Aunt Eileen

I just came home from a meeting tonight, and my mother called to tell me my great aunt Eileen passed away this morning. She was just shy of her 90th birthday. I will miss her, even though I only met her a few times. She was my maternal grandfather's sister, and lived her entire life in Kansas. I always wished that her family had moved out to California with my grandpa, then we could have known her better. That's Eileen in the baby buggy, with my grandfather on the left, and their sister Dorothy on the right, just shortly after their mother died in the flu epidemic of 1918.

It's strange to think that little baby just died today!

I mentioned I only met her a few times. This was because they lived so far away, but the families always kept in contact. She was always so fun when we were with her, and there was something about her that just made me want to be in her presence. She was light hearted and always laughing or smiling, and had a way of saying things in her mid western accent that that was so charming. Like when we saw her in two years ago, I remember saying something facetious, and she said, "well Rachel, I'm just gonna have to kill you sometime." It was so funny the way she said it, like she was saying she was going to have to give me a great big hug sometime.

We were so lucky to get to go see her two summers ago. We (the girls and I) drove my mom out to Kansas to see her (yes, I said drove). She was just like I remembered her, but older. She was still puffin' away on her unfiltered cigarettes like crazy, but had the youngest sounding voice of anyone her age I'd known, even though she'd smoked since she was about 20 years old. She tired easily and took a lot of naps, but was her funny old self. I don't know why I remember this so well, but when my grandfather was very ill right before he died when I was 15, she came out to see him, and one day we ate at Jack in the Box. We all had french fries, and I always squeezed some ketchup out of a packet onto a place-mat. But Aunt Eileen tore off the top of the ketchup packet all the way across, and then dipped her french fries into the packet. I just thought that was genius, lol! I ate my french fries that way for a couple of years.

I talked to her on the phone quite a few times over the last few years, and she always made me feel so special, for lack of a better word. Our girls fell in love with her immediately! We'll miss her!!!!! RIP Aunt Eileen