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Aunt
Sharon
1948 to 2000
- by S.Wayne Roberts / 10.17.11
My Aunt Sharon owned many pieces of jewelry that meant
the world to her. Each had
their own stories. One necklace in particular lingers in
my mind. I called them her pocket beads. They were like a string of pearls, but
looked of marbles. And they were not for playtime.
Not being raised in a religious family, the height of my
observance growing up was to
say, "Bless you," if somebody sneezed. But I knew faith.
I knew it before I was old enough to know what faith was. And I knew it through
my Aunt Sharon.
I was about four when I saw it for the first time,
before I'd started school. Back then, I
spent almost every waking moment with her. I remember
taking a nap on the sofa as she sat in a recliner watching soap operas.
When I woke up, she was still in the recliner but was
sitting differently. The TV was off
and she was leaning back in the chair, staring at the
ceiling. She looked crazy ? staring and the ceiling and talking to herself.
I listened to her address various family members and
friends from her past. She
mentioned assorted things she had done and would like to
do. She even talked about the things
on her grocery list. There seemed to be nothing too big
or too small to discuss with the ceiling. She said: "I'm ready when you are
God."
Her tone wasn't sorrowful, but casual, as if she were
sipping tea with an old friend.
I didn't understand what she was doing; clutching her
beaded necklace in her hand and
rolling them one by one between her thumb and
forefinger. I didn't interrupt, just lay there listening.
I get it now. She was confiding in God as I confided in
her.
Back in 1988, when I was but six months old, my mother
moved us east to live with Aunt
Sharon. After suffering complete renal failure, my aunt
lived a life of constant illness. She had a beeper that only went off if a
kidney had arrived.
Life on dialysis was one of great pain and inconvenience
but Aunt Sharon lived it with a
smile and me by her side; four-years-old and dragging
bags of dialysate down the hallway.
From an early age, I mastered every gadget on the
dialysis machine, every bandage and
every pill. But that's now the part that stands out now.
Her strength does.
Where did it come from?
How it was that such a seemingly frail woman was able to
will herself out of bed each
morning let alone make everything she could of each day?
Life was the gift Aunt Sharon re-gifted.
It's been awhile since I was that eager 4-year-old. Of
all the things I remember from
childhood, I know two will endure: Aunt Sharon left this
life too soon and that she was, without question, one of the good ones.
I don't know how God works or if He truly exists.
But something is going on.
-o-
S. Wayne Roberts was born in Granite City, Illinois in
1988. Roberts lives in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Baltimore City. He is
widely published and the author of the debut novel, "Two Weeks Notice." He can
be reached via: steve.swayneroberts@gmail.com
swrfiction.com
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