Aunt Cass

My Aunt Cass on my Father's side of the family lived in a half dugout by the Colorado River. The dugout was called a half dugout because a wooden house stood over an earthen hole in the ground. You entered the dugout from the house by a stairway. I remember visiting her and the earth smell of the dugout as you walked down the stairway. There were newspapers lining the wall that was plastered there. Most of the newspapers were rather old. Most people back then lined their walls with newspapers. Up above in the dugout, were just wooden, bare rafters. She kept an old Victrola phonograph down in there and her wood stove for heating. I kept some of her old records after her death. This is also where I found her magazines that I have on this blog. She had some old love letters that I also found in the rafters along with some old valentines.
My Aunt Cass had a hard life. After some miscarriages,she had a beautiful little daughter that I had heard was retarded. The little girl also had epilepsy and didn't live very long. I believe she was nine or ten when she died. Aunt Cass was married and divorced after the birth of her second child. Her second child was a boy named Richard. He was drafted in WWII into Patton's Third Army. Immediately after leaving basic training they put him on board ship where he was in the invasion of Sicily. He was killed in the first wave and his body was never recovered. I recently found where his name is listed in the graveyard there.
Aunt Cass never got over his death and always thought he would return. She would have dreams in which she would see him in a cafe or someplace and have relatives drive her to the place she had seen him. She would then become distraught when she found that he was not there. She married again after her son's death but her husband soon died and left her all alone. As time went on, she stayed a recluse and slowly lost her mind. She was then sent to a nursing home and was mistreated there and eventually passed on. When I think of my Great Aunt Cass, I realize that she did live a hard life and I often wonder why God took away the one thing that she had wanted. Her children.