Having learned that my favorite aunt died last October without anyone in the family being notified, and knowing that she was interred with no ritual or ceremony whatsoever, I've decided to write her eulogy from my perspective. I understand not wanting a big deal for her funeral, so I have asked myself a dozen times what I did think would have been the right thing to do. She deserved to have the family gather in her honor, to eat a meal together and share our stories of Aunt Ro. Unfortunately, her son (her only child) decided that getting even with the family for his perceived slights was worth more than what his mother deserved at her passing. Aunt Rosie was a veteran. At the very least, she was entitled to the respect of a grateful nation at her passing. And a eulogy.
You can't tell the players without a scorecard, yes?
My grandparents, George and Ethel Armstrong, farmers in rural Streator, IL, raised three children on the farm:
*Margaret Mary (my mother), who married Floyd Covill, and had four children: Sharon Rae (known as Shari), Barbara Lynn, Margaret Jo (me, known as Peggy), and Floyd Douglas (known as Doug).
*George Edward (called "Bud" by the family), who married Ines Salicrup out of Puerto Rico, and had two daughters: Sally Ann, and Isabel Marie (known as Betsy).
*Rose Anne, who married Robert McPherson, and had one child: Robert Arlie (known as Sandy).
The Armstrong siblings were close. They had their petty jealousies as all children do, but they loved each other. The grew up during the Depression, and when they became young adults, World War II hit, and they ALL became veterans or veteran dependents. The family sense of humor was something that I cherished as a kid. When the aunt and/or uncle were around, there were happy times. Laughter and love abounded. I loved it!
Aunt Rosie joined the Coast Guard. I'm not sure of the timeline, but she was also engaged to marry a soldier who was killed in action during the war. I'm sure that fractured her. Then the family homestead burned to the ground...and that affected everyone. Later, she married Uncle Bob...and had Sandy. Sandy was born a scant two weeks after I was...and there were a number of times that they all lived with us.
Aunt Rosie and my mother were preggers at the same time, when the McPhersons were living at the homestead. Aunt Rosie went into false labor, but my father took her to the hospital. Later that same day, my mother went into real labor with me, so Dad took her, too. As he passed the nun who sat at the reception desk after delivering two pregnant women to the hospital, Dad quipped, "How am I doing, Sister?" Mom delivered me that day. Aunt Rosie was sent home and delivered Sandy two weeks later...
Over many years, Aunt Rosie, Uncle Bob, and Sandy settled in San Diego, CA. In the 70s, she was the director of the Selective Service System (the military draft) out of there. She got put in the position of having to tell her own son that, if he didn't enlist, he would be drafted. He enlisted in the Army...and there are many stories to be told about that, but that's not part of this story.
My dearest Aunt Rosie was a family revisionist historian. There were many tales about Sandy and I as young'uns...most of which I don't remember. One story entailed our having taken a case of eggs and broken them all over the family car. It could have happened, but if it did, I was way too young to remember it. Other stories always showed me to be the brains to Sandy's brawn...that I was always directing him to do bad things. Okay. If you say so. Bottom line is that I came to accept Aunt Rosie's stories with a grain of salt because they never quite matched what I remembered, or what anyone else remembered, for that matter.
Aunt Rosie was the one who claimed that Mattoon, IL, was north of Chicago. When a map was produced to show her that it wasn't, she said the map was wrong!
Aunt Rosie was the one who challenged the use of the word "whom" in a game of Scrabble. She said, "What's this word 'whahm'? I've never heard of it!"
That was my Aunt Rosie! Stubborn? You'd better believe it! Cross her once and you were done for life with her, her husband, and her son! And that's how she left this life. Her husband and her son both had to have their villains...and so did Aunt Rosie. I decided in my old age that I didn't want to be on the "outs" due to misunderstandings that happened over 25 years go...so I started calling her. At one point, I said that I wanted to stay in touch. She said she was okay with that but that she wasn't sure Sandy ever would be.
