I went to bed very early last night, the strain of the week, the job and especially the day's news were all factors. I got to work on Friday just before 9:00 AM, from a pocket I heard my phone ringing as I was taking off my winter weather barriers. The ring was in a tone reserved just for my parents and daughter.
With one arm out of a coat sleeve I took a call from my folks, my father was on the other end, "I have some bad news about your Aunt," he started and my mind immediately jumped to my Aunt Jo who has been ill and is over 80. So when he continued with, "Carolyn died this morning," I was unprepared for that statement. It was too unbelievable to be a shock moment, I still was processing the Jo thought so I only said, "What?" He repeated the news. He told me of some of the specifics. He told me Erika, her daughter, my cousin, was holding her hand as she passed. That the night before, Erika tried to cheer up her mom and Carol said don't joke Erika pray for me instead. I can hear that statement in her voice in my head as clear as a bell, that was Carolyn.
Carolyn was born on September 11th 1949, the youngest of the several children of Lloyd and Violet Martin, 10 years younger than her nearest sibling, my mother Madge.
I remember her room at my grandparents house in Marion. I remember the beads and bright decorations, the Bobby Sherman and David Cassidy posters, the Partridge family album and record player. I remember Carolyn as a teenager, as an older playmate and as a babysitter. Carolyn was less than eleven years older than me. Carolyn used to come and stay with us occasionally when we were in grade school and my parents were both working, she was our house and baby sitter. I remember cousin Cathy staying for a day or two as well and we all walked to the IGA in tiny Swayzee to get candy and treats, and Carolyn bought with her baby sitting money.
Both of her parents were gone before she was much more than twenty. After her parents passed she moved around between her older siblings Mona and Jim's places and took odd jobs and managed to care for herself.
At around her 25th or 26th year Carolyn met a man named John Vaughn, a man with a checkered past, and questionable moral fiber, a man who had spent a bit of time incarcerated. Carolyn , a woman of deep religious faith and belief, saw John as a man repented, as a man changed and in the true spirit of her Christian faith as a man redeemed.
John proposed, she fell in love and they married and moved to Delphi Indiana. John was driving delivery trucks for a seed company, making stops at grain elevators and farms and they head a nice little place in an old house near downtown Delphi. I spent a week there on summer break just after my 16th birthday.
Within a year Carolyn was pregnant and John was gone. Carolyn was back in Marion and on public assistance, and soon her daughter Erika was born. I don't believe Erika would have benefited from having her father around and he never attempted to see his child or supported either of them with any support or childcare money, John's absence may have been a blessing, and Erika was definitely a gift and blessing to Carolyn who, through struggle and hard times raised her daughter in a house full of love.
The last few years Carolyn has been living in Arkansas near her niece Cathy's family and her sister Mona and her family. I have missed seeing all of them, and watching Erika's children growing up. I still remember all the Thanksgiving dinners and the Christmas gift exchanges, and will miss them. I will miss the humor and caring, I will miss, teasing and sharing, I will miss the affectionate hugs. I will miss my Aunt Carolyn very much.
Chuck Pace ©2009 
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