Aunt Janet

My Aunt Janet died earlier this month at the age of 90.  She was my dad's younger sister, and the last of the generation that we kids called "the Bigs."  She was the most eccentric and most accomplished of my relatives, and her death leaves a vacant spot in the lives of those of us who now step into "Bigdom" ourselves.

Aunt Janet was born in Westport, Washington, and graduated from Washington State College, as it was then known.  She married a classmate, Uncle Carl. The couple immediately fled the chilly Palouse and set off for Southern California, where they spent the rest of their lives.  Uncle Carl was a veterinarian and eventually owned his own pet hospital.  Aunt Janet became a model and a movie and TV actress.  She appeared in the 1958 Western "Fort Bowie," and appeared frequently in the 1950s  television series "Gunsmoke" and "Sea Hunt."

For a time, she was married to a well-known race car driver and designer, before returning to and remarrying her first husband, Uncle Carl.  Her various professional credits appear on her IMDb website.

These were her professional and public accomplishments.  To our family, however, she was our beloved if rather eccentric aunt.  We jokingly -- not to her face -- called her "Auntie Mame."

Aunt Janet always seemed surrounded by an aura of glamor and exoticism -- only partly attributable to her life in glamorous and exotic Los Angeles.  She was our only relative who would have dressed my brother and me in hula skirts that she had constructed out of the colored Sunday comics, pursuing some Hawaiian theme she had in mind.  She -- joined by one of her college friends -- was the only relative who would have obeyed a cartoon's injunction to "follow the bouncing ball," and sing loudly and alone in a crowded movie theater in my small Washington home town (embarrassing her 12-year-old nephew almost to tears).  She was the only adult relative to profess herself fascinated by a primitive neighborhood newspaper that I published, and to buy an advertisement in it. 

When I graduated from high school, and was headed off to an expensive college on extremely limited funds, she sent me a letter of congratulations, together with a sizable check with which to build a wardrobe.  Unfortunately, I now recall little about her letter, other than her strong recommendation that I learn the art of "small talk" -- an art with which she admitted she still struggled.  (I never did, but would have been better off if I had!)  She appeared unexpectedly at my dormitory room one day when I was a sophomore, having used all her natural attributes and acquired skills to appear as though she were still a college student.  My all-male dorm-mates took some time to recover from the shock to their nervous systems.  She decided that I needed a bike to get around campus, and bought one for me on the spot.

She and Uncle Carl took me, at the age of 18, to my first piece of professional theater -- two short plays by Tennessee Williams, performed in Hollywood under the title of Garden District.  

During spring break of my senior year, a group of four friends and I traveled south to Los Angeles.  She greeted our entire motley bunch, insisted that we stay at her home, fed us, and obviously had as much fun with us and we did with her. 

Years later, when I began a new job at a new law firm, Aunt Janet wrote me a moving letter of congratulations, telling me how proud my dad -- who had died shortly before -- would have been.  Even later, she insisted that I send her a copy of every journal I wrote while traveling.  She always made me feel that she found my every thought a matter of great interest.

As Aunt Janet grew older, however, her eccentricities became less endearing and a bit colder.  Her relations with her own children became problematic.  She may have developed some form of mental illness, or she may have simply suffered -- as many do -- from the growing knowledge that she could no longer fully control the world about her, or even (and especially) her own family. 

I talked to her often by phone, and my siblings saw her more often in person.  Although she seemed a bit paranoid, I doubt that she was "crazy."  I think life just became harder and harder for her as she grew older.  She had been an actress and a model, and she had kept herself looking preternaturally young.  At 85, she could easily have passed for a woman thirty or even forty years younger.  But there is no medical procedure that can alter your inner feelings or the pains (physical and mental) of advanced age.

But until maybe five years ago, she remained one of the most interesting, funny, and attractive women I knew.  When she talked to you, you had her entire attention.  She was interested, seemingly fascinated, almost to a scary degree, by your own activities and opinions.  While the conversation continued, you truly felt like a more interesting person.  She may, in fact, despite what she claimed, have mastered her own form of "small talk."

At her own request, there was to be no funeral or memorial service following her death.  I think we, her family, needed such a service. We would have benefitted from an opportunity to discuss, among ourselves, her life and how her life had affected our own.

And I know she deserved a eulogy.

This is mine.