My Aunt Alice is with my mom in heaven and I hope watching over us. She used to sit with her left arm fold across her chest and her right hand thoughtfully on her chin. Here is a post I wrote upon her passing. Little additional reading today. https://dasguteessen.wordpress.com/2016/01/27/remembering-alice/.
A lightbulb moment. Everyone has one or two or three. It happens when your brain’s receptors are wide open, and something you have heard your whole life suddenly makes a whole lot of sense. Like how could you have missed it?
And then there are six degrees of separation. In North Dakota, if you were born and raised here, we are often separated by less than six degrees.
Sometimes it amazes me how close I am to so many people, like Shelley.
I’m struggling a bit these days with my health and the people in my life. When having an early morning conversation with my friend Shelley, I asked about face cream.
Why face cream? Because cancer drugs take the life out of your hair and skin. In addition to killing cancer cells, the rest of your body takes a lickin’ and can only keep on tickin’ so long before something gives.
Looking in the mirror I see someone I don’t recognize anymore. It’s not all bad, but greatly deteriorated from a year ago. My strength is gone as well as my get up and go — it got up and left.
Shelley told me about something she uses on her skin. For some reason, we got on the topic of my Aunt Alice. You know Uncle Ed’s wife. Next to my mom, I considered her my mom. She was an amazing person.
“So how do you know Aunt Alice?”
“My mother worked with her.”
“Alice was a trauma nurse in the ER at the hospital.”
“So was my mother.”
What? Seriously? That’s so cool. My Aunt Alice was such a great person it made me happy that Shelley knew her.
It was, however, the next part of the conversation that hit home — my whining.
I have issues with feeling tired all the time and the strength in my upper body is sapped, and working on anything for any amount of time is painful.
Shelley listened patiently to my dissertation about how much cancer treatments have aged me … I’m so sad, my hair is getting gray, and my face is falling.
Then she said, your Aunt Alice had cancer for 20 years. You need to think about Alice and how she did so with grace.
“Uh,” I got caught. It was a lightbulb moment as I finally turned inside out and thought about Alice and all the other women that I knew had a disease, and you would never know it. They never complained. They gritted their teeth and carried on up until their last days with grit and grace.
That brings me to a gift from my cousin Michelle when she heard my diagnosis in 2023. I received an unexpected package in the mail. I love to get mail. It had honey lip balm, lotion and a sticker that I cannot put in this story cause it might offend someone, and a wall plaque that said — Grit and Grace from I Corinthians 15:10.
“I am different now. It is all because of what God did for me by His loving-favor. His loving-favor was not wasted. I worked harder than all the other missionaries. But it was not I who worked. It was God’s loving-favor working through me.”
I must admit, last week was pretty challenging for me. However, when I reflect on how Alice, LeAnn, DeAnn, and Karen have accepted their circumstances with grace and dignity, they inspire me. It’s as if my brain’s receptors lit up like a Christmas tree.
Today, I am moving forward slowly, but surely with a new determination to be the best I can be. I love you Aunt Alice.
INDYchildrendotme 
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