Christopher Street

My Aunt Donna

I had an Aunt that I never met, because she died when she was very young--when my Dad was nine, actually. So, 15 years before I was born? I don't know much about her, because no one ever talks about her, which may be typical in situations where children die so young. I don't know. But still, the lack of information makes her an almost mythical creature to me. I don't know what she was like, I never saw many pictures. The only tangible piece of her that I was ever exposed to was her grave.

When I was little, my grandmother would take me to the cemetery to keep her company while she cleaned the plot, left flowers, weeded...that sort of stuff. I would sit and try to keep her a little distracted while she did this thing that must have been the worst thing that she had to do. It wasn't a lot of fun, but I was always glad to go.

Her tombstone was made of, um...white granite? I think. And it had a lamb on it, which I guess is a common thing to put on a child's grave. The inscription was very stark, black and all caps against the white background: Donna Marie Piper 1948-1951.

I say was, because after my grandfather died last year, they decided to purchase a family headstone, one that would serve as his and my Grandmother's as well as little Donna's. After they installed it, though, there was some question about what to do with the old stone. I guess that it would have been disposed of, but I thought that that would be just too weird, so I asked if we could take it. I didn't know what we would do with it, exactly, but the only thing that I ever got to do for Donna was help my Nanna clean that stone, and I wasn't keen on it getting tossed in the trash. So I asked my Dad to cut the lamb off for me and I put it in my flower garden. Which may be the most morbid thing that I have ever done, but I feel like I want some connection to this little girl who would have been my aunt.