I’d like to be this strong one day

Her name is Bernice. She’s my great aunt. My mom’s aunt. She is (or well, was) my grandfather’s older sister. She’s 92 years old.

She was the seventh child in a family of ten children. She watched her parents try to save her oldest sister from brain cancer and lived with the way that changed them after, when they weren’t able to save her. They grew up very poor on a farm in Texas. She watched helplessly as her youngest sister died as a young teenager from Typhoid Fever. She helped her mother, nurse my grandpa back to health from the same thing.

She was always the solid one. The girl who would help anyone.

When she was right out of high school, she married and quickly had two daughters. When the younger one was maybe four months old, her husband left her. All alone in a state with no family. She found a job and took care of her girls. Four years later she remarried. That one left after three years. Beat her, drained their savings, left her in debt and with two more kids to feed. A single mom with four kids to feed. She moved to be closer to her parents, eventually taking care of them as well.

She started working for the electric company, as some form of a secretary. She went to work for them, because she knew, they’d always be able to pay her. She eventually got out of debt and bought a house.

She’s a survivor.

She survived loosing her youngest son. He was in some kind of a boating accident at nineteen years old. When asked, she says this was the one that would have knocked her over for good, if she’d let it. Says it came close. Nothing before it or after it can ever compare she once told me. Of course now, thirty something years later, she says she only cries every third time he is brought up in conversation.

She’s outlived her parents and all but one sibling. (The remaining sister, four years younger than her is slowly loosing her battle with Alzheimer’s.) She’s done the unthinkable, she’s buried a child. She always says, you aren’t supposed to have to bury your children. That she has some choice words to say to god one day about that.

I don’t doubt that she will.

She’s volunteered in children’s wards of hospitals for my entire life. She reads to kids at the library. She does math in her great-grand-children’s classrooms. She teaches Sunday School and cooks at soup kitchens.

When she retired, she started going on trips. She’s seen the world, one trip at a time. Sometimes with friends. Sometimes with children or grandchildren. Sometimes alone. Picture if you will, a 92 year old woman, who still decides on the spur of the moment to go to Arizona for the weekend. Or Florida. Or Minnesota. Because there is an exhibit she heard is going to be in some gallery there that she’d like to see. Or because she got tired of the heat where she lives. She calls one of her family members and says, hey, I’m going to come visit you this weekend. I’ll be there in three hours. This is when my plane gets in. I can take a taxi, if you are busy.

She does this often.

She’s ornery like that. That’s what her oldest daughter calls her. Of course that’s because Aunt Bernice only calls her daughter and tells her where she’s going, after she’s already there. Ha.

92 years old and she still does what she wants, when she wants. She gave up her house about five years ago and moved into a little apartment in a retirement community, mostly to make her daughters shut up, not because she felt like she needed too. She really does like it though. She’s a mean pinnacle player. She calls all the other people there, the little old people. She loves to say, I may be old, but I’ll never be little.

When she gets bored, she takes a trip. She has three children, 12 grandchildren and numerous nieces and nephews and great nieces and nephews who will always welcome her into their home. She’s helpful. She’s funny. She tells great stories. She bakes. When Morgan was a baby she came to our house for a week. I had to check her suit case when she left to make sure my baby wasn’t in it. She never put the girl down the entire week she was visiting.

In December she had a pacemaker put in. She’d had a few “episodes” and her doctor told her this would help. She said it like it was nothing. In fact, she told everyone about in her Christmas letter. One sentence was, oh my grand-daughter is pregnant with twins and I’m so thrilled and the next sentence was, oh and I’ll be having a pacemaker put in after Christmas…but no one get all worried, because I am only doing this so I can live to see 115.

She was back on her feet in days. 115 years old is her goal. 115 years old. Can you imagine?

Last week, she found a lump in her breast. Unfortunately cancer runs heavily in that side of the family, so we’ll see. It could, obviously be nothing. She has told everyone, no worries. If it’s cancerous, I’ll deal with it. She already told her doctor and kids, she’ll do whatever they think she needs to do. But she also told her doctor in no uncertain terms that she’s planning on going on a cruise in spring 2012 with her grand-daughter and family, so please to be remembering she must be healed by then.

I can’t plan next week and she’s planning spring 2012.

A woman born in 1917. A 92 year old woman. One of the strongest, most amazing ladies you could ever hope to meet. My great aunt Bernice. I just hope one day, I can even be half as strong as she is.