Me, Aunt Bea, and Some Candy Corn (Part 4)

The following is a work of fiction in several parts. Please read the first three parts before reading this one. You can find them on my blog.

Part 4 (final)

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The next time I visited Aunt Bea, she had dismissed her former nurse (who probably was glad to get away from my aunt’s jazz stories for a while). Before I left that day, not one but two nurses stopped by to interview for the position of taking care of my aunt. While I had been reluctant to go this route, especially since my ex-wife was a nurse and the memory of my divorce was still raw, interviewing potential nurses with Aunt Bea was more fun than Internet dating. And I did go out with one of her nurses for a while, but we weren’t right for each other.

Three years later, I re-married. But the story was more interesting than you’d think. I was visiting my aunt in the hospital when she went in for a procedure. I happened to meet a former colleague in the cafeteria who was having coffee with her friend. That friend worked in the hospital here and she had a familiar face. But she recognized me first.

Tracy had grown up in the house next to where my aunt lived. That’s how I had known her smile and why she had remembered mine. As children, we had played together a few times, but I hadn’t seen her since we were teens.

Her parents were named Dean and Delilah. She liked to joke that people had called them “Dean & Deluca” after the grocery store. Tracy had two young children; her own husband had died in a traffic accident a couple of years earlier. She worked in the oncology unit here at the hospital. When Tracy heard that my aunt was in the hospital, she arranged to work some hours on the same floor.

A few days later, Tracy brought her mother in to visit and they had a great reunion. Delilah told Aunt Beatrice that she’d never blamed her for being involved with Dean when they were young. In fact, she thanked Bea for having introduced her to the man who became the love of her life. Somehow, their signals had gotten crossed after he died. I’m not sure if Delilah ever knew that my aunt went on loving Dean from a distance even after he and Delilah married. But now, the two women had settled things and were fast friends once again.

Aunt Beatrice died a few months later, never having recovered from her surgery. I missed my aunt and I missed my deadline. She didn’t live to see me get married again as she'd wanted. But as her health declined, her happiness grew to new heights as Tracy’s kids came to visit her.

Aunt Bea had taken care of Tracy and her brothers when they were children next door. She thought she’d lost them, but one of them had come back to her as she had reconciled with Delilah, their mother. And now, Tracy brought her the grandchildren that Aunt Bea had always wanted. They were wonderful kids and I’d never had so much fun before as I did playing with them. The children spent a lot of time with Aunt Bea in her final months, when I often saw them also, partly because Tracy was a single mother and was often busy working to support them.

And in my own way, I added to that, because I was starting to steal some of Tracy’s time also. I’m not sure if Bea suspected or not. I didn’t tell her because I didn't want to get her hopes up if the relationship didn’t last. In any case, Tracy and I weren’t ready to announce anything before Aunt Bea’s time came. She passed away peacefully, surrounded by those of us who loved her dearly.

Tracy and I continued to spend time together and grow closer in the months that followed. I had found the companion who became a life partner. Tracy's kids became my kids as I grew into the role of both husband and father. Ours is a love born of mutual respect, friendship, and attraction. We are fortunate to live in a time and place where happiness is more important than race.

On the day of our wedding, I saw her mother Delilah looking up into the sky, and I knew she was thinking of how pleased her husband would have been. Their daughter was happy, their grandchildren had a father, and the nephew of their good friend had found happiness as well. Somewhere up there, Aunt Beatrice was smiling down on us, too.

Tracy handled most of the wedding arrangements. And she surprised me when the wedding cake came out. I almost started crying when I saw that she’d covered it in candy corn.

What an awesome tribute to the woman who brought us together. And what an awesome gesture by Tracy on our special day. The guests might find it tacky, and I was sorry they had to eat the candy corn, but there was no doubt in my mind that it was the work of an angel. I had truly found the perfect partner.

The End

This was the last part of the story. If you need to read the earlier parts, please check my blog. The image above is public domain. It's not really my aunt, since I've never had an Aunt Bea and I'm not really the person in the story either. It's fiction.