Hold Everything Lightly #4 {Lester}

I am six years old and sitting in the biggest black car I have ever seen.

 The back seat is strange and would hold my Sunday School Class. I ask mama why we are in this car and she starts sobbing. I ask to go to the bathroom. The long black car is parked in front of my Aunt Vera's house and I have not been allowed in there for days.

The long black car was a limousine used during Aunt Vera's funeral procession and that scene above is all I remember about it. I do not remember seeing Uncle Lester at all in the days after I found her unresponsive on the sofa. She died of a stroke later that day. Mama took me to her and daddy's house four houses up the street and that was that. Uncle Lester was the only father figure I had at this time and suddenly he was gone. I simply adored Uncle Lester and Aunt Vera. They were my world. About six months later he called mama, who was his half sister, and invited her to meet his new friend Edith. 

Mama and I went to Edith's house in South, Augusta.
I can still picture that house, small on the left side of the street with colorful flowers blooming and facing a drive in movie theater. Edith was all sugar and syrup. Far too sweet if you know what I mean. She had outlived one husband and divorced another and had two grown daughters. Lester and Edith met at Clark's Hill Lake. That lake looms large over me somehow.  Uncle Lester and Aunt Vera owned a lot and small trailer at The Lake (capitalized in my head) and I caught my first fish there when I was two. The Lake is why I ended up living with my aunt and uncle in a round about way. Meanwhile mama and Lester were talking in the kitchen and Edith took me in the back yard and held be by the shoulders and shook me and said she was going to be Uncle Lester's wife from now on and he was to have nothing to do with me. Did I understand? I was six year old child. I said nothing. She was not my Aunt Vera and she was taking Uncle Lester away from me. How could this be?
The Lake gives and it takes away.

When we got home I told mama.
 She called Edith on the phone and much unpleasantness ensued as my mama was someone not to cross. I saw Uncle Lester three more times in my adult life. He came to my wedding twelve years later and is seen in the wedding photos although I do not remember him being there. He was admitted to my hospital where I was a RN, for throat cancer, and I visited with him. After that I drove to their place on The Lake and sat with them one day while he was sick. He died on July 4th when CC was two.  He never saw her. I did not attend the funeral. Sometimes I regret that. Edith did mail me photos of Lester, Vera, and me.

 I have never quite gotten over Uncle Lester's rejection of me and his allowing Edith to manipulate him.

Her children were listed as his daughters on his obituary and that hurt me terribly.  As an adult I can forgive my uncle, as a child I was completely mystified and it colored my world for a long time.

This was my second lesson in holding that which I love lightly.

"Hold everything in your hands lightly, otherwise it hurts, when God pries your fingers open."

---Corrie Ten Boom 1892-1983 

To read parts one, two, and three of this series click on the page HOLD EVERYTHING LIGHTLY SERIES at the top of the blog to the right of CONTACT ME and it will take you to each post.
To read about Vera and The Lake go directly here.

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Thank you for reading.

Olive