Aunt Nancy by Don Taco

  I had news this morning. My Aunt Nancy passed away.

  She was well into her 80s, had been ailing a while, had recently broken an arm in a fall, made it to the family's Thanksgiving dinner, held out long enough for her eldest daughter, Ellen, and her husband Ray, to finish traveling across the country and have a visit, and then peacefully drifted off. Life can treat you worse that that. As our clan well knows.

  My clan, our clan, and I choose that word very deliberately, is matriarchal, and I choose that word very deliberately as well. Some of you knew or met my mother. My sisters also. No more needs to be said. Women hold up much more than half the sky in my world. I'm fine with that. It seems perfectly normal, and it works. It works a hell of a lot better than the government and the culture here in the country I grew up in. 

  My grandmother, Harriet, Nancy's mother, didn't like the term Grandma. She was Nannie. She may have inherited that from her mother, Old Nannie. I am not sure if I was ever old enough to meet Old Nannie, but as I am among the eldest of my generation, she may have met me. Old Nannie was famous for beginning the festivities at the big holiday dinners by waving a turkey leg around and shouting, "Down with the Roosians!" Having heard this story all our lives from our parents, me and my two dozen cousins always begged Nannie to take up that cry. But she didn't like the turkey legs, and was reluctant to become her mother, for whatever reasons. 

  Harriet herself lived to be 101 and a half, and you could have used her for the dictionary illustration of frail, but she was lucid to the end.

  We have a reunion every three years. Anywhere up to 150 people might attend. The next one after Nannie passed, (it almost seems disrespectful to say Harriet. She was always Nannie to me), it occurred to me that we had never gathered without her, and I went and found Nancy, the eldest of her four children, and pointed out that she was now the eldest generation. She whooped, "I AM THE MATRIARCH!" And I said, "Yes, you are!" It occurs to me now that she wasn't much older then than I am now.

  Nancy was Harriet's eldest, and my mother, Sally, was next. She has been gone a while now. The two youngest are the boys, Ed and John, my uncles, who are still with us. This next statement, if I was to say it in earshot of my clan members, would elicit gales of laughter, for the truth of it. My uncles are NOT clan leaders.

  So, where does that leave us? Steve and I, born a few months apart, are the oldest of the male cousins. His sister Ellen, a few years older, is the only one born before us. For better or worse, she has inherited the position. Whether our generation feels ready or not. 

  I hope we're worthy. But, you know what? I believe we are. We stand on the shoulders of giants.