The Importance of Remembering

Aunt Wanda

   If you're reading this on December 15, 2015, chance are that as you're reading this I'm either IN Buffalo Center, Iowa; driving TO Buffalo Center Iowa; or driving FROM Buffalo Center, Iowa.  You see my husband's Aunt passed away and it's with a heavy heart that we're going to say good-bye to her.  This blog is partially new, partially old.  It tells you who Aunt Wanda was to me, and it tell you why I think images are important.

   I met Wanda the day before I was going to marry her nephew, Michael.  At almost 64 years young, and nearly standing 6 feet tall, she was full of energy, light, love and laughter.  She was sassy with her brothers, and as the oldest, seemed to know how to keep them in line.  I fell in love with her the moment I met her. 

   Throughout the years, and there were 25 of them, she never failed to amaze me with her humor, spunk and energy.  While other people her age were slowing down, Wanda seemed to pick up steam.  She traveled, quilted, loved, adored the color pink, always had a little mischievous gleam in her eye, and she laughed.  Many people will talk about her laugh.  Hearty and rich, it encompassed your heart so you laughed along.  It will be that hardy laugh that I will hold in my heart.

   I have said before, I wasn't born of "her blood", but I was born of "her heart".  From the moment I met her, I felt like I was one of her family, not someone who showed up because of some piece of paper.  I was lucky to have her, as was all of us whom she welcomed into her life.  Heaven got one of the "great ones" the day she got her angel wings.  I along with so many will miss her greatly.

   When my mom died of cancer in 2002, I realized that I had very few pictures of her.  I have no idea when the last formal portrait was taken (maybe in 1982) and there were hardly any snapshots to be found.  Despite the fact that I seemed to always have a camera in my hand from the age of 17 on, I rarely took pictures of the people around me.

   Same can pretty much be said of my in-laws, who, have also both past away.  My children will have almost no memory of them other than the stories other people tell them, or the rare picture that is found in a drawer someplace.  I have a few pictures of my maternal grandmother, and I do have a portrait taken to honor my maternal grandparents on their 40th wedding anniversary.  I  hold these as being near and dear to my heart.  I actually got married on their wedding date, and wore the necklace my grandma was wearing in that picture on the day I became a bride.

   Why do I tell you these stories?  I'm a visual person, and as I get older, I wish that there were more pictures of my family for me to hold and enjoy.  In 2013, I attended my husband's family reunion in Buffalo Center, Iowa, a town so small, that you would miss it if you blinked.  I brought my camera.  I took posed shots and more than a few casual shots.  I want everyone there (and those family members who couldn't be there with us) to have a testament to the love this family feels for each other.

   Take time to document your life, both formally and informally.  Put pictures on the wall (so that the "little one" can point at her cousin's picture and yell, "Sean!"); take snapshots to cover your fridge; document the memories of your time.  Pictures are proof that not only were you alive, but that you lived!

   I wasn't born a Winter, but I feel like I've always been one.  I have the pictures, and the love, to prove it!