what matters and why

aunt judge

My aunt looks at me with curious eyes. She can barely keep them open. It's been such a long weekend, and she has long way to go before everything settles down. She's trying to carry on this conversation, but she's tired. She's always the one who keeps us talking to each other, who always has something to say, whether appropriate or not, and she's always laughing. We saw her nine months ago, before we knew that her mother, my grandmother, didn't have much more time here. We thought she'd be around another ten years, at least. We spent a couple days in the city with my aunt and uncle who acted as tour guides. She was always my favorite family member, ever since I could remember. She was right there with a comliment to me every time I turned around. She'd been athletic like myself and enjoyed that I was so involved in that. I loved how she was so different than my own mother. She was always so much more positive, so happy, always laughing and goofing off with her kids. She was perfect, I used to think, and I wished my mom had more of her spirit in herself. In the city, we talked about how our lives were going now. Her three children were grown and all in college. She's always been the talker, the lively one. She asked us lots of questions. She looked through my scrapbook and commented on all the pictures. We were driving through the city when she commented on my husband's little sister's weight gain. The shock of that comment stung me. Wasn't this my positive happy go lucky aunt who only had good things to say about everyone? "She used to be so beautiful," she said, without any regard for our feelings about that. I stuck up right and told her how hard she's been trying to fix that. She doesn't know the story behind his family. All they've been through in the last twenty years. She simply made the comment and moved on. It was the first time I started to think that maybe she wasn't as laid back as I once thought. I couldn't believe that she would make judgements about a situation that she knew nothing about. I wanted to take the scrapbook back, because then I knew that there would be other questions about his family. Why did his uncle die and why did he choose the lifestyle that he did? Why does my mother in law choose to live with men she's not married to? Why is she not ashamed when she had two children get pregnant out of wedlock? All of a sudden, I couldn't believe that I'd never seen that part of that family. The part that disallows them to be open to any kind of lifestyle unless it mirrors their own. If you don't attend church, pretend like you're leading a moral life, it you don't paint the picture that you are successfull and perfect, then you are nothing. That conservative attitude that my mother has displayed in a subtle way for years. I wanted to say that just because someone is not like you does not make them less of a person. It doesn't make you better than anyone else because your life went the way it was supposed to, you go to college, get your degree, you get married, have children, maybe earn your masters, and you live the traditional life that is expected of you. You don't have problems and everything is just perfect. You look at others who have possibly divorced or chosen a different path in life and you judge them. You think what did they do wrong to get where they are now. They must be a bad pe