The Rev. Dr. Clay Smith: Aunt Jean

My Aunt Jean passed away. In the odd genealogy of my family, she was not really my aunt but my first cousin. A mere 29 years separated us. This wide range of age is explained by the fact I am the youngest child of the youngest child of the youngest child. I grew up calling all my older cousins "Aunt" and "Uncle."

Aunt Jean had the gift of making you feel special and loved. She was always interested in my work as a pastor and always encouraged me. She was always put together, always beautiful. In her house, everything was in place; everything spoke a sense of beauty.

Aunt Jean had a deep and profound faith. During one of our visits, she told me she was reading Bonhoeffer's The Cost of Discipleship. It is a classic but not something the typical Baptist laywoman would read. When I did a consulting gig at her church, I asked eight focus groups who were the five most respected people in the church. Her name was the only one given in all eight groups.

Aunt Jean grew up down the road from my grandparents. After my grandfather died, she was selected to stay with Granny Smith to help cook and clean. I think that is the time when she began to hero-worship my father. It was an era before TV when radio was barely a part of life. Evenings were spent telling stories. I can picture Aunt Jean, Granny Smith, my Daddy and whoever else happened to be staying at the house gathered on the porch in the evening breeze, talking and telling stories in the moonlight. She remembered those stories and told them to me. That is part of what saddens me about her passing: She was the last person who held memories of my father as a young man in his late teens and early twenties.

Aunt Jean walked three miles each day as an adult, but time eventually eroded her mind. When I visited her, she could clearly remember Granny Smith and my Daddy but had trouble remembering what year it was. When her son told her about the high price of calves, she said she needed to tell Granny Smith because she had a lot of cattle. The reality that Granny Smith had been dead for 67 years did not enter her mind.

When someone you love has dementia, you must be willing to enter their reality. Earlier this year, Aunt Jean was hospitalized. She woke up from a nap and asked her sitter if Kong knew she was in the hospital. The sitter did not quite understand and asked who she meant.

Aunt Jean said impatiently, "King Kong, does he know I'm in the hospital? If he knew, he'd be here." She fell back asleep. When her children came to see her, the sitter told them Aunt Jean was losing her mind and was calling for King Kong. It took a while for them to convince the sitter that she was not referring to King Kong in the movies but to her uncle, my father, whose nickname was "King Kong."

I feel the loss of Aunt Jean. Like most people in their fifties and sixties, I am now losing the people who shaped my childhood and who remember the time before my memory began. I try to make sure those memories are tucked into secure corners. With Aunt Jean's passing, one more keeper of the memories is gone.

More than that, one of the women who loved me and encouraged me is gone. Hillary Clinton said it takes a village to raise a child. There is truth in that, but my experience was it took a gathering of mothers to raise me. My Aunt Jean was one in the gathering.

After my mother was rendered mute with Alzheimer's disease, Aunt Jean and her sister, Aunt Faye, came to my 10th-anniversary celebration of serving as pastor of Alice Drive. We had a wonderful gathering after church. As I walked them to their car for their journey back to Florida, I told them, "You both are now the only mothers I have." They laughed and hugged my neck and told me they loved me.

Paul said to the church in Rome, "Greet Rufus and his mother, who has also been a mother to me." It is a great gift to expand your heart and mother children who are not your own. That was the gift Aunt Jean gave to me.

Now, I move up the generational ladder. There were twenty-one first cousins on my father's side. Only four are now living. I'm the youngest by about 13 years. There are stories for me to tell the generations behind me; there are children who need to be loved and encouraged. When older people ask me, "Why has God left me here?" I tell them, "You have a story to tell. There are people who need your love."

Aunt Jean told me the stories. Aunt Jean loved me. My turn has come.

The Rev. Dr. Clay Smith is the lead pastor of Alice Drive Baptist Church in Sumter. Email him at claysmith@adbc.org.