Aunt Helen was special

Helen Audrey Stewart was born on Jan. 31, 1922 in Fort Frances, Ont. and left us Sept. 14, 2017 in Alaska with two of three sons by her side.
She was an outdoors woman, as comfortable hunting and fishing with her sons and husband as she was serving tea.
She was Don, Darrell, and Dale’s mother. She was my father’s sister and sister to Frank Munroe Stewart. She was a daughter to Frank Ezra Stewart and Sarah Lucy Carnduff. She was aunt to Randy, Rob, and Rick, and my siblings, Sherry and Laurie.
She was many things to many people, and my sister and I were her “little girls”–no matter how old we got.
Helen taught me to sew and I still can hear the whirr of her sewing machine at the top of the stairs in her white house in International Falls as she assembled play clothes for my brown-and-yellow teddy bear, whose name coincidentally was “Teddy.”
She set me up on the front steps of her house in the spring with a bowl of water, in which I placed strips of dandelion stems, watching their magic as they curled and transformed. She brushed my hair carefully, never pulling when she came to a snag (and there always were snags).
She didn’t fuss when I peed the bed when I slept at her house–too afraid to creep past sleeping older cousin, Darrell, in case I disturbed him.
She understood my disappointment at sitting on the shore in the sand on Reef Point while the “big kids” played tag for hours on overturned U.S. Army-issue life rafts, their raucous water play both exciting and terrifying.
I wanted to be just like her when I grew up and in some ways I was. We share a flushed red complexion that we both complain about. I don’t recall her ever asking for help and I am of the same ilk, albeit not necessarily a sensible characteristic.
She took over the creation of decorative Christmas stockings from her mother, my Grandma Stewart, and has handed the torch to me and to her granddaughter, though I must confess my creations come up short.
She had a wonderful laugh, an easy one that came naturally. It was authentic and it was very similar to my father’s laugh, one that made you want to join in with the shared secret.
She lived in paradise, as she called it, in Maui for many years under the helpful and watchful eye of her nephew, Jerry Misner, whom she loved like a son. I had the great pleasure of visiting her there twice.
She spent many summers in Alaska with her son, Darrell, travelling with him into the wilderness for fishing, where she baked bread in a wood stove oven; always ready to join in and help wherever she could, never shying away from hard physical labour.
Helen outlived her brothers, John and Frank, by four decades as both of them died at age 54, just weeks before their respective 55th birthday. She turned 95 in January; a life “long enough,” she said, weary of the limits of old age.
She was a do-er, always busy with a project, and found her unco-operative body annoying.
She is free now and I like to think she and all those she loved who went on ahead are together, catching up on new memories.
Perhaps the measure of our time on this earth is how we are remembered. All who loved her have happy memories as we carry on.
wendistewart@live.ca