Aunt Hulda

This morning my mother reminded me that our dear Aunt Hulda would have been 100 years old today. She was a single great aunt who was like an additional grandmother for me and my siblings.


She was well-traveled and brought back an infant dress for me from Egypt.


In 1968 she had a stroke that left her paralyzed on her right side. I do not remember her before the stroke. When we visited in Illinois we would help her in the morning get ready for work and in the evening we would help her get ready for bed. It was quite an accomplishment to remember the exact count of her pills every night. Included in all of the pills were two "Buffern", which how I still think of Bufferin tabs today.


Since there was a wonderful drug store up town that we loved to get candy and comic books from, Aunt Hulda allowed us to earn the money for these items by helping her. I remember negotiating with her that every thing we did would be a penny but anything to do with her feet was worth a nickel. (Remember we could buy a comic book for 15 cents or a big comic for 25 cents way back then!) On a typical day we would earn about 30-50 cents.


When we visited she would always give us money "to eat on the way home" which was of course her way of just giving us a few dollars since obviously our parents would get us food. We were torn between wanting the money and the look our mother gave us to not take money from Aunt Hulda. The life lesson I learned then was Aunt Hulda's words--"No one offers you money unless they want you to have it. If someone offers you money you take it and say thank you."


Her therapists recommended taking up a hobby so she and my dear Aunt Louise, another single aunt who was also another grandmother figure to us, took up ceramics. With her one good hand, Aunt Hulda would clean the greenware and then paint it after firing. They actually started a small ceramics business to sell their completed work.

Last Saturday at my annual pumpkin pancake breakfast I had these pieces as my centerpiece. I told my guests about how my paralyzed aunt and her sister had made these. Telling them about her made me wonder how old she was when she had the stroke. I told them I could only guess as she was always "old" to me. Today I realized she was only 56 when she had her stroke and then passed away 8 years later.

I've been thinking about her today as she passed away the Saturday after Thanksgiving which was 3 days after her birthday. I've thought about how young she was to have a stroke is by today's standard. And, I also wonder how different her treatment and life may have been if she had that stroke with today's medical improvements.