I Knew a Brave Soul Who was a #Miracle on Earth

(Left: me with my Aunt Debbie when I was maybe 2-3 years old)

I just lost someone very special in my life this week. My mom's baby sister, my Aunt Diggy- as I called her until I could pronounce Debbie. After that she became my Debbie Roses (though her middle name was simply Rose). My memories of her are always of a vibrant, outgoing, caring young woman.

When I was growing up, she was just as much a role model for me as my mom and my cousin Carol (who I call Bubba). I always associate the three of them with the 3 Musketeers- "All for one and One for All"  because though two were sisters and one was not, they were thick as thieves.

I wouldn't trade these three women for the world because a lot of the fabric of who I am is woven from the things I learned from them about life and love, so this is a very sad time in my life. In some respects, I probably chose my pen name because of her. Raye is my middle name, but she always called me "Miss Raye" when I was a kid.

"Whatcha doing Miss Raye?" "How's it going, Miss Raye?" "I love you, Miss Raye."

Somehow I think that was in the back of my mind when I chose Taryn Raye as my pen.

 (Right: Debbie with my Grandpa's dog, Molly)

Growing up, we spent almost every Saturday down at my grandparents' house and my aunt still lived there with them. I remember walking along the edge of the road near the mailbox with her to pick flowers for my mom when she was in the hospital having my baby sister when I was three. And I've heard the story a hundred times how the flowers were full of fleas and my mom had to throw them away. I will continue to tell that story to my daughter, so that it keeps the memory alive.

From the time I was old enough to stayed overnight at my grandparents, I slept in Debbie's twin size bed with her as well as a few cats and dogs. Staying all night at Thanksgiving or during winter months was brutal, as her room didn't have a coal or wood burning stove, so we were piled up beneath electric blankets and stacks of quilts. If you had to get up in the night to use the bathroom you'd better hope you had thick socks on to keep your bare feet from smacking the ice cold wood floor that only had a few scatter rugs. Brrr....

I remember climbing over old car bodies in the junk yard with her to go find a can of liniment for a cut and helping gather eggs from the chickens. I remember her insistence on saving a little runt out of a litter of pigs and naming him Wee Willy and putting him in a pen out behind the house. I'd run straight through the house every Saturday to go bounding out the backdoor to see him and he'd run up and down the wire fence like a puppy excited to see his playmate.

(Left: Being silly)

She and I spent a lot of time doing adventure scavenger hunts under rocks for roly-polys and ants and other things in wildlife that she thought were interesting and it created in me a sense of wonder about nature and the world around me. I learned about the life cycle of mosquitoes standing on an upside-down slop bucket while peering over the wooden beams of the cows' stall— Cows she had named Fred and Barney, much to my grandpa's dismay. (As he would have said- you don't name it if you're going to eat it.)

She shimmied up apple trees at my grandpa's urging to get me little sour green apples to eat with salt and scared as I was (am) of wasps and stinging bugs, she'd never kill one. She would catch it in a jar or a cup and release it outside. "They're just as scared of you as you are of them," she would always tell me. (I'm still not sure I believe that when I get dive-bombed by a wasp in my house. LOL)

(Pictured at right- My mom, Grandma & Aunt)

She loved the horses, mules and ponies my grandpa had and I remember when Big Kurt (the largest red mule I'd ever seen) kicked her and bruised her up badly. I remember when she worked at the Dollar Store and would pick us up a box of Fiddle Faddle when I'd ride with my uncle to go pick her up from work.

The majority of my time at my grandparents' was spent in her room, playing dress up with her make-up, pretending her bedroom was my grown-up apartment. I sat in front of the dresser with the large round mirror and put on lavender eyeshadow and pink blush and painted my nails with her Love My Nails "Candy Kisses" iridescent pink polish.

(Left: when she was in for a visit once)

 I listened to her record albums. I read her short story about a young woman who was trying to take care of the farm and her brother after their parents died (she wanted to be a writer and that inspired me) and I typed things on her Brother typewriter. I rifled through the books on her book shelves. In fact, that's where I discovered V.C. Andrews' Dollanganger Series- Flowers in the Attic and the other 3 books scared the bejeebers out of me, but I loved them. My momma had to MAKE me give them back, but then Debbie turned around and gave them to me because she didn't plan to read them and she knew how much I loved them.

My aunt was kind, loving and nurturing, always caring for strays and runts and things that she didn't think could fend for themselves. She married and moved away to western Kentucky before I was grown, but we always looked forward to her visits "back home" and it was cause for celebration. She was like sunshine bottled in human form and could brighten and cheer you up, even when it didn't seem possible.

My aunt wanted children, but by the time she married and tried, she discovered she couldn't have children because of Endometriosis. Still, she took in cats and dogs and birds and loved them as her babies. She taught me how to do plastic canvas and other crafts when I went down and spent a week with her one summer when I was maybe fifteen or sixteen.

(Right: playing my mom's N64 video game)

That was before the accident when she fell into the glass china cabinet doors and lost so much blood before the ambulance got there that we almost lost her. Though she lost the feeling in her left hand, she did learn to live with her disability rather than letting it hinder her.

