MY FATHER'S SISTER by Rowena Clarke Fulk, [email protected]

In February of 1995 I had an antsy feeling that I wanted to visit my 83-year-old Aunt Virginia (Clarke) Charlton Hayen in Montana. I didn't see her very often but when we got together she was warm, and wonderful, and made me laugh. She always said I was her "favorite." I called her up and told her I wanted to visit. She couldn't wait. I went to Kalispell, Montana on July 5 and came home to California on the 9th. She took me to Glacier Park. There we had a BBQ by the river stream with her stepson and his aunt; a deer was close by. We went to Flathead Lake and went on a boat around the lake. We shopped in Whitefish. She wore me out.

In the times at her home, we talked about family. She went through the photo album and I video taped as she talked about each picture. We laughed and laughed. She gave me so many pictures. I even have one of her on a pony in front of my mother's house (when she was a kid) and their house across the street in a different picture that she also gave me. We pulled pictures out of the album that I wanted and she took me to have them copied by a computer on photo paper. You can't tell they are copies. She gave me a few ceramic pieces her mother made when she was over 80, when she stayed with us in Palo Alto, California. She also gave me a cotton blanket she said was spun on a spinning wheel, dyed and woven about the time of the Civil War. Such treasures. She gave me an old suitcase to carry these things home.

I also conned her into playing the organ and sneaked into the bedroom and set up the video camera to tape that also. We really laughed over that. The night before I was to fly home, I got very nostalgic. I knew it might be the last time I would see her.

My Aunt Virginia lived winters in Tempe, Arizona (a "snowbird") and the rest of the year in Montana. So I got a postcard from Arizona around December 10, telling me she would be out to visit her grandchildren south of San Francisco for Christmas holidays and wanted me to come see her the day after Christmas at one of their homes.

On December 12, I got a phone call telling me that my Aunt had been killed in a car accident in Tempe that day. I do not know what drove me to go visit, but I am glad I did. What memories.