Influence

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My Aunt Mickey wasn’t one to sugarcoat her strong opinions, no matter who she was talking to, and this was her take on my latest blog post: “It just went on and on and on!” 😳 So, when I sat down to write her a letter of appreciation (see above), I tried to keep myself in check.

(Gotta say, it’s a really bad sign for long-form writers when even 90-year-old family members who ate up everything you created since your keyboard was a crayon suddenly throw up a “TLDR” in response to your work…😑)

Aunt Mickey has always been one of my biggest supporters, and given her declining health, I had an inkling that our most recent trip home to Chicago might be the last time I saw her in person.

She was, true to form, treating us to Cubs tickets — in a luxury suite — on our second day in town, and I was pretty sure that would be the last time my entire family convened at Wrigley Field. So, I spent 15 minutes the morning of the game banging out a little recap of her influence on my life.

When I saw a chance to deliver this message, with Aunt Mickey seated in our box at the stadium, staring quietly at the tarped (but still beautiful) diamond through a sheet of summer rain, I plopped down next to her and read it aloud. Really loud. Had to make sure she heard! 🗣️👂🏻

That was July 2. She passed away in the hospital on July 21 and will be buried in her family’s plot this coming Thursday.

Yesterday, my dad texted to say he printed my words on a sheet of paper, along with a photo of us from my Northwestern softball days, and gave it to the funeral director to seal in her casket.

And that’s what really hammered it home — the reality, the finality of this immeasurable loss.

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When it seems like I need them most, words fail me. Or, it’s more like my brain fails me. Weighed down by the gravity of the moment and fogged up by its natural fight-flight-freeze anxiety response — 🧠: “This is important! Say something profound NOW!” — I struggle to convey my thoughts and feelings in a way that does the subject true justice.

I guess now is good practice for Aunt Mickey’s memorial service (date and time TBA), because I absolutely plan to get up and speak my piece about the woman of honor.

She was — is, always will be — a huge part of who I am, and I want to play a role in living out her legacy.

Then again, I can still barely process the news that she’s gone…

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Aunt Mickey is technically my great aunt, my father’s aunt, the younger sister of my Grandma Wielgus, and she was christened with the name Amelia, but I never heard anyone call her that. Mickey seemed much more appropriate for a spunky sports fan with a fiercely independent (sometimes to the point of rigidly stubborn!) personality and lively spirit. We kids usually just referred to her as “Auntie Mick.”

She was more than just my oldest living relative, a status she assumed after my mom’s mom passed in 2016. She was more than just a person I loved. She was a revered family institution, the closest thing we had to a matriarch, though she never married or had children of her own.

She was abundantly generous with her time and money, and along with her niece, my Aunt Barb, she took my sisters and me on so many fun outings — shopping, amusement parks, cool restaurants, beautiful nature areas — that remain some of my most cherished childhood memories.

As a long-time physical education teacher who became an enthusiastic regular at our sporting events after her retirement, Auntie Mick had an impact on entire generations of kids who weren’t even her blood.

Basically, she was everyone’s Auntie Mick. I was blown away by how many of my former classmates and playmates remembered her, when I posted a personal note about her death on Facebook.

With her blunt, incisive, some might say perfectionistic manner, combined with her humongous heart, zest for life, and unwavering conviction that family is everything, Auntie Mick loomed larger than life at every family gathering, even in her later years when her body started to break down. Gatherings often happened at her house, where she showed a sense of propriety and taste for the finer things that, to me, seemed a perfect complement to her athletic, outdoorsy side.

Christmas Eve, I can assure you, will never be the same without her at the head of the table.

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Auntie Mick was omnipresent in every important life event, even after I moved away from the Midwest in the early 2000s, settling in Pennsylvania at age 24. We weren’t physically together more than twice a year over the last two decades of her life. But she steadfastly followed my journey throughout that time span, clipping my newspaper articles and watching my video packages and reading — should I say, enduring? 😂 — this blog. She was a huge proponent of higher education and seemed over-the-moon excited when I decided to go back to school and get my master’s in counseling (still in denial that she won’t be at my graduation next spring).

Auntie Mick frequently expressed her pride in my decision to get sober. In fact, she was one of the only ones in my extended family who talked directly to me about my issues with alcohol addiction and disordered eating, and listened to — if not totally heard 😉 — what I had to say back. She did not mince words, or withhold judgment, and while her directness took me aback at the time (imagine someone barking out, “And I said to myself, THAT GIRL IS ANOREXIC!” over lunch at the Cheesecake Factory), I can’t help but smile when I remember those conversations.

If she once considered me a big #%^*-up, I know for certain that in her eyes, I had been redeemed.

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Now that I’m no longer under the influence of any consciousness-altering substances — at least, nothing stronger than black Starbucks coffee or melatonin supplements — my brain is able to explore, reflect, process, and understand things more deeply and completely, when given some time and space. Recovery forces you to confront grief and “ambiguous loss,” as you pivot from one way of life to another, but suffering an actual death of a loved one is a whole other, intense experience.

Grief sneaks up on you at the strangest times. Like when you’re jogging through the woods at 5:30AM on a Tuesday morning and burst out sobbing so hard in the middle of a random song (damn you, Kenny Loggins!) you can’t breathe…thank goodness nobody but a few frightened deer was around to witness that today.

I’ll bet if Auntie Mick had been reading this, she would’ve totally abandoned ship by now, so I don’t feel bad playing the emotional exhaustion card and dipping out. I know that the final letter I wrote my great aunt wasn’t a poetic eulogy, nor anything close to my best work. At the same time, Auntie Mickey taught me that the actual words you say aren’t always what’s most important, it’s the genuine love shining through in the passionate, heartfelt sharing of your message.

By continuing to do that, personally and professionally, I will live out her legacy. I just gotta learn to keep it short! 🤷🏼‍♀️