auntie barbara

Dear Heidi & Shelly,

The news of your mom’s passing left me with a heavy heart. I understand she had been ill for some time, but this does not lessen your loss. I spent much of Friday thinking about “Auntie Barbara” and shared the many memories I have of her with my own children. Nikolas is familiar with my Auntie Barbara stories, in which your mom has been transformed into a type of superhero. One of his favorites involves Auntie Barbara racing about town in her little Carmen Gia, her auburn hair whipping about her face, adjusting her lipstick in the rearview mirror, on her way to retrieve candy stolen from children on Halloween night. In this particular story Auntie Barbara recovers the stolen candy to the town’s children and is hailed as a town hero.

This morning I told Emma all the things that I loved best about Barbara. To me she was pure fun and glamour. I loved her lipstick kisses, the way her perfume enveloped me when she hugged me, the heel on her shoe that seemed way too thin and precarious to hold anything more than a feather, her purse always filled with gum and candy, the way her laugh seemed to fill an empty room. I recall one train trip to Toronto in which Barbara indulged my every request for cokes and salt and vinegar chips. I remember sitting next to her, watching her read a magazine, peeking into her purse at her lipstick. She caught my eye and reached in her bag for the lipstick and with flawless execution; she reapplied her lipstick perfectly without a mirror. To my great joy, she turned to me and applied a slight amount to my lips. “Isn’t this fun,” she smiled to me. For me it was Heaven.

I can’t begin to imagine your loss, but I want you to know the memory of your mom will last forever in my heart and mind. My family has yet to spend a single day on a beach without sharing a Barbara story. There is something about being up north and near a beach that will call to mind stories about her. So much of my summers spent up north involve both of you and your mom. Evenings in the cottage are still spent with someone saying, “remember the time Barbara fed all the baby carrots to Molly,” our mutt of a dog that we dragged up to a cottage. Barbara always felt a kinship with dogs and was determined that all of their hardships should be rewarded with “treats” like coffee cake and ice cream. I see pictures of all of us at the Oak Grove Lodge and I long for those long summer days and endless nights, where music mixed with the grown up’s laughter.

There are so many things I will miss about your mom. As a little girl, she was everything I loved about being a grown up. I so wanted to have her elegant hands, finger polish matching her toes. I always felt special when she would say to me, car keys jingling in her hands, “ok kid, let’s go buy some chocolate.” Her mere presence excited me. Whenever she visited our home, her voice would float out from the kitchen, where she would be sampling Herb’s cooking, insisting she just wanted a “nibble.” Everything around her seemed to be charged with electricity. To me, she always seemed so full of life. This is what I will remember about your mom.

I loved her dearly and I will miss her terribly. I will continue to share Auntie Barbara stories with my children not only because they will remind me of my own childhood, but also because I simply treasure these memories so much.

Please accept my deepest sympathies for this tremendous loss.