My Aunt Helen was 99 when I stayed with her for five days while my aunt and uncle, her next door neighbors and caregivers, took a short vacation to Tennessee. Just like my mom, she was not my “real” aunt, but my step-aunt and yet I was closer to her than any of my “real” family. Aunt Helen lived to be 104 and she lived an inspirational life.
She was born on a farm in upstate Maine, miles from the nearest town. Her older brother was like their father - a hard-working, practical, no-nonsense Yankee man. He would take over the farm as he matured and raise his own family of four children there. He asked for little and lived what some may call a small life - rarely leaving the county where he was born and raised. But, Aunt Helen was never meant for a small life. She was her mother’s darling. Aunt Helen wore crinoline dresses and hair-bows of colors that rivaled the spring wildflowers in the fields that surrounded their old farmhouse - a house that lacked indoor plumbing and electricity until Aunt Helen was already middle-aged herself. In spite of a difficult and meager life on the farm, her mother managed to buy a piano and music lessons for Aunt Helen and to send her to a boarding school/secretarial college where she graduated at the top of her class.
In the early 1900's it was unusual for women to be educated past high school, if they even made it that far, and in rural Maine, it was simply scandalous for a young lady to study for a career of any sort. Fortunately, Aunt Helen’s mother and Aunt Helen thought otherwise.
She left northern Maine and settled in the Portland area, living in boarding houses where adventurous career women were chaperoned and carefully monitored. She moved up in the secretarial world, always accepting positions with more responsibility and a better salary. During World War II, she was executive assistant to the president of the Bath Iron Works where most of the nation’s warships were manufactured, earning the highest salary of any woman in the state of Maine. She had graduated from boarding homes to a house of her own and lived a happy, successful life as an unmarried 30-something-year-old. She finally did marry, but not until sometime in her late 30's or early 40's. Her husband had been married before (I never knew if he was widowed or divorced) and had grown children. He was a very successful insurance agent who retired early due to a heart condition. They spent their summers at their lovely, but simple cabin-like home on a lake in Camden and winters in Boca Raton, Florida where they owned a lovely, but simple ranch-style house near a canal. I only recall seeing Uncle Laraine once. I was three years old and I have a very vivid mental photograph of riding in a motor boat on their lake. Uncle Laraine is at the wheel and my father is standing next to him. I am in the back of the boat with someone else - perhaps my step-mom or one of my older sisters. We are pulling away from the dock where Aunt Helen stands waving good-bye. She is wearing a peach-colored, slightly-flared shirtwaist dress, stockings, white pearls and white pumps - classic Aunt Helen attire. A few months later Uncle Laraine died of a massive heart attack - sad, but not unexpected.
Because of their late-in-life marriage, Aunt Helen and Uncle Laraine had no children and she seemed fine with that. She chose a different life than most women her age and she had no regrets. After her husband’s passing, Aunt Helen sold the lake home in Maine and became a permanent resident in Florida. She was in her early 50's at the time and well-off financially due to Uncle Laraine’s successful insurance career and his generous life insurance policy, but she chose to return to work as an executive secretary for a small, prosperous insurance agency. She continued to work there until she was in her mid-70's and, in fact, helped to computerize the office before going part-time and then retiring altogether.
While working, she spent her vacation time taking cruises and trips around the world. After her retirement, she did the same, but more often and for longer periods of time. She visited most U.S. states and a great portion of Canada, all the European and Scandinavian countries, much of Asia, Australia and New Zealand, and countless islands in the Atlantic, Pacific, Caribbean and Mediterranean.
She lived well, but not extravagantly. She sold the Boca Raton home and purchased one of the first apartments in a new condominium three blocks from the beach in Pompano. She served on the board of directors there for many years, holding every possible position.
Her politics and her financial investments were conservative and she was up-to-date on all the world and national news stories. She smiled broadly, laughed often, marveled at other people and at life, loved deeply but at a comfortable distance, and her appearance was always impeccable.
I quoted Aunt Helen in an earlier blog post: “Most, if not all, of the world’s problems can be solved with good manners.” She lived those words. I never heard her say a sharp word or raise her voice. Her manners were faultless even when responding to boorishness, incivility, sarcasm, arrogance and just plain bad behavior. She truly was a “lady”.
That five-day period I spent with her when she was 99 is one of my happiest memories. I was able to know her on a much deeper level. We shopped for shoes (she loved shoe-shopping), we ate at quaint sandwich cafes near the beach, we bought new wall-paper for her dining room, we sat side-by-side and read in silence for hours, we talked and laughed - a lot.
