Barbara Weddle

On the way home to Wisconsin from Valdosta, Georgia, one year after spending Thanksgiving with my Air Force son, I took a detour to Narrows, Virginia, to spend a few days with my aunt. I was anxious to get home, but Aunt Dorothy was the favorite of my mother’s six sisters and had recently had major surgery.

The 1957 D-17 Allis-Chalmers tractor, faded by the sun and long unserviceable from languishing for years in the old machine shed, has recently been brought back to life by my cousin Gilbert. This night before Christmas, boasting a new coat of Persian orange paint and an overhauled engine, the beast stands ready for a test run around the cornfield. I am the last to abandon the warmth of the farmhouse and join in the fun.

“Aunt Gracie had a boyfriend? Are you serious?” My cousin, Thelma, and I are having coffee in her kitchen before I head home to Wisconsin. I have come to Tennessee to attend Aunt Gracie’s funeral, and have stayed on for several days to help Thelma settle the affairs. Aunt Gracie, in her late 90s, with her hair coiled high, away from her face all around, in the style of the ‘40s, died as quietly and as naturally as she had lived, as she stooped to pluck a tomato in her garden.