Every kid should have a favorite aunt. Every boy should have a favorite aunt like my Aunt Emmie.
Most of the women in a 9-year-old’s life are uniformly mom-like. They wear the comfortable clothes and shoes and favor low-maintenance hair. They drive boxy cars and keep the windows rolled up. They enforce the rules, articulate the cautions and dispense justice. My Aunt Emmie did none of those things.
Emmie was fun, glamorous, adventurous and prone to spoil nephews with stuff like circus tickets and cotton candy. The mom gene pretty much passed Emmie by.
Emmie’s blond hair was wrapped stylishly around her head and pinned high like Tippi Hedren in The Birds. She was single, with the height and build of a model, which she had once been while living in New York. She favored stylish wool suits, high heels, sunglasses, and gloved hands that usually held a cigarette. Her car was an MG convertible with a tiny back seat that popped out of the trunk.
A ride in the MG was always expected when Emmie came around, and she never disappointed. Even on cool days she threw back the top and opened the rumble seat, which my little brother begged to occupy. I preferred the passenger side where I could talk to Emmie and watch her shift the manual transmission.
Aunt Emmie was a presence I couldn’t get my prepubescent mind around. She had an effect on males of all ages. Though at age nine I could not know it, describe it or appreciate it, she had sex appeal.
Emmie also had a Nikon camera--the large single lens reflex style favored by war correspondents in Life magazine. She took pictures of my brother and me at the circus. The grainy black and white prints she produced of the event, my face illuminated by the dizzy, sensuous world around me, are documentation of her power to intoxicate and enchant.
The phone call with news that Emmie had suffered a stroke and would likely die in days or hours hit me unexpected and hard. My first emotion was shame. Why had I let so many opportunities to write, call or visit pass by? I let my favorite aunt become a favored memory. May God forgive me for the waste of it all.
Emmie loved the East Tennessee mountains near where I now live. Her final instructions were that her ashes be spread in The Great Smoky Mountains National Park. She was not a hiker or a naturalist, but she loved the Smokies experience--driving to Clingman’s Dome, visiting the Cherokee decked out for tourists, shopping on the strip in Gatlinburg. Like millions of others with a time on their hands, the Smokies is where Emmie wanted to rest.
So a small group of family gathered near the park to honor Emmie’s request. Her husband Don and his daughter Lynn, my uncle Pat--one of Emmie’s few surviving brothers—and Pat’s wife B.J., my mother and me—we were to see Emmie’s ashes to a final resting place. Having never scattered anyone before. I had no idea what to expect.
The Zip-Loc bags were the first surprise. To pack Emmie on a plane and ease her past airport security, the family decided on the practical approach. They divided her into a couple of quart-sized freezer bags and placed her in a carry-on.
The second surprise was that Emmie had not specified any particular spot in the Smokies as a favorite. The Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the most visited in the country, contains more than 800 square miles of trees, trails and mountain views. Any number of vistas along U.S. 441, which bisects the park could have been a favorite spot, but no one knew for sure.
So Emmie’s husband Don asked me, as the one who knew the Smokies best, to pick the place. He wanted somewhere a little out of the way since it was unclear—another potential surprise—if the National Park Service would take kindly to seven visitors entering the park, but only six coming out.
We stopped at the Sugarlands Visitor Center near the park’s Gatlinburg entrance to make a plan. At Sugarlands there is a large, sculpted relief map that shows all the peaks and valleys of the park to approximate scale. The black line representing 441 South snakes its way from the blue line of the Little River on the Tennessee side, up and around Mt. LeConte and over Newfound Gap toward Cherokee, North Carolina and the blue line marking the Oconaluftee. The map has a border-to-border base coat of deep green paint, but the mountaintops are worn black from decades of visitors touching the summits. No doubt Emmie’s fingers had stroked these mountains at some time past.
My eyes settled on the lesser peaks called the Chimneys. There was no way our aging troupe could hike to the top, but I was familiar with the access trail and knew that it quickly crossed a footbridge and a cascading stream, which should provide some degree of seclusion and solitude. Don accepted the suggestion and we set out.
