Aunt Raenae "Celebration of Life" Memorial Picnic Roundup!
1. Troy [Aunt Raenae's oldest, born 1967, oldest of all us grandchildren]
2. Michelle [Troy's wife]
3. Michael [Aunt Raene's second, born 1970]
4. Veronica [Michael's wife]
5. Toni Marie [Aunt Raenae's youngest, born 1982—Aunt Raenae birthed both the oldest and the youngest of all us grandchildren]
6. James [Toni's husband]
7. Hayden [Toni and James's oldest]
8. Hayden's girlfriend
9. Kandice [James's sister]
10. Kandice's kid [I think]
11. Kandice's kid [I think]
12. Jennifer [Uncle Paul's third, born 1977]
13. Eric [Jennifer's ex-husband]
14. Ian [Jennifer's third child]
15. Uncle Garth [born 1952]
16. Shane [Uncle Garth's oldest, born 1979]
17. Aunt Penny [born 1953]
18. Tammy [Aunt Penny's only child, born 1974]
19. Erin [Tammy's husband]
20. Dad [born 1955]
21. Sherri [Dad's wife]
22. Matthew [me]
23. Angel [Sherri's oldest, my sister]
24. Aunt Arliss [Grandpa McQuilkin's sister, born 1947, only one year older than Aunt Raenae]
25. Lesley [Dad's cousin, great-Aunt Roxanne's son, though raised by the late great-Uncle Lynn, if I have that correct—either way Dad and his siblings' paternal cousin, though he's only two or three years from my age]
26. Sharon [Aunt Raenae's friend]
27. Sharon's husband
28. Aunt Raenae's old hairdresser friend
29. Aunt Raenae's friend who read her favorite scripture
That accounts for all the family that attended; I don't think I've forgotten anyone—actually pretty good for a memorial picnic planned with relatively short notice on a weekday afternoon. There were definitely other friends of Aunt Raenae's there to whom I was never introduced, anywhere from five to ten of them, probably. Let's split the difference and say seven, in which case the total attendance would have been 36. It was somewhere around there, and thus a bit bigger than
Uncle Paul's memorial picnic last year—at which I counted 28 attendees. Jennifer was somehow remembering that her dad's memorial last year was smaller. I think she just thought it was because last year she booked the small picnic shelter, but this year managed to get the large kitchen shelter—the small one was already booked.
All right. So. Let's talk about Troy.
We never spoke to each other. He was there when I arrived at 12:52 p.m.; he was still there when I left at 5:20, although he was down by the barbecue near the lake shore by that point. Jennifer was correct that I could probably easily avoid him with how many people were there.
It should be noted, again, that
the letter he sent me in 2008 was fully fifteen years ago, and as truly awful as that was, holding a grudge would be dumb. My issue now is just that, by all accounts, he's just as conservative in his views now as he was then. I will give him this much credit, though: he did get up and speak a bit before we dug into food, and I observed him a little on occasion while I was there. I really didn't get a malicious vibe from him at all. He's been married to Michelle since the eighties, and he would sit with his arm around her—still clearly very healthy affection between them after thirty-some years. I can respect that. Had that fucking letter never happened, I'd be judging him now as someone who seemed like a perfectly nice man. Any fears of some kind of ridiculous confrontation were totally unfounded.
That didn't mean I especially wanted to talk to him. I didn't want to make him uncomfortable, either. He's grieving the loss of his mother. For all I know, maybe even in all likelihood, he never even thought about that letter today. I can tell you for certain that I did.
In fact, when I arrived, I walked into the kitchen shelter and found Sherri, standing next to, somewhat to my surprise, Angel. Sherri immediately said, "Troy's here." I said I know. And she was like, "We've got your back!" which was nice. Angel effectively indicated, "Yeah, we've got your back!" And then she took me by the arm and we walked just out of the shelter where she could ask me what the hell happened with Troy.
