Tribute for Aunt Brenda

Some of you may know that my Aunt Brenda passed away last week. It has been an UNBELIEVABLY difficult week for my whole family. She died on Thursday at age 60. I could go into all the details of how she died but instead, I'm going to tell you how she lived.
There certainly aren’t too many people out there like my Aunt Brenda. She was so much fun to be around and kept our family laughing all the time! Brenda was a true girly girl. The smell of nail polish and hair spray will forever remind me of Brenda. When I was about 4 or 5 years old, I can remember going to Brenda’s house and sun bathing with her in the back yard. She used to tell me as we laid on her blue lawn chairs to hold my hands up vertically in the air so the veins in my hands wouldn’t bulge! My mom and other aunts would look outside and find me and Aunt Brenda laid up on those lawn chairs with both our hands in the air! What a site! Aunt Brenda was definitely prissy.
She also had such a deep love for animals! Her two dogs, Buster and Rosy were her babies and she took such good care of them! Besides loving her animals, Brenda would nurse little birds that had fallen out of a tree back to health. And one day, she noticed that a lizard had gotten in her house and she tried and tried to find it. After a few hours of not being able to find it, she put down a little cap full of water for it because she didn’t want it to perish from thirst! Only Aunt Brenda! She was one of the most caring, loving, and compassionate people I’ve ever met. She would give you the shirt off her back. She had such a childlike innocence about her that made her so enjoyable to be around. She was a free spirit.
Aunt Brenda loved her flowers and she just loved her mama as well as her sisters and her whole family. She was truly a mama’s girl though. She would call granny 2-3 times a day. Granny was her best friend. Whenever she was sick she had to have her mama close by. She had a flair for the dramatic. She could do her make up and her eyes as good as anyone I’ve ever seen. She was just beautiful! When she was young and just out of school, she was a flight attendant for Eastern Airlines and people would tell her she looked just like Elizabeth Taylor. And she really did! She loved to look good.
She wanted no part of any kind of manual labor. She would always tell us, the lord knew what he was doing when he didn’t make her a carpenter. Her body wasn’t cut out for manual labor! She was a true girly girl. She used to tell me, she just loved to hang out at her house and watch her soaps! She always knew exactly what was happening on the Young and the Restless, The Bold and the Beautiful, and the Guiding Light.
Aunt Brenda was always so light hearted and funny but she was also very smart and very deep. Right after my Aunt Lawanna passed away about 8 years ago, as the family was making funeral arrangements, she told my Aunt Sheila that she couldn’t bare the thought of Lawanna being buried in the ground! She wanted her buried behind a stone like Christ was. So she was buried in a mausoleum behind a marble stone, just like our Savior. On Saturday, we layed my dear Aunt Brenda to rest the same way, true to her wishes, just like our Savior.
It is so hard to lose such a beautiful, loving person like Aunt Brenda. Life here on earth will never be the same without her. But I can’t help but to be so happy for her today because I know that she is having such a marvelous reunion with her father, her sister Lawanna, and her brother George that have gone before her. But most importantly, I’m so thrilled that Aunt Brenda is able to be reunited with her Heavenly Father and her Savior who love her so much and are welcoming her home. We love and miss you Aunt Brenda and bid you farewell until we meet again.