gratituesday #210

So I realized - not that it really matters - that it might be better - for what reason, I'm not sure - that it might be helpful to distinguish one gratituesday from the next.  I tried the date last time, but that's to clunky to my easily distracted brain, so I've decided to number them instead.  Taking the 154 thank You thursdays (antecedent posts) + 55 gratituesdays makes this #210.

My mom just called to say that after suffering some sort of cataclysmic brain event and being rushed to the city, her sister Carolyn has been given less than 48 hours to live.  She's been suffering with dementia of some sort for awhile now, but it is still a shock to my system.  She is the first blood aunt to die on that side.  It's not that I expected my aunts and uncles to live forever, but I'm still somehow surprised.

When I think of Carolyn, what great memories flood my mind!  Christmas Day (and later Easter as well) was spent at her house.  She never failed to greet me with a hug and then pinch my (southern) cheeks at some point during the visit.  She's one of the most physically affectionate people I know.  Even in her messed memory state, she never failed to love me with her body - hugs, squeezes, and the like.  The last time we visited her she didn't fully know who we were, but she did know she wanted at least some of on her lap.

At that last visit, I asked her about the photograph of a strikingly colorful bird included in a collection of many beautiful photographs she had taken throughout life which had been brought in to decorate her small apartment.  She told me she has snapped out her front window, and I knew this just had to be another crossed memory because there was no way an animal that beautiful could be found in her woody Western Oklahoma front yard.  I assumed she had snapped it on one of her many visits to her son's home in Alaska. When we got home later that day, I pulled out a book on Oklahoma birds, and sure enough, there was the painted bunting - known to hale from the woods of Western Oklahoma. :)

Beyond photography, Carolyn loved to paint as well.  She painted landscapes in oil and hosted craft painting parties at her house for sister and nieces.  Usually the projects were reserved for those old enough to paint without ruining something, but she usually had some other sort of paint project set aside for those of us who did not fit that category.

One of the great ironies of Carolyn's life was that although she was the local home ec teacher, she was only asked to bring the practically-impossible-to-mess-up ham to Thanksgiving dinner.  The rest of the meal was provided by non home ec teaching family members who somehow had a better skill set in the kitchen.

Carolyn Patten
Smallest of her tribe of six
Feistiest of all

Carolyn Sanders
Still the shortest in stature
Beloved big, not small