So what happened 25 years ago? First, some background:
Back in the early 1980s, when my parents retired to the family farm, Aunt Rosie and Uncle Bob retired from their jobs in San Diego. Uncle Bob had had a stroke that affected his emotions. He was already a handful, so she needed to be near family as much as they needed her in order to help care for their father (my grandfather). They sold their long-time home in SD and bought a fixer-upper farmhouse on some acreage near Rutland, IL, a scant 25 miles away from the homestead. The night my grandfather died, Aunt Rosie and my mother were together and arrived at the hospital together. Then, when my mother died unexpectedly, she was at the hospital to be with Dad even before I could get there. When my father fell and shattered his hip just five months later, he crawled to the phone and called Aunt Rosie who then called the ambulance for him and went with him to the hospital. In Mom's absence, Aunt Rosie and I talked endlessly by phone at least once a week. When I had to move to Indiana for my then-husband's job in 1988, Aunt Rosie was there to help. The following spring, Aunt Rosie, my daughter, and I took a trip to D.C. to visit one of the Armstrong cousins and see the sights...and then, when my husband left our marriage and I was forced to move again, all of the McPhersons came to help with the move. (Uncle Bob was still living then. Ever the vindictive prankster, he wanted to put marbles in the gas tank of Joe's lawn mower and a pin-hole in his water bed. I had to tell him that we weren't going to do that...even though Joe himself had booby-trapped a number of my belongings!) In short, we were close. I accepted Aunt Rosie for the way she was. And what she was, was family.
My father, living on the family homestead farm, always left the house open. His logic was that thieves could easily get into the house, and he would rather deal with things that were stolen than have to fix a locked door that was broken in a theft attempt. What he hadn't counted on was that everyone else in the family still considered it the homestead rather than his residence. There were a few times that he would come home from town to discover that things that had been promised to other family members after his demise started to disappear. Aunt Rosie had come in and removed them, without his knowledge or permission. (I know my dad. If she had asked, he would have had no problem with giving up the possessions...but he wasn't asked or told.) That started a bit of a rift between Dad and Aunt Rosie. Dad pushed back...and rightly so.
And then the letters started. Over a period of a few months, Dad received probably five anonymous hand-written letters, postmarked from Rutland, IL. They were hateful, rambling missives, poorly written, and not in Aunt Rosie's hand or grammar. The letters called my father a joke, the town drunk, a betrayer of family who did not deserve whatever the writer perceived was the motivation for the letters. Over time, those of us who read them and thought about it determined that Aunt Rosie probably wasn't the writer...but that they were not out of character for the demented Uncle Bob...or son, Sandy. And, because there was no proof nor anything to be done, nothing was said to Aunt Rosie or the rest of the McPhersons about it. The letters had stopped. I knew that any mention of it would have merely ignited a McPherson firestorm that no one in the family needed. We let it go.
It's all a little more complicated than what I am telling...involving the other Armstrong sibling (who was not well and was upset about the family rift). In any case, silly me, in one long-winded phone conversation with Aunt Ro, the subject of the letters came up. She had not known about them. I mentioned, off-handedly, that we had just figured Uncle Bob had written them. Aunt Ro blew up! She denied any responsibility, then ended with, "Why didn't you tell me?? I could have gotten it stopped!!" (That spoke volumes to me.) I said, "I've never said anything because of just this sort of reaction. I knew you would get angry, and it wasn't that important." Then, suddenly, Uncle Bob was by her side, feeling unjustly accused (that he couldn't know about because he wasn't part of the conversation, unless he was the culprit), but was having a "spell". He was dramatically going to faint or something...so Aunt Rosie said, "I have to go take care of Bob." Click. And that was the end of it. The end of the phone calls, Christmas cards, birthday cards, and anything else that spelled f-a-m-i-l-y. I became the villain, never to be cared for again.
My sister and I took the bull by the horns a few years ago and went to visit Aunt Rosie and Sandy. (Uncle Bob had long since died.) They also showed up, unexpectedly, at my sister and bro-in-law's 50th anniversary party. Thereafter, I decided to start calling to talk about family things. (Aunt Rosie was the only one left to tap into on that stuff.) At the end of my first brave call, I told her that I would like to stay in touch. She said she was okay with that but didn't think that her son would ever be. Huh? I never did anything to Sandy! This is just part of the culture of having villains. In any case, I called Aunt Ro probably five times in the last two years...my mother's last remaining relative, and my beloved aunt. The last time I talked to her was probably six months ago. She sounded good and didn't complain. She was 90 then.
And the rest is history. So here is my eulogy:
Rose Anne Armstrong McPherson was born into a well-respected farm family near Streator, IL, who answered the call of her country during war time with the Coast Guard, and never left the hearts of those who loved her. Stubborn? Yes, she was. Giving? Yes, she was. Caring? Yes, she was as long as you were doing things her way. She was part of the key to my happy childhood. Rosie, please accept the thanks of a grateful nation for your service, and the love of your blood relatives whose connection to you nothing can take away. Rest in peace in the bosom of the family that has gone before you. I love you, dearest aunt. You were special to me.
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