"This was fifteen years ago," I prefaced. "But, back when I first started making the annual calendars, I was including birthdays for everyone in the extended McQuilkin family, including Troy and his family. Well, in 2008 he sent me a letter telling me to stop putting his family's birthdays in them, because and I quote, 'Your lifestyle is an abomination.' There was more in the letter but I don't remember anything else because, as Shobhit rightly suggested, I burned it before I could read it any more times."
Evidently Angel had never heard about this. "You're shitting me!" she said. "You want me to go kick his ass?"
There was realness to the sentiment, but she wasn't really being serious. And of course, I had no interest in being a part of any kind of scene. And thankfully, no scene was ever caused. The whole day was perfectly cordial between everyone. Michael even came over to chat with me for a while, and I asked him some questions about his life: he has three kids aged ten, sixteen and eighteen; he works as a financial planner for Charles Schwab; he lives in San Antonio. I knew some of this stuff but had forgotten. I only overheard later, when Michelle was asked, that Troy lives in a totally different part of Texas, "Northeast Texas," I think she said. She never specified a town, but I am assuming it's not a city.
Anyway, back to Angel for a moment, who was actually not there for long: she sat way back by herself on the picnic tables during the brief memorial service, and was picked up by a friend to be taken back home shortly thereafter. While Angel and I were chatting right outside the shelter, she produced a bottle of spiked orange juice from her bag, and
offered me a drink. It was mixed with pineapple rum, and that was a fantastic combo, I must say. I was bummed when she left without my getting another drink!
Angel and Troy were good buddies back in the day, incidentally. This would be mid-eighties, shortly after Dad and Sherri got together, and Angel was still a teenager (and so was Troy). There's a couple of fun pictures of them together, actually. But, then Troy met Michelle, evidently the daughter of a preacher, and he "found god." Angel did not, so she kind of got left in the dust.
There was a moment when I sort of accidentally found myself awkwardly close to Michelle. I had been sitting to the left of Jennifer, across from Shane and Dad and Sherri. I got up for some reason, maybe to go to the bathroom, and when I got back, Uncle Garth was moving to sit where I had been sitting. "Go ahead and sit there," I said, "I can sit over here," and I sat on the other side of Ian from Jennifer. I had not realized Michelle had sat down next to Sherri to chat with her, which put her directly across from me. Within a few short minutes, I asked Jennifer to go out on the dock with me so I could take my
Perennial Mason Lake Selfie with her.
It's feeling a little like the extended family is scattering in the wind, and it occurred to me today that, while I could be wrong, there's a fair chance I will never go to a family gathering there at Mason Lake again. Toni and James clearly asked Jennifer to book it for this picnic for tradition's sake, but she didn't bother to tell them it cost her two hundred bucks, much more than it used to. When she and Eric were still together, they continued getting annual passes, but she didn't get one for this year. Until Aunt Raenae died, she didn't think there would be any family event out there, so why bother?
Quick side note: shortly after I got there, Jennifer's insightful observation was to say, "Everyone looks so old!" Sherri pointed at everyone within our vicinity and said, "Well, we are!" I kind of get what Jennifer's talking about, though. This extended-family group is something Jennifer and I experienced with far more frequency as children, and anyone who is now still a child is someone we spend little to no time with (Toni and James's youngest, for example—I don't believe they came; with Aunt Raenae no longer around, I have no idea who was looking after them).
