dancing with two left feet

my grandparents had six daughters. i remember the day almost all of them went to the doctor with my aunt krissy. i remember i didn't think there would be any bad news. the bad news still came: cancer.

she and mom were best friends. ok, not always. once she almost threw mom out the window of my grandparents' house. once, mom and aunt kelly drew a picture of aunt krissy on her mirror, featuring a mole on her face that she had had removed. but as they got older, they became best friends.

i remember finding out first and having to tell my mom that her best friend's cancer was "everywhere."

aunt krissy was a very particular and sometimes peculiar woman. we said the word "fart." she said "fluffy" instead. "someone let a fluffy." she was always a coach - even at family whiffle ball games. i remember her telling me something about my form and how i was doing it wrong...i think we were bowling. i am the least coordinated person in my family aside from maybe a few that tie with me, and i have a big family. how she thought her coaching would help me in my sad athletic state, i'll never know.

once at our fourth of july, she salted her watermelon right over the whole bucket of watermelon. seth was little and he got so mad because he was getting ready to get a piece and he didn't like salt on his watermelon. i'm not sure anyone but aunt krissy liked salt on watermelon.

she would straighten anything that was crooked. we would laugh, because there would be a picture on the wall hanging ever-so-slightly crooked, and the person that would fix it? aunt krissy. i think that once she noticed, it would have driven her insane to NOT get up and straighten it.

once, mom hemmed some curtains for her. mom is a good seamstress, and she made them very even, but when she finished, she pinned one curtain up a few inches shorter. then they hung them up at aunt krissy's, and even though we knew it was driving her nuts, she wouldn't say anything about the short curtain since mom had done it for her. mom eventually told her it was only pinned.

and her vocabulary...it made the rest of us look like hillbillies. that woman was a thesaurus, and a dictionary too. she was a language arts teacher. she had to be. her handwriting was meticulous, neat and even and exact.

the cancer changed her a lot. it was in her brain, so it affected a lot of things, from her movement to her eyesight to her personality.

the always-polite aunt krissy was no more; instead, she would call aunt julie, who lives next door to my grandparents' house where aunt krissy stayed, and act inconvenienced when she had to wait for aunt julie to finish cooking to get a haircut.

she hid her whoppers from delainey when she heard her come thumping up the stairs. once, grandma made aunt krissy some butterscotch pudding. delainey came up and asked for some, to which aunt krissy replied, "no, that's bad pudding!" because, of course, she wanted to keep her pudding.

she also accused someone of stealing her heath blizzard from the freezer. she sent me, jake, and aubrey to walmart to buy her some fruit popsicles: "the real ones, and get the good ones, not that off-brand stuff." i recite that quote every single time i look at the popsicles in walmart.

she was just so ridiculously funny - all the time. you never knew what she was going to say, and by golly if it came to her mind, it was coming out of her mouth. the cancer took the filters away, but filter-less aunt krissy was ok with me. she certainly didn't worry about saying "fluffy."

she loved sonic rootbeer floats. i remember they had free float night, so i got her one, and you would have thought i gave her a million bucks. and crab rangoon from panda garden. and the aforementioned whoppers, of course.

mom was one of several in a rotation who stayed with aunt krissy around the clock when she got worse. they put in so much time, effort, and emotion to take care of her. i know they would do it again in a heartbeat.

she needed help doing anything and everything. moving her to the toilet (she would be so embarrassed to know i am writing this) was a production. they wiggled back and forth and shifted their weight and her weight and inched and spun. they called it "dancing with two left feet" because it was such an uncoordinated event.

once, when they took her to northern illinois for her surgery, mom and aunt julie maneuvered her in a public restroom...and almost got her in the right place. let's just say that if aunt julie's foot had been the toilet, they would have been right on.

and when she was nearing the end, it was easy to see. i know we all hated it. i know she had to be in pain.

and yet, she never lost faith, and three years ago today, God took her home, and she is healed now.

i remember getting to the hospital that morning, practically the last one to arrive after getting the call that she was gone. mom asked if i wanted to go in, and i said, "no, she's not in there," as i squeezed a tearful jake against my ribs.

her funeral was PACKED. the impact she had on this earth in her short number of years was incredible. family, friends new and old, students, softball players, church family - everyone was there. the first baptist church was filled to bursting that day.

and we miss her still, and i know we always will. if i ever have a daughter, her middle name will be kristine, after aunt krissy's kristina.