care of me in every way he can – from loving me unconditionally to taking care of my health matters.  And we have four wonderfully loving (and smarter than their mother) children who were made with love and who have known from the day they were born that we loved them.

My own family – my husband and our four children

Again, something I never had growing up – I do not even recall a time when my own parents said they loved me.  The only person I can say without question who loved me unconditionally was my mom’s mom – my Gramma from Tramma.  There certainly may be others (such as my mom’s youngest sister) who loved me – but my Gramma from Tramma was my lifeline to love and I held on very tightly to that lifeline.

As I continue on with the novel, I see how much Sam holds back from everyone around him, because he is always afraid of losing them.  Again, totally me.  Although my husband knows more about me and how I grew up than anyone else (except probably an aunt of mine), there are still things he does not know.  Those are parts of me that hurt so very much – and my aunt and uncle always told me to move forward and not look back.  Hence, that’s how I live my life – even though going back is necessary to understand my actions and reactions to various things that happen in our marriage and family – it will define me for the rest of my life, whether I want it to or not.  But, I’m not going back to the unloved child that I was.  I refuse to do so.

Right now, I fear losing my kids, especially as our high school senior is planning the next stage of her life as a college student.  I want her to go, to grow, to live life to its fullest.  But, I don’t want to lose her, either.  I’m not worried about losing her love, we’ve made sure she grows up in a house filled with love.  It’s just the part about her not sitting beside us in church, not joining us for dinner, not coming out of her bedroom to share with us things about her day…her enthusium for her art and antics at school that is SO MUCH a part of our family dynamics.

Out of all of my growing up, though, I learned how I wanted to raise my kids.  I wanted the good parts that made up a family – whether it be from my natural family or from one of the foster homes I lived in.  I wanted to move forward, with love, to raise our children the best way we knew how.  Sure, there’s been bumps in the road – but, never a rut so deep that we couldn’t find out way out of it.  And I truly feel like we’ve done some good with our children.  They love easily, they laugh quickly, they are compassionate toward others.  The bottom line is that they are LOVED. 

I will finish the book, and probably look over some of the trials and tribulations of Sam as he continues on with his life.  I may not read it as quickly as I’ve read other novels – but, I’m pretty sure this one has a happy ending…and that is what we hope to achieve with our own children.