For Ellen

LesbosOnTheCouch by Beth C, one of the Lesbos

I get off the plane – but it’s too late.

She was my aunt. She was my friend. She was my big sister and my confidant. For years we’d speak two or three times a week. She listened to me, she counseled me. She usually knew what to do and if she didn’t – she could comfort me and lend me her belief in me that I would find the way. When I told her about my new love and my decision to be the person that writes this blog – a lesbo on the couch – she accepted. Without question she accepted the woman of my dreams. When there was war and my child was thus engaged, my aunt would call me -and ask -and listen. She never pretended to be something she wasn’t. She never asked why I chose the paths I’ve chosen.

My boys knew her as my aunt and theirs. She never forgot a birthday, an anniversary a holiday. When I got here, at her house… going through her files, her possessions -I found her secret. Lists and notes and files – everything written down and meticulously documented. Every  happy occurrence and bit of news. When I started my new job, the time and place recorded. How I felt when I saw these things can only be explained as pure joy – simply and completely loved. Here was this person, my aunt, and me and mine – so important to her that all we’d done recorded and documented in such detail.

And when I found my poems – all of them from high school and beyond, the cards, the drawings and trinkets sent from far off and nearby – she kept them all. All the stuff from her grand nephews – every picture they ever made, every gesture they every sent. She kept it all…and all I could think was that I regret not sending more. She treasured us so much…so she said – and now I know.

I love my aunt Ellen and she loved me. I am lucky to have had her in my life. I am lucky she took me into her heart. I am blessed to have had her these past 49 years. The world was blessed to have had her 64 years. I miss her already. I will miss her always.