A tribute to Auntie Linda

Editor’s Note: My Aunt Linda passed away August 2nd. Here is the tribute I gave at her funeral.
Linda was an amazing person.
She was a loving wife, a mother, a grandma, a friend, a volunteer and she was short.
As many of your know we teased her about being short a great deal. Bob, her husband and my uncle, always did it in a special way referring to his Sweety... or Tweety or special LITTLE lady about this tall (his shoulder height)... sometimes it was a bit taller, depending upon if she had her hair poofed up or not.
Linda took that ribbing in perfect stride, knowing that we loved her and that it was all in good fun.
When I first got to know Linda, some 20 years ago, I notice that she was not only short but she also did not like change.
One time we all got colds in the office (there were four of us there then). Linda having worked there the longest, had things set up in a certain way. Unbeknownst to me but that was a way that had to be etched in stone with no room for change.
Well that cold was a bad one and we all had runny noses. Linda had positioned the office kleenex box behind her desk in the far corner of the office. It was awkward to get a kleenex so while she was out running errands for the office I moved the kleenex box to a central location. I thought that was a good idea but Linda did not like that at all. She blew her lid and moved it back to the filing cabinet behind her desk.
When we moved from our 5th St. location to the old Legion on 3rd St. she proceeded to try and set the layout of the new office up exactly like it was on 5th. She and Anne moved things around to an almost identical layout, however that was not going to work on production day, so I proceeded to move it to a more efficient layout while she was gone the printing plant with the paper.
When she arrived back she came in carrying a bundle of papers under each arm, walked in and blew her stack again. She stormed in and out of the office unloading and then proceeded to run the addressing machine the fastest I ever saw her do it before or even after that day. She then left work for the day mad about the change.
But I think that was the beginning of her realization that life is full of changes, whether they are natural or forced.
A few years later she met my uncle Bob and started down a path of big changes.
Not only did she invite him into her’s and Kelly’s lives she eventually married him and invited him into her home... a huge change.
As we had warned Bob about her resistance to change he quickly went to work on her, changing some things ever so slightly. Eventually he had her accustomed to moving furniture around on a regular basis and that rippled over to the office where in the past several years she regularly moved things around.
Ironically this woman who was so agitated by change was actively involved in positive changes in other people’s lives. Her years of volunteering at the Legion brought so much joy to so many people’s lives. As we all know the Legion has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to causes like a new hospital, the park, children’s sports, rec. centre improvements and most recently to a district CT scanner. All of which Linda has had some role in.
She also worked very hard for the Women of the Moose, a charity that works hard to help make the lives of children, especially orphans, better. She often recruited a group of us to help cook and sell Friday night suppers at the Moose, fundraising efforts that helped the WOTM do their work.
She worked so hard to coordinate fundraising efforts like the annual “A Dinner To Remember”, the Alzheimer’s Coffee Break and the Walk for Memories. These efforts raised thousands of dollars to help provide support and educational programs for Alzheimer’s patients in Rainy River and the area.
While she may have only so high... Bob’s Sweety, my favourite Auntie, was probably the tallest person I have known. Her outlook on life and her many efforts to make this a better world are proof of the saying that “Big things do come in small packages.”
–Until then, Ken