Family

Family is a wonderful thing. I have a great one. We're a bag full of nuts. That's what I love about them. Every person I've ever brought to meet my family...they've always fallen in love with 'em. It's understandable. They're pretty great. By now, you're likely thinking I'm just talking about my mom and dad. (Lord knows I'm not just talking about my brother.) I have relatives stewn across Franklin County. They're all special, in their own way. And most of them are pretty doggone wonderful.

Unfortunately for Franklinton, and for my family, we lost one of our own this past Thursday morning. My grandmother's sister Jean, whom the world knows as Jean Pace, passed away after short battle with cancer. Some of you may know Jean from her time spent working as the bookkeeper at Franklinton High School. For the six years I was at FHS (from 7th - 12th grades...before the advent of Cedar Creek Middle School), Jean helped make sure nothing I did went unreported...because she saw my mom every day around 1:00 at First Citizens. And if something happened at school, my mom knew it.

Jean was a part of that village that helped raise me. During the summers, her family - my cousins Steve and his wife Kim and son Garrett, Randy (also known to us as Possum) and his wife Donna, son Mitchell and daughter Randi Lynn, Rusty and his wife Tina, son Blake and daughter Jenny, and Teresa and her husband Dan - lived across the path from us at our place on Kerr Lake. Summers were spent splashing in the water, and sitting around the table under the canopy or on the back porch. Jean loved the lake, and spent countless hours there. She is so inextricably tied to my memories of the lake, I truly don't know what it's going to be like to go up there next summer and find her not there.

As I mentioned, she was my grandmother's (my dad's mom) sister. I visited with my grandmother tonight, and she said to me so many times how much she loved Jean, and how close they were. They shared many wonderful times - some of which I'll be more than happy to tell you about, but I'd prefer to wait until my grandmother isn't within earshot, as she'd surely die of embarrasment. As my grandmother and Jean were close, so were my own mother and Jean. (Technically, Jean is my great aunt, but I never really paid much attention to that. She and my mom and dad were always so close, and she wasn't much older than my mom, and they spent a good deal of time together, also.) Jean's passing has hit my mom pretty hard, as well as my dad. I kind of expected that. What I didn't expect was how much it affected me. As my grandmother said tonight - I guess you don't realize how special people truly are until they're gone. Sitting at Ebeneezer Baptist Church today, it hit me.

It's odd how small things can affect us in such large ways. I saw my great uncle Willie wiping his eyes. Then I saw two of my own high school teachers standing on the side of the church, because there were so many folks there wasn't any room to sit. Hearing Edward Wheeler sing took me back to my other grandmother's funeral. And then, it began - I suppose it's what I hear Oprah Winfrey call the 'ugly cry.' I have a hole in my bottom lip from where I bit it so hard trying not to cry. But out it came. I realized how much life would change for so many folks. And I realized how much she would be missed.

It stinks that so many folks won't get to meet Jean. It stinks that Teresa, Rusty, Steve and Randy don't have their mom anymore. You will likely never meet four more wonderful people. Rufus and Jean just raised some damn fine people. They, in turn, have done the same. Because Blake, Garrett, Randi Lynn, Mitchell, and Jenny are all younger than me, I've had the privilege of watching them grow. They all have, or will as they grow, made their grandparents proud. It stinks that my grandmother and her sister can't sit and talk on the phone anymore, and can't sit and chatter around the table at the lake anymore. And it stinks that this stupid, horrible, vengeful diseases struck someone so wonderful. My heart simultaneously breaks and goes out to all of them, because I nor anyone else can truly understand what they've lost. For those of you who are people of faith, please keep them in your prayers.

For those of you who knew Jean, I hope you know as I do that she will live on in many truly wonderful memories, and thanks to Teresa, some great pictures. For those of you who didn't, I'm truly sorry. Stop me sometime. I'll be glad to tell you about her. So will the rest of us.