My Aunt Thelma Has ‘Gone Home’
May 5th, 2009 — inspirationspeaker
This is a photo of me, Aunt Thelma and my daughters that was taken a few years ago.
Excerpts from the Epilogue of the book, “You Don’t Know Crazy”: My Aunt Thelma, my mother’s sister, is 95 years young. She was diagnosed with colon cancer about five years ago. She refused to have surgery and all other invasive medical treatment. According to all of her medical documentation, she should have died a few years ago. However, she still lives alone in the senior citizen complex, flirts with the roadside vegetable sellers, can walk faster than I can, and is teaching me an invaluable lesson about living and dying on your own terms. *****
Aunt Thelma passed over on May 4th, 2009. In her final days, she was happy and at peace with the decisions she’d made concerning her health and last days of this incarnation. She also said she was happy to have lived to see a black man be President of the United States. *****
Some other excerpts from the book that mention Aunt Thelma: One of my most special memories was watching Grandma Beady, Aunt Thelma and my mother getting dressed for church. They were dignified, strong, beautiful, stubborn, and incredibly stylish. They made their own clothes, styled their own hair and wore red lipstick. To this day, I buy and wear only red lipstick. To me lipstick is not lipstick if it’s not red. *****
We all loved going to our grandma’s. She didn’t give us a lot of chores to do. In the evenings, she would give my Aunt Thelma money and tell her to take us to Williams Street to Wayne Dairy to get ice cream. My favorite was butter pecan. On about our second day there, she’d give Aunt Thelma money to take us downtown to Kresses dime store or Woolworth’s to get us a toy of our choice so we would have something to entertain ourselves with during our stay.
I would usually choose a ric rac—the paddle with the ball attached by a long elastic or a set of ball and jacks. A slick linoleum covered the long hallway that literally went straight from the front door to the back door of the house. The linoleum was great for throwing and picking up jacks because it was so smooth. We’d also get a shopping trip to a fabric store. Roberta and I would get to pick out a few pieces of fabric to take home for my Aunt Thelma to make us shorts and play clothes for the summer, or dresses for the coming school year or church.
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