The Transfiguration of Aunt Irène

I'm all for cheese. Cheese, if you ask me, can be eaten any time of the day. Above my son's favorite: A ripe brie on dark grain bread with yellow peppers, tomatoes, and chia seeds.

Some people die suddenly. Others fade away slowly. 

Aunt Irène didn’t really die at all.

Not in the proper sense of the word anyway. Of course the doctor declared her dead when her heart stopped beating. But as Aunt Irène herself would’ve said:
“What’s a heart? Nothing but a muscle. A clenched fist of a muscle.”

And wasn’t she somehow more than that?

Aunt Irène was one of the most different persons I’ve ever met. I don’t know what word to use to describe her but “different”. She looked different, for sure, but she was different too. I suppose one could call her “crazy”. She laughed loudly in church and had to be ushered out, she peed in flowerpots on the days when she didn’t feel like leaving her room, and she loved dead men. All of that I’ve written about. At the same time, she was a most generous woman. She was curious and always wanted to learn new things. She was kind, fascinating, and fun to be around.

When she died, we all had this feeling – this sensation – that she didn’t actually die but merely transformed into something else.

My adopted French family lived in a very small town called Toul in the north-eastern region of France. It’s not a very exciting town. It’s a sleepy place. A day would be dull as dull can be when suddenly Aunt Irène would decide to take a walk in her peacock-colored frock and her purple heels and her turban. You’d see her, a most glorious vision, coming out of the pâtisserie on Rue Docteur Chapuis heading for the fountain at Place des Trois Évêchés. And the sun hit the rooftops just so, and the sky was lavender and pink. And suddenly it would be dull no more.

It was the summer of peaches. An abundance of peaches everywhere. There was always a bucket full of them in the garden by the hammock. Maman had washed them; we’d just reach down and grab one. They were mostly red and so ripe they threatened to come apart by the slightest touch. The juice from those peaches splashed everywhere, on our hands, on the hammock, and on our clothes. We laughed at that. And I said:
“How come in French the word for peach is the same as the word for fishing?”

But I can’t remember if anyone explained it to me.

And Aunt Irène threatened to come apart also and nobody could explain her either.

In the park there were nine muses, nine sculptures, and Aunt Irène liked best Terpsichore, the muse of dance. There was also a reedy little pond, into which the little children threw pebbles. And behind the hawthorn hedges a bench, hidden from view. We sat there, enveloped in the scent of the hawthorn. Lazy days. And we talked about horoscopes and fortunes and futures. Aunt Irène said the two big sloping lines from between my thumb and the rest of my fingers down to my wrist were separated, which showed independence. And Edith, her real niece and my friend, looked at her own palm and saw how in hers, those lines were interlaced. Quick as a weasel, Aunt Irène swat Edith’s hand away.

“Never compare hands!”

It was a bad omen in Egypt.

It was in this park we sat, Edith and I, long after I put the gemstones by Aunt Irène’s grave when everything was quiet as if over and done with.

“It’s bizarre,” said Edith.

Then we were silent and there was a chill in the air.

“Do you believe in a parallel universe?” she asked me.

But before I could answer, a green bird swooped down in a flash, landing on the hedges. It was very green, an unlikely green, like lime, a tropical bird that had escaped its cage. We held our breath as if breathing would scare it away. But it didn’t leave. We walked up close to the hedge where it sat. Still it did not leave. When we were close we saw that it looked at us and cocked its head in understanding. Its round black eye had a human quality to it and there was like a crown of light around its head. And that light had an aura of humanness about it.

“Aunt Irène?” Edith whispered under her breath.

And off it flew, the tropical bird, making an arch in the air like a green promise or a question answered.