Well, the five siblings of which Dad is the youngest . . . are now down to three. They went down 40% in two years. I think we'd all be perfectly happy to press pause on that for a while. A guest on a podcast I was listening to this morning was referring largely to Covid-19 when he said, "We're definitely living in an age of loss." That hit hard for me. The only person I actually lost to covid was Bill, and yet I've lost six family members in the past four years:
2019: my cousin Heidi (Jennifer's sister, born 1978) died suddenly of a heart attack, at age 40
2020: Auntie Rose died at age 82 in February, just before covid changed the entire world; Mom died of a stroke in July
2021: Bill, Mom's husband, died of covid within 24 hours of diagnosis, having refused to get any vaccinations
2022: Uncle Paul died, of sepsis and liver failure; evidently he'd had a liver transplant over a decade before
2023: Aunt Raenae died, of stage 4 liver cancer
Aunt Raenae had just turned 75 on July 7. A bunch of family went out to eat with her to celebrate. My understanding of the timeline now, after speaking with a few people today, is that nobody knew anything was wrong with Aunt Raenae until June, like literally two months ago, when she had cirrhosis of the liver, and no one knew why. Jennifer only texted me 11 days ago that Aunt Raenae was in hospice care, and according to Toni and James today, at that time the hospice had only just started. But, even on her birthday, Jennifer told me 11 days ago, "You could tell she was not the same." And when Sherri texted me a photo of her from when they took her out to eat only two weeks before that, she looked awful. And Sherri said then: "She looks a hundred times worse than that now."
Aunt Raenae died early in the morning Thursday last week. Valerie was the one who texted me to let me know—she was one of the few notable absences today, along with Sarah, Uncle Paul's widow, who apparently had said she was going to come but didn't; Jennifer's two other kids who had work shifts to be at; and Glorya, Uncle Garth's wife, who couldn't travel because apparently she has a broken leg. Anyway, I had exchanged some texts with Valerie about whether she'd come today, and she clearly wanted to, but she didn't make it. She was going to see if her dad, Uncle Imre, would be up for a day trip down from Port Townsend, and I can only guess now that he wasn't. Besides, today was
his 91st birthday, and obviously for Valerie that would take priority.
Besides, Valerie actually went down to Aberdeen to visit Aunt Raenae (where she was living with Toni and James the past three years) on Wednesday last week. She did text me this, though:
I wanted to let you know, though, that they all enjoyed watching videos last night, the ones that you put together with Auntie June and Uncle Bruce. Apparently Raenae was alert enough to laugh along with some of them last night.
I loved being told that.
I did ask Toni and James about it today, just to make sure I fully understood. This would have been Tuesday night last week, two nights before Aunt Raenae's passing. The way James talked about it, Aunt Raenae was still mostly unable to communicate through most of it, but said it seemed like maybe she could understand what she was hearing, especially when Grandma ("Auntie June" to Valerie) was talking. And, I got confirmation that what they watched was my "
Margaret June McQuilkin, In Memoriam" video I made in 2011, the year Grandma died—it was the one year I did not make calendars for everyone (which legitimately disappointed some), as I did this project instead.
I've made many memorial videos since, and this one, at an hour and fifty minutes, is the only one that is actually feature length—the rest tend to be around ten minutes on average, as I have found people on average don't have the attention span for 110-minute videos. The one quasi-exception was my "
Dreaming of Jeanni, the Wendy Bird" memorial video for Mom that I made in 2020, which was 75 minutes long. I suppose you could make the argument that that's "feature length," but it's still only about two-thirds the length of the video I made of Grandma. To be fair, I had exponentially more home video footage of Grandma—whose own video camera I first used a lot in the early nineties—than I ever got of Mom.
Anyway, back to Aunt Raenae's family viewing of "Margaret June McQuilkin, In Memoriam." I have that on YouTube, but when I gave it as Christmas gifts in 2011, I had burned them onto DVDs—complete with
homemade inlay card. When I was talking to Toni and James today, James told me it was Troy who had found the copy I made and gave to them, not knowing it had ever been made, and asking if they could watch it. I guess they all had a good time watching the whole thing on Tuesday night last week. "Troy even said 'I'm glad Matthew made this,'" James said.
So, there you have it. Troy did acknowledge some level of my value as a human being. I'll take it. Just as an added note there, getting back to his total lack of any malicious vibes—that does not necessarily mean he would not do the same today as he did 15 years ago. A lot of times Christians do these sorts of things convinced they are doing it out of love. Or, it's possible he thinks I'm such an amoral heathen that I don't have any feelings to hurt. Even back in 2008, he may have sent that letter without any real thought to how it might have affected me. And as you can see, it did affect me deeply. I suppose one could argue that I might get better closure if I were to actually talk to him about it, but I don't see the point. I don't spend my days thinking about that letter, and only think about it now because Troy and I were to be in the same space again. With Aunt Raenae gone, it's extremely likely I will never see him again for as long as I live. I'm totally good with that; presumably he is too; we'll both just move on.
