Rita C. Pullen

The Calendars

For years, two of my mother’s sisters lived together in a small home in Elyria. Aunt Hilda was my mother’s oldest sister and Bernetta, 20 years her junior, was the youngest of the seven “girls’ in the Kriebel family. Neither had married; Bernetta’s fiancé had perished in World War II and Hilda had been a frail, quiet lady who worked all her life.

Both aunts were career women long before the term was popular. Hilda worked at Timms Springs and Bernetta retired from Bendix-Westinghouse. Their house was always spotless, with everything in its place. As young children, my six brothers and sisters and I were somewhat terrified to visit them. We were never very good at sitting perfectly still, with our hands on our laps, while the aunts chatted. But, “the aunts” as we called them, always sent us home with some homemade cookies or candy, anything they could find for us in their pantry.

Over the years I tried to keep in touch with these ladies, showing off the newest baby and visiting with them on the holidays. But as my family grew larger and we became more involved in our own activities, our visits became fewer and farther between. I even discouraged my oldest son from offering to mow their lawn or shovel their snow because they were such taskmasters. No one ever did it right, and the volunteer was often called back to do the job over again. During their later years, my sister, Carol, and my husband and I ran errands and took them to church when we could. But somehow, I never found the time to just visit.

Only after my youngest daughter was in high school, did she begin to visit them and listen to their stories. She’d spend a summer afternoon with them, sitting on the porch (when there wasn’t a draft) and talking about the good old days. Aunt Hilda had been trapped in the basement of a department store in downtown Lorain during the June 28, 1924 tornado; Aunt Bernetta had traveled out west and to Hawaii. And they would go on and on about growing up on the farm in Sheffield with five other sisters.

As they grew older, they got out less; Hilda, the oldest sister, was the driver and Bernetta wouldn’t let her out in the bad weather for fear she’d catch a cold. (These two ladies knew every drafty spot in every local restaurant, church, etc.) So winters could be very long for them. My other aunt and her husband would travel every Sunday, weather permitting, from Medina to have dinner with them and play a few hands of pinochle. If the weather was at all threatening, they were prisoners in their neat little home with only each other to keep themselves company. They even kept track of such things as which sisters had called whom last on the phone. Heaven forbid they would call someone when it was the other person’s turn.

I tell you all this to set the stage for a bittersweet incident that occurred two years ago. Aunt Bernetta passed away rather unexpectedly in 1994 leaving my ninety-year old aunt to fend for herself. Remarkably, Aunt Hilda seemed to blossom. She went anywhere she

wanted to go and drove until she was 94. This frail little person who had always seemed like an ‘old lady’ remained in surprisingly good health until her death six years later at 96.

As their belongings were disbursed to some of the nieces and nephews, I inherited a slide projector and thousands of slides from Aunt Bernetta. Included in this box of slides were calendars, dating back to approximately 1984. On each day, on each calendar, Bernetta had made some type of notation. “The dryer repairman came today; $35 in repairs.” “Fertilized the rose bushes with Miracle Grow.” “Didn’t feel very well today.” “Josephine and Paula came to visit.” “Changed the furnace filter.” She recorded the temperature, the weather, what long distance phone calls they had made, when they cleaned their kitchen cupboards, if they got to church that week and with whom.

But the most poignant entries were the ones that read, November 24, 1991: “Cold and windy, 30 degrees, no one came.” January 5, 1991: “Rain and snow in a.m., some sleet. No Mass for us; Hilda has cold.” January 6, 1991: Ice in driveway, took balls off tree – no one came.” January 24, 1993: “Snowy and cold, no church for us. No one came.” Over and over again, in among the notations of “colored hair,” “baked cookies,” “wrote out Christmas cards,” “raked leaves,” were the sad little comments “no one came.” How those three words lashed out at me!

Then in March 1994, came the sporadic notations, “Washed my hair. I hurt and was so dizzy.” March 19: “Cold all day. No Mass, legs hurt bad.” March 26: “I was so dizzy. I fell hard in kitchen.” March 28: “Managed to wash clothes. Slept all afternoon.” Then Aunt Bernetta’s handwritten notes stopped on Holy Thursday, March 31. Easter Sunday 1994 was the last time she made it to church. She soon was in the hospital, consumed with cancer that took her life a few short weeks later.

On that same calendar, on May 25 in a very shaky, dissimilar handwriting is the notation, “Dr. Thomas 11:00.” Aunt Hilda had started recording doctors’ appointments and long distance telephone calls, but only three or four notations a month. There were no more comments on the weather, the yard, the leaves to be raked, who came and most importantly, who hadn’t. Aunt Bernetta had chronicled her life, day by day, on a simple church calendar that hung in her kitchen. And fortunately, for me at least, she had saved a few of those “journals.” I feel very privileged to have them.

Ironically, I was relating this story to one my cousins, Aunt Bernetta’s niece, who looked at me and asked “What is so strange about the calendars? I have done the exact same thing for as long as I can remember!”