Remember me and smile...

for it is better to forget than remember me and cry.


I received an email from my mom that my Aunt had passed away in her home this weekend.

Although we hadn't seen each other in many years, it did make me a bit sad.

Memories flooded me of being a child and playing at her farm with my cousins. The trouble we got into.
The late night horse back riding adventures we had together.

The time my one cousin shot a skunk with a shotgun... that was under the 'goose' house.
...and we drew straws
to see how would take a pitchfork and dispose of the smelly mess.

I drew the short straw.
But didn't want to seem 'girly' to my boy cousins.
The stench was awful and my stomach roiled.
Somehow I survived it.

There was the time that my cousin used dynamite to blow the swamp up ... making it deeper. I recall the aftermath of flying frogs and snakes, along with debris.

Or riding late at night with a silvery fog creeping across the road. The local cop stopping us and advising us to get our butts home. He totally creeped us out by saying that there was a prisoner loose in town.
Okay, that was enough to set any teenage imagination off on a tangent.

Riding horses to the town dump and shooting rats with .22 rifles.

My cousins 'jousting' with saplings and garbage can lids. Dangerous? I suppose, but we were kids in the countryside.
Climbing trees,
Flashlight tag,
Dressing like indians and using my Aunt's lipstick to paint our faces.
Oh yeah...
she got mad.

So I remember these things and smile for an era gone past.
That lives only in memory now.