Aunt Mar

I lie awake during the night thinking about how I am going to miss Aunt Mar. It surprises me. She was three weeks short of 97 years old. She wanted to go. Her family rejoiced that she was set free.

For over 60 years, we have stopped by to see them, and/or called them periodically on the phone. 

(Until Eddy started to talk, we called him Travis. He let us know he did not like that name, so when we changed our last name, we switched his name around to Edward Travis.)

They came to our kids’ baby blessings, missionary farewells, concerts throughout the valley. One time, Aunt Mar called and said they wanted to come out to Davis High School’s orchestra concert because she loved Strauss music. She had read about it in the paper. We made arrangements to go together, not knowing at the time that Brooke had a French horn solo in it. They came to all of Brent’s and Brooke’s concerts. Of course, we saw them at reunion every year at Duck Creek on Cedar Mountain.

1965 Kenneth Duffin, Mar and Robert's youngest son, Brent DeRay, 2-years old; Calvin Sorensen, and Lynn Charles Hart, my two nephews who went to the Pugh Reunion with us. We were always going to name our first son Kenneth Duffin. They beat us to it. Serves us right for waiting seven long years to have our first baby. 

 Often we were the first ones to the reunion and/or the last to leave. One year, the kids spent one whole day at Mirror Lake building a raft.

81-year-old Aunt Mar, trying out Ed's adult recumbent trike. 2002
Now I'm, all too soon, 81 and ride my trike nearly everyday, it doesn't seem so remarkable.

 Amy, Millie, and Aunt Mar hiking to Mirror Lake - every year! One mile each way.

2002

Millie (her only daughter) & Aunt Mar at Uncle Kelly's Graveside Services 2005. 

Annie Gardner Judd, my Valley High School classmate, Jeanette, Amy, Aunt Mar, 90 years old. 2011

We also went camping with them at Rockport and other places. One time, Brent saved Aunt Mar from being washed down the Provo River when we were tubing. I remember dancing with Uncle Robert there. He was a wonderful dancer, teaching at Arthur Murray and other places.  DeRay thought of Robert and Kelly more as brothers than uncles. Orphaned young, they lived with DeRay's family until they served their country in combat during World War II.
           In later years, we had a little dinner club with Uncle Grant, Aunt Olive, and Uncle Robert and Aunt Mar. We had them out on Christmas Eve one year when we found that we would be alone and so would they. When DeRay was working in Albuquerque, Ed, Amy, and I rode to Mexico to stay in Judi’s Beach House with Uncle Robert and Aunt Mar. We picked up Grandpa Pugh in Kanab. DeRay met us in Flagstaff.

 Ed & Aunt Mar at the Beach. The Gulf of California. Puerto Penasco.

 Going to church: Aunt Mar, Frankie. Back: Eddy & Judy

 Frankie, Eddy, Jeanette, DeRay, Aunt Mar

 Ed, Judi, Frankie (sisters), Aunt Mar, DeRay January 23, 1992

Aunt Mar was married to DeRay’s dad’s brother. She, Robert and his twin brother, Kelly, and DeRay’s Uncle Grant Pope on his mother’s side, were all in the same graduating class from Kanab High School in in about 1939. I don’t know when we discovered that Mar and I were second cousins – our grandmothers are sisters. Her grandmother married a Chamberlain and my grandmother, Emily Alvira Hoyt, married an Esplin.

Aunt Mar was always interested in everything the kids were doing. When Amy was in her condo, one evening when I was staying down there, Amy went over and picked her up and brought her back to her condo for dinner. Aunt Mar was so amazed that Amy would fix such a delicious meal so effortlessly. She appreciated everything.

All of our kids loved Aunt Mar and Uncle Robert.

Any man’s death diminishes me,

because I am involved in mankind;

        

        John Donne was right. Aunt Mar’s death diminished me. When she died, a part of me died too.

”No Man Is an Island”

by John Donne

No man is an island,

entire of itself;

every man is a piece of the continent,

a part of the main.

If a clod be washed away by the sea,

Europe is the less,

as well as if a promontory were,

as well as if a manor of thy friend’s

or of thine own were.

Any man’s death diminishes me,

because I am involved in mankind;

and therefore never send to know

for whom the bell tolls;

it tolls for thee.

I remember when they used to ring the church bell in Orderville,

one-half hour before time to go to Primary.

They would also ring it
when there was a fire or

when someone died.