Aunt Lola

Laugh for us one last time! 

My aunt Lola died this week, peacefully in her sleep. She was on my mother's side, a Thompson. Big deal?  Well first of all Aunt Lola was in her mid 90's.  I think that is still kind of a big deal.  And another big deal?

 

She was the last survivor of this family of nine  kids raised during the great depression in dust bowl Kansas.  Just off the top you'd know that had to give you a lot of character. But it also made it possible for all the Thompson kids to BECOME characters. Lola may have led the pack. Somehow Elmer and Murrell Thompson found a way during the turmoil of the times to let the Thompson kids be themselves, think outside the box (Elmer was a one room school house teacher), find their own paths in life.

And, oh my, what wonderful story tellers they all were. When all nine of them were together there was no sense in trying to get in the middle of the conversation. They all knew the road map, but it would have been dangerous for anyone else to do anything but sit on the curb, and listen and laugh.  And I don't think there can ever be a dispute about this.  Aunt Lola was the LAUGH LEADER.

She was the shortest of the nine, but not the least heard.  When she let go with her gleeful explosions I don't think it would be much of an exaggeration to say you could hear her a block away.  Now don't let me give you the impression that that is all she did.  When I was around, and admittedly that wasn't much, she would always have some sharp words for sons Bill and Errol. They didn't exactly grow up in choir robes.

But I have to tell you less than a minute into a tirade she would catch herself and turn it into a cacophony of guffaws. Her laughter was always joyous, never mean.  If you'd ask her secret to long life I'm not sure what she'd say.  But those who've known her would have to say it had to have been that unflappable positive outlook and that wonderful laugh.  (I hope someone has recorded it.)

Well anyway, I and a couple million (exaggeration) first cousins, are orphans. For me and my sisters that is now on both sides of the family. 

There is an infamous media story here in town of a reporter interviewing a mother in grief over her kidnapped and missing daughter? That reporter in the excitement of the news gathering moment reportedly said, "I know just how you feel. I lost a cat once." I suppose it is tough to forgive the apparent arrogance of that remark. But as I'm sitting here I'm starting to understand. It really depends on how attached she was to that cat, doesn't it?

It's clearly justified that I lost ten pounds of tears when my own parents died.

 

Mom

But in my case? Let's see, aunt Marge, uncle Gabe, and uncle Rudy, all on my father's side, gone over the past three years. Uncle Art died a long time ago. Then, on my Mom's side there was uncle Virgil, a long, long time ago, aunt Gladys and uncle Forest quite a while ago, uncles Dicky and Danny over the past decade, followed by aunts Velma, Theda and Lola in the past five years. 

I can't match the grief of the Lola Woolen family right now. But I think I can tell you I'm missing a lot of cats.

Let me tell you if they put all those Thompson kids in the same room up there, they better pad the walls with acoustical clouds.  If they don't nobody in heaven is going to get any sleep.  Come on Lola lets hear it just ONE MORE TIME!