Aside from all that, as usual I spent most of my time today hanging out with Jennifer. After her, I hung out with Dad and Sherri more than anyone else, but as I noted earlier, I did spend some time catching up with Michael. I also talked a bit with Shane, who remains kind of astonishingly quiet until spoken to—when I asked him what he does, I learned he's been a "low voltage technician" back in Cheyenne for the past ten years or so. Jennifer and I even went back out onto the dock to get
a group selfie with him.
There was a moment, later in the day, when Jennifer had me walk with her away from the shelter a bit, so she could tell me a funny story about Aunt Arliss at Aunt Raenae's birthday party on July 7. I guess Jennifer was complaining about all the crap the U.S. Postal Service is doing (she works for them, and she complains about them endlessly, a lot of it legitimately—they apparently cut all of their pay), and in the middle of that, Aunt Arliss blurted out, "That's why you need to get right with God!" And it was like, okay, what does that have to do with this? The thing that amused me about this was my nervousness about facing something like that at Aunt Raenae's memorial picnic, and nothing of the sort happened—but Jennifer did get it, inexplicably, from a different person at Aunt Raenae's birthday party.
I suppose it might have been a good idea to get a photo of all the grandkids present, just as
we did back at the scattering of Grandma and Grandpa's ashes in 2016. There were seven of the twelve of us present then; this time there were seven of us again: Troy, Michael, Tammy, myself, Jennifer, Shane, and Toni. The only person there in 2016 not here this time was Ben, but Troy wasn't there in 2016.
No one ever did suggest getting a photo of all of us, and under normal circumstances I might have. But, Shane did ask me, "When do you think was the last time Troy and Michael and Toni were all together?" I have no idea, but it may have been a long time. I only know the last time I personally saw Troy in person was in 1997, at
Grandma and Grandpa's 50th wedding anniversary party. I don't know when it was that Troy and Michelle moved to Texas, but I believe at that time they were still living in Shelton.
So, Shane posed that it would be a good idea to get a photo of Troy, Michael and Toni together. He was absolutely right. Still, I said, "Well I'm not going to be the one to suggest it." Admittedly this was a little more petty than I needed to be, but, it is what it is. Shane took the initiative on his own, and asked them all to go down to the lakeshore for a picture.
As for my own photos, I kept 45 of the ones I took today, adding to the photo album for today's event that I already started, which has
48 shots in it. Granted, three of them are saved as not-public for reasons related to a lot of what I shared in this post, so for most people it would appear to have . . . 45 shots. One of them is the video at the top of this post, a collection of home video clips of Aunt Raenae from 1992, 1998 and 1999. You don't really see her in the 1992 clips that start it, because I was a sixteen-year-old with a video camera and didn't take an active interest in any of my aunts or uncles rather than my cousins. But, I did take an interest in that conversation
about Aunt Raenae, which is actually her middle name, and her awful first name, "Brucilla," named after Grandpa (Bruce). That video is about eight minutes long and I rather like how it ends, though.
The only other video related to day that I have is the clip I took of the guy who read what Aunt Raenae told Sherri she wanted read at her funeral, evidently
her favorite scripture.
Aunt Raenae and I did not see eye to eye on most things. The last time I saw her, on New Year's Day at Dad and Sherri's house, we argued a bit about spanking children. I will say this much for her: in practice, if not necessarily in her mind, she accepted me for who I was. She gave me a hug every time I saw her, and was the only family member outside my immediate family who consistently said "I love you" to me. It may very well have been the last thing we ever said to each other. She kind of drove a lot of people crazy, but I'll miss her. Any gathering of extended family won't ever be the same again.
[posted 10:47 pm]
