A Memory
by: Billy Collins
It came back to me
not in the way
a thing might be returned
to its rightful owner
but like dance music
traveling in the dark
from one end
of a lake to the other.
I know exactly what Collins is talking about--that moment when you hear a song/piece of music and are suddenly transported to another place and time. When I hear the Simple Minds singing "Don't You (Forget About Me)," I'm sitting in the Butler Theater in the dark with my high school friends. We're watching The Breakfast Club, sort of, and sneaking sips of a Diet Coke spiked with Malibu. The topic of conversation is Molly Ringwald versus Ally Sheedy. (I am firmly in the Molly camp.) In a week or so, we'll all be graduating, and, a few months after that, we'll all be off to college, and nothing will ever be the same again.
All that from a song, traveling in the dark from one end of a lake to the other.
When I was an undergraduate in college, I would spend about a month every summer living downstate at my Aunt Aileen and Uncle Larry's house. My sister and I would would drive down with a pop up camper and set up shop in their backyard. We would swim in their pond, visit relatives and cousins, go shopping, watch movies. We rarely made huge plans. Some years, we would visit the Detroit Zoo. Others, we would take a ferry to Boblo Island Amusement Park for the day.
My memories of those vacations are gilded with nostalgia. Yes, I was in college. Yes, I was supposed to be a young adult. Should I have gotten a summer job instead? Maybe. I didn't have a whole lot of money, but I did have a full-ride scholarship and was still living in my parents' house. My expenses mainly consisted of movies, books, and clothes.
My Uncle Larry passed away quite a few years ago from cancer. I just found out that Aunt Aileen has been placed on hospice care. She's been suffering from dementia for a while and recently fell and broke her hip. According to my sister, Aunt Aileen's oxygen saturation is down to 88%, and her breathing is labored.
Aunt Aileen is my dad's sister, and our two families have always been very close. There were nine kids in our family. Aunt Aileen and Uncle Larry had ten kids. When our clans got together for Thanksgivings, the table would extend from the dining room out into the hall. During my middle and high school years, we would all go camping together at a local state park. (Some of my cousins still travel to the U. P. every year to camp.) Like I said, we were really close.
On my way home from work tonight, I heard Bob Seger's "Old Time Rock & Roll." One of my Aunt Aileen's favorite songs. For a quiet, soft-spoken lady, she really dug Seger. (And it had nothing to do with Tom Cruise sliding around in his socks and underwear in Risky Business.) As I tapped on my steering wheel and sang along, I tried to remember the last time I saw Aunt Aileen.
It was at least five or six years ago. I think she drove up with her oldest son and his wife. (I could be wrong on this fact. Memory is a slippery thing, like trying to land a Chinook salmon.) Aunt Aileen looked much older, but she still had the same spark and sense of humor that allowed her to survive raising a family of ten.
Up until a little while ago, she would send me birthday cards every year, without fail. And Christmas cards. All written in her loopy, beautiful script. She loved going to Dairy Queen with us for ice cream and watching Abbott and Costello movies late at night. In a world of Donald Trumps, she was a Dorothy Day, making sure everyone was warm and fed and loved.
That's how Saint Marty will always remember her.
