Aunt Moe and I at her wedding. I'm wearing my very favorite sailor dress.
I had the COOLEST Aunt growing up. Aunt Maureen...affectionately known as Aunt Moe. Everyone called her Moe. She drove the sweetest brown Camaro - and she drove it FAST. She was only 16 years older than me - she was my Mom's baby sister. She moved from Illinois to Tucson when she was around 25 to take a job as a teacher at the Tucson School for the Deaf & Blind. That was the other thing that was so cool about my Aunt. She knew sign language. She spoke with her hands even when she was speaking to me with her voice. I loved it. I always had her teach me different words and I had quite a sign language vocabulary when I was young. As I got older, she would drive up to Phoenix and take me down to Tucson to hang out with her for the weekend. I have great memories of driving in her Camaro and talking and talking with her about everything. I remember her telling me to hold of on shaving my legs for as long as I could because once you started shaving, you had to do it all of the time, and it was a pain! (I held off until I was 12. She wished I would have waited longer.) Her favorite color was brown, so my favorite color was brown. She had a deaf roommate named Rosa who had long, frizzy hair. I loved it when she would put my hair in a bun. I remember once I kept begging and begging her to do my hair. I was evidently annoying her because when it came time to do the bun, she looked at me straight in the eyes and said "Honey, I love you, but you are a nag." I remember that well. Makes me laugh now. She met Mark Winter and they were married in June 1982. She had given me this beautiful Sailor dress for my birthday that year, and she told me to wear it to her wedding. I loved that dress. I treasured that dress. I still have that dress. It hangs in my closet. It is the one dress that I will not let my girls play dress-up with....it's too special.
Aunt Moe was killed in a plane crash on November 20, 1983. She was 29. She and Mark and two other friends had flown to Vegas for the weekend. Mark and his friend were both pilots, and they flew themselves there. The other man was flying home that Sunday in a snow storm when they flew straight into the side of a mountain in Wikieup, Arizona. They were all burned beyond recognition and dental records had to be used to identify the bodies. I remember when my mom got the phone call and her reaction is something I will never forget. It took several days for them to recover the bodies because of the location of the crash. I remember seeing it on the news and reading about it in the newspaper.
Four days after the crash was Thanksgiving. It was the worst Thanksgiving I've ever had. We didn't find much to be thankful for that year. It was, however, the first time I remember being with my divorced grandparents who hated each other, and my Uncle Don from Illinois. My whole family was together. Unfortunately, we weren't together for a holiday. We were together to bury Aunt Moe and Uncle Mark.
I think about Aunt Moe all of the time. But, I think about her most when it's Thanksgiving. I have often thought of what our relationship would be like now with me being an adult. I'm 39, so she would have been 54. I bet we would have still been very, very close. I think the hardest birthday I've ever had was when I turned 29 and I realized how YOUNG she was when she died. 29. That's a baby. So much life ahead of her.
My grandma never got over the death of her baby girl. How could she? I think my grandma's heart was broken the day she lost Moe and it never recovered. When my grandma passed away last summer, all I could think about was the reunion she was having with my Aunt. I cried tears of joy just thinking about it. I thought the same thing when my Uncle Don died just before grandma, and the hug he must have shared with his sister that he missed so much.
I remember when I was holding my dying sons in my arms, I begged them to find their Great Aunt Moe, and tell her I loved and missed her. I'm sure they did. And I know someday, I will be with her again, and I will be able to tell her those things in person. Maybe she'll even put my hair in a bun.
By the way, Caitlin's middle name is Maureen- Caitlin Maureen Chase. And a few years ago, I was given a video tape of Aunt Moe's wedding. We have the exact same voice. I love it.