 

The most devastating blow came in 2004 when she started having problems with her speech, memory and had swelling in and around her eye. It turned out to be a brain tumor, Stage 4 and though they were able to operate and remove the mass that was causing the swelling and motor skill issues, they weren't able to get it all. In fact, the doctors never gave a time frame with which to base her life expectancy because at Stage 4, as bad as it was, even with surgery and aggressive chemo and radiation, the doctors didn't think she would survive.

This is how I know I knew a brave soul who was a miracle on this earth. She stuck with the chemo and radiation though it made her sick as a dog and not always as strong as she tried to be. She adapted to a diet, that though odd to most everyone else (black olives with their juice and buttermilk for breakfast, for example) that nourished her and fed her body and kept her at a healthy weight. She had faith and hope and she survived. She locked horns with the cancer and she was winning. Well, winning as well as you can when cancer is that far gone.

So this is in memory of my aunt—Rest in peace Aunt Diggy, knowing we will love you always and will never forget your bravery, your strength, your faith, your smile or the size of your heart.

I believe Miracles exist.

When diagnosed with brain cancer, the doctors gave her no time frame. But she was blessed with time, as that was 8 years ago and we were also blessed to get to keep her around that much longer.

We love you and will miss you~Forever and always yours~ "Miss Raye"

I am a #Writer ~ A Poetic Soul ~ I am a Dreamer #writing #inspiration

(Image from MorgueFile photographer Darren Hester)

I am a writer- a poetic soul- I am a dreamer-

I've known I wanted to be a writer from around the time I was 10 or 11 years old, playing with an old upright Royal typewriter in our basement on hot summer afternoons pretending to work for a newspaper as a reporter, or handwriting my "high-school-sweethearts-happily-ever-afters" and illustrating them in pencil and crayon or colored pencils. My neighborhood friends can attest to this, but the proof was destroyed years ago, so you will never see them! Haha!

I wrote a lot of angsty (horribly embarrassing) poetry in my teens- yeah, that's still around but you'd have to pry it out of my cold dead fingers. I stayed up late on weekends, scribbling short stories and the beginnings of YA novels in those Lisa Frank rainbow-colored-LSD-trip notebooks on pastel pink and blue colored pages until my parents got me a Smith Corona typewriter/word processor and 3 1/2 inch floppies for Christmas the year I was 17. That was also the year they gave me "The Romance Writer's Pink Pages" and a package of paper and a good long talk from my logical dad about how "hard" it is to be a writer, that I might not ever be able to do it for a living without a back up plan and a regular day job, that not everyone can break into the business, just like artists and singers...it's lofty and inspiring, but not always practical.

I continued writing, but never finished anything. A lot of spitting and spluttering. I got older, got a job rather than going to college and had very little time for writing any more. Ah, Life...

Around 21 I started writing a more serious novel, one I consider to be a work of women's fiction after some very personal issues I was dealing with, but the story became hard to write, emotionally- the relationship I was in was failing and though I started taking a writing workshop, I just grew more and more frustrated with my instructor's guidance. I wasn't mature enough to handle criticism, constructive or otherwise. Add to that, I had a fiance who didn't believe in me or my dreams of becoming a writer. The relationship ended after much fighting and arguing and back and forth of "I want you, but I don't know what I want" and "I love you, but I can't love you if you don't have a job." (His wishy-washy, not mine) That is one for the record books of unsolved mysteries...I STILL don't understand it, but I'm okay with how it all turned out or I wouldn't be where I am today.

I tucked away my writing, deeming myself unworthy, incapable, etc. All the self-pity I could wallow in. I wrote angsty twenty-somethings poetry and decided that maybe writing and publication weren't my dreams to chase after all. I did have a few who encouraged me along the way, but most of what I wrote was still poetry, still not quite believing in myself enough.

Fast forward almost a decade, I'd been married 4 years, had a school-age stepson, a young daughter and I was a housewife who hit a very low spot. Writing kept egging me from the corners of my life, reminding me that it was also something I wanted to go with the husband, the family, the life. I couldn't get away from it. It taunted me as I settled in to go to sleep at night- "You NEED to be writing and have something just for you."

I'd never really told my husband how much I wanted to be a writer, so for a while, he looked at me like I was just trying to find a hobby to bide my time as a stay at home mom and wife. He didn't take it seriously, but I started coming back out of my shell, started to think that maybe all the stories in my head needed to be out on the pages. I began to write again, but more seriously than I ever had and the best part- it boosted my self-confidence- but so did the encouragement from my mom(who had always encouraged me to get back to it because she said I had a way with words)- from friends, from fellow writers I was meeting online.

I finally finished that one story- the one that was emotionally hard on me- I finished it in August 2006. Then I discovered NaNo in October and did my first one that November with only my mom and a friend encouraging me to do it- to see if I could write a novel in 30 days~ after all, it had taken me a decade from start to finish on the first one~ I needed to prove to no one but myself that I had more in me and could write it in less time.

And I did it. I penned and finished my 2nd manuscript, then followed that with two more the following year, and 5 the next. Then I hit a slow down- I burnt out, but I still wrote one for NaNo '09 and the most recent one- the 11th one I've written, was a NaNo '10 that I finally finished last month. Now #12 is looming on the horizon, and I know I have more than that hidden inside, bubbling to the surface a few ideas at a time.

As a writer, a poetic soul and a dreamer, I'll never let someone steal it out from under me again. That's just NOT going to happen.