The Chimney’s are among the finest places in the park. The trail up is steep, but the reward at the top is a point of rock that exhilarates. The safest route to the highest point is through a passage that resembles a chimney, perhaps the last evidence of an active volcano, now many thousands of years cooled. I doubt seriously that Emmie ever climbed the Chimneys or even walked its trail, but she would approve of the choice. If she loved the Smokies, she would have loved the Chimneys and all they surveyed below.
It is simply part of being human that we carry our secret musings with us in every circumstance. As we drove toward the trailhead, I privately laughed at the thought of Emmie, a dedicated smoker of many years, resting at the foot of The Chimneys. I also entertained a poetic vision of us all releasing her ashes into the stream, the middle prong of the Little River, which would carry her along miles of secluded and pristine parkland. I love rushing water, and there are some streams where I would not mind floating through eternity.
That was my idea—the stream--but Don informed me Emmie was terribly frightened by water, so the Little River was out of the question. It humbled me to realize that if I had really known her, I would have known that. I’m just guest here, I acknowledged to myself. Emmie was spoiling me with one final adventure I did not deserve.
Fortunately B.J. and Lynn made a better choice. We gathered near the base of a majestic hemlock, one of the signature trees of the Smokies. Hemlocks can grow to 100 feet or more. This one had attained a girth that would require at least three tree-huggers for a full embrace.
Lynn read from the Psalms and Isaiah, and we recited the Lord’s Prayer. Then B.J. opened the baggies and divided Emmie, a little at a time, into our cupped hands.
What better metaphor for life than the passing of ashes through our fingers? Whether we pour ourselves out for the noble or the ridiculous, the grains of our lives continue to spill out. When we are young and full we barely notice the movement and sound of the tiny pieces of ourselves falling away. Then, eventually, the remaining grains are so few we fixate on them and try to count each one that passes.
I took the last grains of Emmie and placed them at the base of the hemlock, in the folds of the roots. I uttered a prayer that God would let her see that she was, and would always be, my favorite aunt.
Soon I’m planning a return to the Chimney’s and, God willing, I will climb to the top. Yet the highlight won’t be the view from the peak. What I am looking forward to is a giant hemlock. I want to sit by its roots and gaze into its canopy. Like Emmie, I want to rest there awhile.
Most of the women in a 9-year-old’s life are uniformly mom-like. They wear the comfortable clothes and shoes and favor low-maintenance hair. They drive boxy cars and keep the windows rolled up. They enforce the rules, articulate the cautions and dispense justice. My Aunt Emmie did none of those things.
Emmie was fun, glamorous, adventurous and prone to spoil nephews with stuff like circus tickets and cotton candy. The mom gene pretty much passed Emmie by.
Emmie’s blond hair was wrapped stylishly around her head and pinned high like Tippi Hedren in The Birds. She was single, with the height and build of a model, which she had once been while living in New York. She favored stylish wool suits, high heels, sunglasses, and gloved hands that usually held a cigarette. Her car was an MG convertible with a tiny back seat that popped out of the trunk.
A ride in the MG was always expected when Emmie came around, and she never disappointed. Even on cool days she threw back the top and opened the rumble seat, which my little brother begged to occupy. I preferred the passenger side where I could talk to Emmie and watch her shift the manual transmission.
Aunt Emmie was a presence I couldn’t get my prepubescent mind around. She had an effect on males of all ages. Though at age nine I could not know it, describe it or appreciate it, she had sex appeal.
Emmie also had a Nikon camera--the large single lens reflex style favored by war correspondents in Life magazine. She took pictures of my brother and me at the circus. The grainy black and white prints she produced of the event, my face illuminated by the dizzy, sensuous world around me, are documentation of her power to intoxicate and enchant.
The phone call with news that Emmie had suffered a stroke and would likely die in days or hours hit me unexpected and hard. My first emotion was shame. Why had I let so many opportunities to write, call or visit pass by? I let my favorite aunt become a favored memory. May God forgive me for the waste of it all.
Emmie loved the East Tennessee mountains near where I now live. Her final instructions were that her ashes be spread in The Great Smoky Mountains National Park. She was not a hiker or a naturalist, but she loved the Smokies experience--driving to Clingman’s Dome, visiting the Cherokee decked out for tourists, shopping on the strip in Gatlinburg. Like millions of others with a time on their hands, the Smokies is where Emmie wanted to rest.
