Ellis and Stella

After writing about Gil and Virginia, I thought of two other love stories that I wanted to write down. The next love story is my great aunt Stella and my great uncle Ellis. They were married 66 years before Ellis passed away a few years back.

I have to confess that I have not spoken to my great aunt Stella since the funeral. That embarrasses me to admit…especially since I have a circuit of old women who I call regularly from my days working at the nursing home. It seems if I am staying connected with ladies living in a nursing home in Minneapolis, then I should work at staying connected to my own blood family.

I called Stella without any particular questions in mind other than I wanted to hear what she knows of love after 66 years of marriage. And I wanted to know what is like to sleep alone after 66 years of companionship. I just wanted to know what she misses the very most since Uncle Ellis died.

I called her and she answered, and my heart swelled and my eyes filled. I thought for a minute that this could be quite awkward if I just call her and start crying! But I got it together as quick as I could. It's just that it was such a strange thing that happened. Hearing her voice made me instantly miss my Grandma and Grandpa Harrington. My whole childhood of Harrington family time was filled with just this tiny family of Grandma and Grandpa and Grandpa’s only brother Ellis and his wife Stella. When I heard Stella say, “hello” in her super-high-and-sort-of-squeeky voice, I was instantly homesick. So sad and sorry that icons of life pass away. Sad that I hadn’t ever thought to call Aunt Stella in three whole years.

She’s a kick of a woman. I tried to explain that I wanted to write an article of sorts on her and Ellis. And I wanted to put it on my computer magazine column. (I had to think quickly of how to explain a blog, without using the word blog and without getting too technical.) She laughed and said, “Sure. I don’t care. I don’t know people, and they sure don’t know me!” But I wish you did know Stella. She uses words like pertnear for ‘pretty near’ regularly as she talks and she has a honesty about the way things are that is endearing and real. I said, “what should a girl like me know about a marriage that lasts 66 years?” And she replied, “Marriage is give and take. And to be honest, I think I mostly give. I don’t know!”

Then we talked about how the best marriages probably have a husband and wife who both think they mostly give. And she said, “and then you find happiness.”

She met Ellis while working at a restaurant in 1938, she said, “the other girl who was a waitress was going with a fella in Dysart and that fella was a good friend of Ellis. We went together for about a year and a half before we got married.” Soon after Ellis was drafted and was gone overseas for three years. Stella sent him a letter every single day of those three years. And Ellis wrote to her long love letters just about that often.

When I asked her when she misses Ellis the most she told me, “It hasn’t been too many times this winter that I don't wake up at night and I swear to goodness that Ellis is right beside me. And so I put my arm around him like I would when he would have trouble breathing during the night and when he is not there I am just so disappointed. And I have to realize that he’s not here no more.”

They never had kids. She said she told Ellis that she wouldn’t have kids until she had a home first. And by the time they had a home she felt too old to have a family. She cared for her own father and mother and my great grandma and commented that she sacrificed a lot, caring for them and working full time to help pay for their needs.

Ellis died in the middle of the night. Stella was there when he collapsed on the floor and held him when he breathed his last breath.

I asked her how she spends her days now, living in her home, all by herself. She told me that a friend brings the mail by around a quarter of ten, and meals-on-wheels delivers a hot meal a bit before noon. One person will deliver the church bulletin during the week, “so I keep up to date that way” and she’ll often get a phone call from one of the other five widows in town. “We check in on each other. We know how quiet it can be.”

Calling Aunt Stella was the best thing I could have ever done with my day. I called her with a reporter mindset calling to get the scoop on love, but melted into a little girl who just plain loves my family and misses the generation that, because of His great love, is already with Jesus.