Aunt Flo and Momma

My Aunt Flo called me today......she was married to my mom's younger brother and she was mom's traveling buddy.  They did bus trips together, and I bet they traveled a zillion miles together.  They went to the west coast several times, to Mexico three or four times, to Branson Mo seven times, and to the east coast three or four times, as well as Canada, Nova Scotia , Michigan and all points in between.  One Fourth of July they were in the Rockies and they called me because they had three inches of snow!  I have all my mom's photos from their trips, the pictures are awful, neither knew how to work the Kodak cameras they had, but they always had a good time.  My  mother would get the photos out, and tell me the stories behind each and every picture......but the pictures.....well there were  heads cut off, most were out of focus, or were so far away you could not tell who the people were.

Aunt Flo is now the age my mom was when she passed.  Each time I speak with her, she reminds me.......I am to sing at her funeral.  She talked to me today about all the good times she and my mom had together.
And she told me, she dreamed of my mother this week......they were making pies, well she said basically my mom was teaching her how to make pies and there were pies everywhere.

She asked me if I knew where and who she was with ten years ago today.......tears came to my eyes......I told her yes.....she was with my mom, and they were on one of their trips somewhere outside of Washington
DC.   I didn't know until that evening that they were ok.  And being the gritty old broads that they and all their friends were, not only did they go on to DC, but continued on to NYC.  Yep, you heard me, a bus full of over seventy year olds at the Pentagon and then at ground zero  at the Towers site.  They refused to let a hand full of terrorists keep them out of their favorite cities.  The bizarre thing about it all, no one stopped them, they drove by the Pentagon, and into the canyons where the Towers fell.

That trip, was the breaking point for my mom.......she was in early dementia, and the horrors that she saw, the sights, the smells, the people looking for their loved ones,  she was never the same.  I begged her to let me come and get her, but she stayed with her friends......she called me every night on that trip crying, her heart broken  by all that she saw, and the stories she heard.

Aunt Flo, said that trip was all she could think about this week.  How she and my mom clung to each other, the prayers they prayed.   Every person has a story about this day, where they were, how their lives changed....before 9/11 my mother had always talked about how Pearl Harbor had changed her life, but 9/11 changed her in ways she could not communicate.  She only took a couple of more trips after that, her traveling days were over.

I am ready for a cup of hot tea.
Good night, Sweet dreams.