So a small group of family gathered near the park to honor Emmie’s request. Her husband Don and his daughter Lynn, my uncle Pat--one of Emmie’s few surviving brothers—and Pat’s wife B.J., my mother and me—we were to see Emmie’s ashes to a final resting place. Having never scattered anyone before. I had no idea what to expect.
The Zip-Loc bags were the first surprise. To pack Emmie on a plane and ease her past airport security, the family decided on the practical approach. They divided her into a couple of quart-sized freezer bags and placed her in a carry-on.
The second surprise was that Emmie had not specified any particular spot in the Smokies as a favorite. The Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the most visited in the country, contains more than 800 square miles of trees, trails and mountain views. Any number of vistas along U.S. 441, which bisects the park could have been a favorite spot, but no one knew for sure.
So Emmie’s husband Don asked me, as the one who knew the Smokies best, to pick the place. He wanted somewhere a little out of the way since it was unclear—another potential surprise—if the National Park Service would take kindly to seven visitors entering the park, but only six coming out.
We stopped at the Sugarlands Visitor Center near the park’s Gatlinburg entrance to make a plan. At Sugarlands there is a large, sculpted relief map that shows all the peaks and valleys of the park to approximate scale. The black line representing 441 South snakes its way from the blue line of the Little River on the Tennessee side, up and around Mt. LeConte and over Newfound Gap toward Cherokee, North Carolina and the blue line marking the Oconaluftee. The map has a border-to-border base coat of deep green paint, but the mountaintops are worn black from decades of visitors touching the summits. No doubt Emmie’s fingers had stroked these mountains at some time past.
My eyes settled on the lesser peaks called the Chimneys. There was no way our aging troupe could hike to the top, but I was familiar with the access trail and knew that it quickly crossed a footbridge and a cascading stream, which should provide some degree of seclusion and solitude. Don accepted the suggestion and we set out.
The Chimney’s are among the finest places in the park. The trail up is steep, but the reward at the top is a point of rock that exhilarates. The safest route to the highest point is through a passage that resembles a chimney, perhaps the last evidence of an active volcano, now many thousands of years cooled. I doubt seriously that Emmie ever climbed the Chimneys or even walked its trail, but she would approve of the choice. If she loved the Smokies, she would have loved the Chimneys and all they surveyed below.
It is simply part of being human that we carry our secret musings with us in every circumstance. As we drove toward the trailhead, I privately laughed at the thought of Emmie, a dedicated smoker of many years, resting at the foot of The Chimneys. I also entertained a poetic vision of us all releasing her ashes into the stream, the middle prong of the Little River, which would carry her along miles of secluded and pristine parkland. I love rushing water, and there are some streams where I would not mind floating through eternity.
That was my idea—the stream--but Don informed me Emmie was terribly frightened by water, so the Little River was out of the question. It humbled me to realize that if I had really known her, I would have known that. I’m just guest here, I acknowledged to myself. Emmie was spoiling me with one final adventure I did not deserve.
Fortunately B.J. and Lynn made a better choice. We gathered near the base of a majestic hemlock, one of the signature trees of the Smokies. Hemlocks can grow to 100 feet or more. This one had attained a girth that would require at least three tree-huggers for a full embrace.
Lynn read from the Psalms and Isaiah, and we recited the Lord’s Prayer. Then B.J. opened the baggies and divided Emmie, a little at a time, into our cupped hands.
What better metaphor for life than the passing of ashes through our fingers? Whether we pour ourselves out for the noble or the ridiculous, the grains of our lives continue to spill out. When we are young and full we barely notice the movement and sound of the tiny pieces of ourselves falling away. Then, eventually, the remaining grains are so few we fixate on them and try to count each one that passes.
I took the last grains of Emmie and placed them at the base of the hemlock, in the folds of the roots. I uttered a prayer that God would let her see that she was, and would always be, my favorite aunt.
Soon I’m planning a return to the Chimney’s and, God willing, I will climb to the top. Yet the highlight won’t be the view from the peak. What I am looking forward to is a giant hemlock. I want to sit by its roots and gaze into its canopy. Like Emmie, I want to rest there awhile.
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