Alice as my mother August 1982

When my mother became too mentally ill to care for me, my aunt, Alice, took over. She washed me; she sang songs to me, she tucked me into bed to sleep at night, and even when the thunder and lightning rocked the old house we lived in at the time.

“It’s angels bowling,” she told me then, sitting on the edge of the bed as I shivered under the covers, knowing when she left I would pull them over my head again.

But she insisted on staying a long time, and her sweet perfume filled the room with its lily fragrance, a scent that remained with me, even after I had grown.

I still recall her gentle touch on my arm. She wore very little jewelry, just a thin gold chain that held a tiny gold heart, a gift from a boyfriend destined to become her husband and the father of her real children when they came.

“Do you think about your mother?” she asked me during one of these visits, her brown eyes full of sincerity.

“Yes,” I told her, uncertain exactly what she wanted me to say, smiling at my reply, but sad, too, perhaps too much aware of the torment my mother, her sister, had undergone.

Alice wasn’t old then, barely 20, and had no way to know how her life would get cut short, allowing her to survive only a few years after 40. But even then, she’d not been overly healthy, getting hurt in a fall, and then some other internal issue that had her sent to the hospital. She was as religious as my mother was, and only recently been approved to teach religion at our local church.

She was in my mind then already a saint, but each time she left, I struggled, resisting the urge to beg her to stay. I knew she had her own life, boys she dated, friends she went to parties with. And each time, when she reached the door of my bedroom, I struggled most not to call her “mother” when for the most part, she was.

 

email to Al Sullivan