Aunt Anna

Nancy’s Aunt Anna

Anna Geneva Fetzeck, nee Benson died a few days ago at the age of 90. She was Nancy’s Aunt and the last of eleven brothers and sisters. She resided close to the farm where the family was raised in the little northern Pennsylvania town of Ludlow.

My father, as he lay dying of cancer commented that he had found much guidance through life from friends and reading, but that no one had written a book on a guide to dying. I think he was wrong, that a few good books have been written but that they are too morbid for the living to read. I’m not sure how Aunt Anna crossed from life to death, but I suspect with a certain dignity.

I had originally placed ‘quiet dignity’ in the above sentence, but Aunt Anna was not a quiet woman. Not to say she was boisterous, at least not in the time that I knew her, but that she would speak her mind. Her dignity was a home made dignity. Store bought cookies may have a mass appeal, but they lack the authenticity of being home made. Anna’s values were authentic and home made.

Twenty-five years ago when Nancy and I were much younger and involved with children and business and work Alice, Nancy’s mother, and Anna would drive to Virginia to spend a week in May helping keep the ship afloat. The business we owned was very seasonal in nature and May was the busiest time. Anna would have been in her mid-sixties then, Alice in her fifties, but they both came ready to work. I have a picture of Anna dressed in her work clothes, gloves and boots swabbing the deck of the porch of our house in Elkton. Cleaning the porch with a toothbrush was a chore Nancy remembered as a childrhood memory her Aunt Anna assigning her back on the porch at Ludlow. It is appropriate that our best photo of Anna is porch cleaning, sans toothbrush. Unfortunately, I do not have access to the picture to scan and place on this blog, but I’m sure that you can use your imagination.

Anna and I both contended that ice cream belongs as one of the seven basic food groups. Practically every afternoon she’d work a cross word puzzle and practically every evening she’d be happy with her bowl of ice cream before bed. She liked to read and made lists of the books she read. They’d be interesting to study if they turn up when some one sorts through the accumulation of a life of ninety years. Reading books and working crosswords and eating ice cream don’t by themselves define a person with dignity. Volunteering at the Cane Lutheran home, being a mainstay in her community and church at Ludlow, being involved with her children and grandchildren and great grandchildren, with her nieces and nephews does define it.

Anna’s passing is the passing of a generation. The cousins are now oldest descendants of the Benson family that migrated from Sweden to the woods of north central Pennsylvania. The original Benson’s were farmers and people of the soil. The most successful thing they raised from that difficult land was their eleven children.

The simile of a home baked cookie keeps coming to mind as I think of Aunt Anna, irregular and imperfect but with unmatched warmth and goodness. It is a sign of my high regard for her that she brings to mind thoughts of comfort food.

What follows death we know not with absolute certainty; whether there is reward for our wholesomeness or penalty for our recklessness, or whether we shall have some sort of consciousness at all. Anna was a Lutheran, as am I, and with a solid degree of faith so perhaps she has rejoined her brothers and sisters and father and mother. It seems to me that one measure of a life is the traces that one leaves behind and no matter what the passing of life ultimately means, in her living of life Anna Geneva will be remembered with warmth and fondness.