Auntie Melba

Plot is sad to report that Auntie Melba died yesterday. She was as sweet as sugar, Kentucky to the bone and always a pal to her niece and to Plotnik as well. It's good that Duck and Plot got to spend time with her in Somerset in April, where it was surprising to see she had seemed to have slipped more quickly than expected into older lady-hood. But she was still Auntie Melba: "Now, Honey, you just open that refrigerator and get you something to eat."

Back in 1970, just a few days before Thanksgiving, when Plotnik and Ducknik had only been married a few months, Duck's Mom, Mildred, passed away. She was buried in her hometown of Somerset, Kentucky, and the family flew down from New York. But you don't just fly to Somerset, Kentucky, you fly to Cincinnati, or Lexington, and drive a few hours through a Southern landscape unlike anywhere else. When the family arrived in Somerset, the metropolitan, impersonal big-city landscape Plotnik was accustomed to had disappeared. What had taken its place was a welcoming, overpouring of love on a scale he had never before experienced.

Melba led the parade. Everyone stayed with her at the little house on Vaught Street, and this is where Plotnik discovered what country funerals really mean: food. Neighbors brought turkeys and hams and homemade jams, and you can see that rhymes so you know what Plotnik did with it.

Melba's husband James was a railroad man, but he had been seriously injured many years earlier and in his later years suffered from crippling arthritis. When he died, Melba moved forward with her life, but when her daughter passed away earlier this year, it seemed to take the starch out of her. She told Duck on the phone that she wasn't able to deal with it, that she couldn't figure out why Janice had died but she herself was still alive.

When Duck and Plottie were in town in April, they drove with Melba to the cemetery, where Plot looked at Melba's unmarked tombstone, already erected and carved with her name Melba Elise Murphy and her birth date Dec 19 1924, but no other date yet, and Plot hoped he wouldn't have to think about that tombstone again very soon, but that's not how it has turned out.



What a grand lady. Plotnik already misses her old family stories, her hospitality, her country ham and gravy, and above all, the melody of her voice. He can hear her right now, laughing.