So what does Aunt Helen have to do with Manifesting Mount Dora? She is my inspiration. She lived her life as she saw fit, not as society or others dictated. She accomplished what others thought a poor farm girl from northern Maine could not. She did not acknowledge or even listen to the bubble-bursting comments made about her career dreams. She showed no fear and constantly, consistently moved forward on her path. Her plans pushed no one aside and she stepped on no one as she moved forward. She just did her best and she believed that she could achieve her dreams. Optimism was her trademark. When Hurricane Andrew was taking aim at South Florida, her condominium building was evacuated to a shelter in the local high school. Although she was having terrible stomach discomfort, that would later prove to be a cancerous tumor, she talked about her evacuation experience as if it were a Disney World vacation - “The Red Cross workers were so kind and helpful”, “The cot where I slept was comfy”, “They gave us delightful little plastic bowls of fruit for dessert”, “We had fun playing cards”. Not a complaint, not a whine.
At 86 a massive lump was discovered hidden away under her right breastbone. It was her first experience with a serious illness and family members were already writing her obituary - “She has no idea what she will have to go through”, “At her age, she will never make it”, “She’s lived a good life.” Fortunately, she was not through living that good life. After two radical mastectomies, her doctor said he had never seen anyone heal so quickly. He marveled at her positive attitude, her strength of will and her impervious nature. She was sent home from the hospital with a home-care nurse. After three days of being told she needed to stay in her nightgown and bathrobe because getting dress would be too painful, she told the nurse to leave the room for awhile and thirty minutes later she emerged fully dressed, including stockings, pumps and pearls. The nurse was reassigned to another patient two days later. After her Hurricane Andrew evacuation experience, Aunt Helen finally sought medical advice about her stomach discomfort. A large tumor was removed and again she defied odds with her amazing recovery and her eternally optimistic approach to her healing process. She just would not allow herself to believe that she would do anything but heal speedily and completely. In her 90's, a fall at a supermarket left her with broken bones in her arm, but she recovered and was hand-hemming her clothes a month later. Another fall at 103 left her with a weakened arm and she moved to a nursing home where she finally decided she had lived long enough, done enough, been enough places, loved enough. She died of “old age” - no ailment, no disease - just because she was not fond of her new living arrangements and because once she could not go to concerts, plays and movies anymore and when she was no longer able to play her beloved bridge twice a week with her decades-younger friends, she knew it was time to move on to her next spiritual adventure. She was not sad or angry or disappointed. She was ready. She just let go and over the period of a few weeks, she turned into the old woman that 103 previous years could not create. She made it a few days past her 104th birthday. That was enough.
Aunt Helen would love my Manifesting Mount Dora project. She would say it is “delightful”, declare it “great fun” and spur me on with her own enthusiasm. She knew nothing of the Law of Attraction or manifesting or anything of the other new-Agey stuff that surrounds my work-in-progress, but she would support me nonetheless and I am sure would find some of my “putting it out in the Universe” faith similar to her own unwavering optimism. She would come to visit me in Mount Dora, too, and we would shop for shoes and eat in quaint little cafes and we would talk and laugh - a lot.
She was born on a farm in upstate Maine, miles from the nearest town. Her older brother was like their father - a hard-working, practical, no-nonsense Yankee man. He would take over the farm as he matured and raise his own family of four children there. He asked for little and lived what some may call a small life - rarely leaving the county where he was born and raised. But, Aunt Helen was never meant for a small life. She was her mother’s darling. Aunt Helen wore crinoline dresses and hair-bows of colors that rivaled the spring wildflowers in the fields that surrounded their old farmhouse - a house that lacked indoor plumbing and electricity until Aunt Helen was already middle-aged herself. In spite of a difficult and meager life on the farm, her mother managed to buy a piano and music lessons for Aunt Helen and to send her to a boarding school/secretarial college where she graduated at the top of her class.
In the early 1900's it was unusual for women to be educated past high school, if they even made it that far, and in rural Maine, it was simply scandalous for a young lady to study for a career of any sort. Fortunately, Aunt Helen’s mother and Aunt Helen thought otherwise.
She left northern Maine and settled in the Portland area, living in boarding houses where adventurous career women were chaperoned and carefully monitored. She moved up in the secretarial world, always accepting positions with more responsibility and a better salary. During World War II, she was executive assistant to the president of the Bath Iron Works where most of the nation’s warships were manufactured, earning the highest salary of any woman in the state of Maine. She had graduated from boarding homes to a house of her own and lived a happy, successful life as an unmarried 30-something-year-old. She finally did marry, but not until sometime in her late 30's or early 40's. Her husband had been married before (I never knew if he was widowed or divorced) and had grown children. He was a very successful insurance agent who retired early due to a heart condition. They spent their summers at their lovely, but simple cabin-like home on a lake in Camden and winters in Boca Raton, Florida where they owned a lovely, but simple ranch-style house near a canal. I only recall seeing Uncle Laraine once. I was three years old and I have a very vivid mental photograph of riding in a motor boat on their lake. Uncle Laraine is at the wheel and my father is standing next to him. I am in the back of the boat with someone else - perhaps my step-mom or one of my older sisters. We are pulling away from the dock where Aunt Helen stands waving good-bye. She is wearing a peach-colored, slightly-flared shirtwaist dress, stockings, white pearls and white pumps - classic Aunt Helen attire. A few months later Uncle Laraine died of a massive heart attack - sad, but not unexpected.
