Destruction and transformation

Last Saturday, September 13, Ted, Kenidee, and I hiked near Recapture Wash. Rain had saturated the desert, filled the rock tinajas, and ran in the wash. Clouds massed over Blue Mountain, the sandstone bluffs, and the eastern horizon, but overhead the sky remained clear.
We were looking for petroglyphs, pictographs, or historic inscriptions written on the sandstone. As I listened to the song of a lone rock wren and watched it flutter upward out of sight, I couldn’t help thinking about the trip we’d taken a month earlier to check on my aunt Helen.
After we arrived at the Plainville care center, Aunt Helen’s friend sat her in a wheelchair and trundled her out to the day room, so we could visit.
My auntie had always been talkative, often going off onto tangents and always interjecting prayers into our conversation as if communicating with God was as natural as speaking with humans.
During this visit, however, she didn’t communicate much, and her eyes remained closed until we placed Kenidee, our mini schnauzer, in her lap.
Then, she leaned forward, murmured love words, and kissed Kenidee’s head, but she seemed exhausted, so once the aide tucked her back into her narrow bed, her friend accompanied us outside and transferred Aunt Helen’s family treasures from her car to ours.
I left the photos and other keepsakes with my brother, but I kept the ones Aunt Helen had designated for me, including, a tiny hairbrush and comb set, a gift from my dad’s first grade teacher when Aunt Helen was born in 1934; her 2011 journal with one entry, scribed in her crooked writing, saying she needed to “repent” of her “stinking negative attitude” toward her brother’s doctor; photographs from her trip to Communist China when she and her group smuggled Bibles to the residents; and a pencil drawing of her dad, my granddad Austin.
As the youngest of six children, Aunt Helen grew up poor, but when family finances finally freed up enough for her to take piano lessons, she fell in love with music which led to her career as an elementary school music teacher.
She was also a gifted artist and writer, but no one questioned that she was a mite eccentric. In fact, my brother always called her the crazy aunt. She never married, never had children, and often stated her husband died in the war before she met him.
Three weeks after our trip to see her, Ted, Kenidee, and I made another journey to Plainville, this time for the funeral. My brother and I shared our memories during the services, and then the minister opened it up to the congregation.
One of her former sixth grade students said, “She had a hard time getting and keeping our attention, so she came to school one day with sparkling stars glued to her eyebrows. That sure got our attention, but I can’t say we stayed quiet because we couldn’t help laughing.”
She passed the mic to another friend who said, “Helen shared an office with a P.E. teacher. She’d bring treats to pass out to her colleagues during their breaks, but while she was in class, the P.E. teacher would eat everything on the tray.
“This went on and on until she finally told him he could have one or two cookies or brownies, but to save the rest for others. The following day, once again all the treats disappeared, so the next time she brought goodies, she laced them with Ex-Lax. “The P.E. teacher missed the next few days of school and never touched her treats again.”
Then, her friend added, “When I asked if she’d really done that, she said, ‘Yes, and I’d do it again!’”
Despite Aunt Helen’s funny, fiery nature, many people told me how she had changed their lives. I was thinking about her influence when a weather alarm blared on my phone, bringing me back to the present. I pulled out the phone and read about possible flashfloods in our area.
Certainly, to the east, the sky looked ominous. We hiked a little farther, and the blast went off again. This time it was a tornado warning. Then, I received a text from a friend in Illinois, worrying about us. “Did you really have a tornado in Blanding?”
“I don’t know,” I texted. The rock wren was singing somewhere high in the cliffs, and everything else around us seemed calm.
After a few more weather warnings, we finally walked back to the Jeep and headed home. My friend continued sending social media photos of San Juan County tornados, but as we drove into Blanding, hundreds of people were celebrating at the Fall Festival.
It was only later we learned that tornadoes had indeed touched down, destroying homes and property and sweeping away pets and livestock in the Montezuma Creek, McCracken Mesa, and Cahone Mesa areas. Fortunately, no humans were hurt.
I’m no stranger to the destructive and terrifying nature of tornadoes, having lived through a twister as a teen and witnessing the aftermath of many others, so my heart and prayers went out to those families and communities.
Perhaps it was no coincidence I was thinking about Aunt Helen the day the San Juan County tornados struck since tornados carry a dual symbolism of chaos-destruction and renewal-transformation.
The legacy Aunt Helen left wasn’t material. Rather, it was her courage and faith in the face of trials. Her death was her greatest transformation.