One person can make a difference.

Aunt Kate did.

My Aunt died 30 years ago but it is her that comforts me. I imagine me sitting next to her, wrapping myself around her ham of an arm and never letting go. She loved me. That I know. I could see it in her worried eyes. I could feel it in her nervous energy. She wasn’t perfect, neither was I in our relationship. In my early twenties she had asked me to meet her at a wake for a dear friend of hers. I told her that I would but then I didn’t show. I had my excuses. I was too tired. I had worked long hours on the night shift into the morning. I was exhausted and needed sleep. I couldn’t summon the energy to dress into nice clothes, navigate through the cold wintry weather, and step into the funeral home. She asked me later that day where I was. I could hear her disappointment. I held the phone to my ear, imagined her waiting for me. My aunt who didn’t ask anything of me but this one time, who counted on me to be there for her.

Aunt Kate was a caretaker of her siblings throughout her life, before her service in the army and after. She never married.

It was her boyfriend from days gone by that had passed away and I didn’t show. My one unforgiveable regret.

She must have forgiven me because as she lay dying at age 83, she visited me though we were miles apart. Her white shadowy spirit passed through the room. I was kneeling at my bedside, sobbing because I knew that I would never make it to her in time.

At that moment, my mother called. “Aunt Kate died,” she said.

“I know.” I felt oddly comforted by Aunt Kate’s presence. By her choice to see me before she departed this life. She recognized my love for her. “I know,” she was saying to me. “I know.”

It’s because of Aunt Kate that I live my life differently. I show up for people that I care about though I may be too tired, too exhausted, too busy, and the drive too far.

I went to Aunt Kate’s gravesite on the anniversary of her death. She would have liked that I thought of her and put flowers at her headstone. She would have liked that I pulled two of the flowers from the bouquet and put one on each side of her at her neighbor’s graves though neither of us knew them. She would have liked that I showed up though it was impossibly hard to find her grave at Fort Snelling even though I had been there before. It was cold. It was windy. I had to go to the bathroom. I didn’t give up. She didn’t give up on me.

It’s her that comforts me even now.