Because of their late-in-life marriage, Aunt Helen and Uncle Laraine had no children and she seemed fine with that. She chose a different life than most women her age and she had no regrets. After her husband’s passing, Aunt Helen sold the lake home in Maine and became a permanent resident in Florida. She was in her early 50's at the time and well-off financially due to Uncle Laraine’s successful insurance career and his generous life insurance policy, but she chose to return to work as an executive secretary for a small, prosperous insurance agency. She continued to work there until she was in her mid-70's and, in fact, helped to computerize the office before going part-time and then retiring altogether.
While working, she spent her vacation time taking cruises and trips around the world. After her retirement, she did the same, but more often and for longer periods of time. She visited most U.S. states and a great portion of Canada, all the European and Scandinavian countries, much of Asia, Australia and New Zealand, and countless islands in the Atlantic, Pacific, Caribbean and Mediterranean.
She lived well, but not extravagantly. She sold the Boca Raton home and purchased one of the first apartments in a new condominium three blocks from the beach in Pompano. She served on the board of directors there for many years, holding every possible position.
Her politics and her financial investments were conservative and she was up-to-date on all the world and national news stories. She smiled broadly, laughed often, marveled at other people and at life, loved deeply but at a comfortable distance, and her appearance was always impeccable.
I quoted Aunt Helen in an earlier blog post: “Most, if not all, of the world’s problems can be solved with good manners.” She lived those words. I never heard her say a sharp word or raise her voice. Her manners were faultless even when responding to boorishness, incivility, sarcasm, arrogance and just plain bad behavior. She truly was a “lady”.
That five-day period I spent with her when she was 99 is one of my happiest memories. I was able to know her on a much deeper level. We shopped for shoes (she loved shoe-shopping), we ate at quaint sandwich cafes near the beach, we bought new wall-paper for her dining room, we sat side-by-side and read in silence for hours, we talked and laughed - a lot.
So what does Aunt Helen have to do with Manifesting Mount Dora? She is my inspiration. She lived her life as she saw fit, not as society or others dictated. She accomplished what others thought a poor farm girl from northern Maine could not. She did not acknowledge or even listen to the bubble-bursting comments made about her career dreams. She showed no fear and constantly, consistently moved forward on her path. Her plans pushed no one aside and she stepped on no one as she moved forward. She just did her best and she believed that she could achieve her dreams. Optimism was her trademark. When Hurricane Andrew was taking aim at South Florida, her condominium building was evacuated to a shelter in the local high school. Although she was having terrible stomach discomfort, that would later prove to be a cancerous tumor, she talked about her evacuation experience as if it were a Disney World vacation - “The Red Cross workers were so kind and helpful”, “The cot where I slept was comfy”, “They gave us delightful little plastic bowls of fruit for dessert”, “We had fun playing cards”. Not a complaint, not a whine.
At 86 a massive lump was discovered hidden away under her right breastbone. It was her first experience with a serious illness and family members were already writing her obituary - “She has no idea what she will have to go through”, “At her age, she will never make it”, “She’s lived a good life.” Fortunately, she was not through living that good life. After two radical mastectomies, her doctor said he had never seen anyone heal so quickly. He marveled at her positive attitude, her strength of will and her impervious nature. She was sent home from the hospital with a home-care nurse. After three days of being told she needed to stay in her nightgown and bathrobe because getting dress would be too painful, she told the nurse to leave the room for awhile and thirty minutes later she emerged fully dressed, including stockings, pumps and pearls. The nurse was reassigned to another patient two days later. After her Hurricane Andrew evacuation experience, Aunt Helen finally sought medical advice about her stomach discomfort. A large tumor was removed and again she defied odds with her amazing recovery and her eternally optimistic approach to her healing process. She just would not allow herself to believe that she would do anything but heal speedily and completely. In her 90's, a fall at a supermarket left her with broken bones in her arm, but she recovered and was hand-hemming her clothes a month later. Another fall at 103 left her with a weakened arm and she moved to a nursing home where she finally decided she had lived long enough, done enough, been enough places, loved enough. She died of “old age” - no ailment, no disease - just because she was not fond of her new living arrangements and because once she could not go to concerts, plays and movies anymore and when she was no longer able to play her beloved bridge twice a week with her decades-younger friends, she knew it was time to move on to her next spiritual adventure. She was not sad or angry or disappointed. She was ready. She just let go and over the period of a few weeks, she turned into the old woman that 103 previous years could not create. She made it a few days past her 104th birthday. That was enough.
Aunt Helen would love my Manifesting Mount Dora project. She would say it is “delightful”, declare it “great fun” and spur me on with her own enthusiasm. She knew nothing of the Law of Attraction or manifesting or anything of the other new-Agey stuff that surrounds my work-in-progress, but she would support me nonetheless and I am sure would find some of my “putting it out in the Universe” faith similar to her own unwavering optimism. She would come to visit me in Mount Dora, too, and we would shop for shoes and eat in quaint little cafes and we would talk and laugh - a lot.
