Bad news today. Aunt Mamie, who is really my mother's aunt, but whom I always kind of thought of as my own, has died. She was 93 years old.

Actually, I guess she wasn't really my mother's aunt either, come to think of it. Technically, she was Grandmother's niece. My grandmother was the youngest daughter in a large family. As was not at all uncommon in those days, the early days of the 1900's, one of her older sisters gave birth to a baby the same year she was born...or very close to it.

Anyhow, Aunt Mamie and my grandmother spent much of their young lives together, she was as close to Mamie as she was to any of her sisters, or her brother. And, oh they just don't make 'em like that any more!!

If family stories are true, as soon as my Grandmother, Ida, and Aunt Mamie were able to walk they were up looking for fun, adventure, and a good time.

They were born into another world, before the invention of television, before the polio vaccine, before anti-biotics, before cars were common. They didn't have indoor plumbing. One of the best stories about Aunt Mamie has to do with how her mother found out she had a boyfriend - the love letter that she had been carrying in her bloomers fell out in the out house!

An influenza pandemic had the world in it's grip. Tomorrow was not only not promised to anybody, it's coming was sort of a crap shoot.

As young teenagers, these young city girls were almost "trapped" down on the farm in Severn. But the trusty streetcar came around and transported them back to Baltimore, where they could spend their lunch money on Twinkies and Ice Cream Soda, go to the soccar games and meet the players, or some sailors, or some boys the family knew. How Grandmother used to laugh and shake her head when she told these stories, "We were crazy for the fellows. The best thing was the time I got hit on the head by the soccar ball, and all those fellows were standing around me, 'oh, oh, are you all right?' - and I fluttered my eyelashes as much as I could" Grandmother told me. "My mother used to get so mad. We'd put on make up and try to sneak out of the house. My mother would see us and make us take it off. No sooner would we be out of the house before Mamie took out a lipstick she had hidden up her sleeve. We'd paint bows on our lips and roll down our stockings and head for town. I never liked the country. Nothing to do."

It's hard to believe that there was ever "nothing to do" with Aunt Mamie around. Because, like Grandmother, she wasn't just looking to go to a party or start a party, she WAS the party. In a world where life really WAS uncertain, she always ate dessert first - or just ate dessert. Life was there to be lived, and she lived it and lived it up.

She fell in love, of course. Her husband was a friend of Grandfather's. They were fellows of a kind no longer found in the world either. Young, handsome, funny, quick witted and daring they made their own fun. Music didn't play from radios in those days, so the guys got together and sang, tapping their feet, feeling their way through the harmonies. They drank beer, they smoked ciggaretts, they strolled through the park on Federal Hill and made plans.

Aunt Mamie was the witness when my grandparents eloped in Ellicott City. They all went out in a taxi cab. It was as if Ellicott City was the end of the world. Then, no one breathed a word. It was all hush hush until Grandfather got out of the Navy. That was the other side of her: the true and trustworthy friend. And she was a true and trustworthy friend to my grandmother and our whole family.

She broke my heart at Grandmother's funeral. Grandmother was 80 when she died. Aunt Mamie, who never expected to outlive her beloved husband who had died 20 years before, certainly never expected to outlive Grandmother. Grandmother laid aside ciggaretts years before, and I never saw her drink more than one beer, occassionally, usually at a crab feast. Moreover, Grandmother had a horror of diabetes which runs rampant in our family, so she was an early adaptor of healthy moderate eating habits....with a little ice cream for dessert of course. Mamie believed in moderation too....that was she took moderation in moderation and pretty much ate, drank, and smoked as much as she felt like.

But it was she who was standing at Grandmother's casket to say her final goodbyes to her constant friend for over 70 years. She looked stunned and deeply, deeply sad, but she leaned over, and put her hands over Grandmother's and said softly, "Well, g'bye Idie. I guess I'll see you soon."

I guess she has been reunited with her "fellow", my grandmother, and all her other old friends and family. In her later years, her hearing began to fade and her eyesight fail. "Anybody who wants to know about the family had better come down here to talk to me. I'm not gonna be here forever." she'd say.

I was always going to go. But when some one lives that long and is that lively! You can't imagine them going, even though you know they must. She was never without a smile. She always had an encouraging word. She must have had pain at times like when she broke her hip, but she NEVER complained. She lived the example of living for today, and enjoying it....and all those days added up til she was 93years old and the very last one of her generation of friends and family. All the girls with the rolled down stockings, the fellows who rode on the running boards of the car one of them got, they were all gone. The docks became the Harbor. Federal Hill became the place to be for yuppies with lifestyles Mamie and her friends would have called "lives" unimaginable. When she was a child the horses burst out of the fire station and the bucket brigage put out fires. When she died there had been a man on the moon, a micro chip in her microwave, and a cloned cat. But nothing beats the legacy she left of years of love and smiles and laughter....the two wonderful children she raised, her grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Everyone around her benefitted from her spirit of fun, her practical help, her encouraging words and refusal to let life get her down.

Without inventing anything, making a million dollars, reaching the top a career, writing a book, or going to Hollywood, she was a tremendous inspiration to a lot of people. She lived fully, truly, deeply engaged with life until she died. And we miss her.

So Good-bye Aunt Mamie! I'll see you again some day!