One thing leads to another, I know.

As I was driving home from Sumrall today, down HWY 589, and I passed Oral Church Road I thought about the farm, as I always do when I am in that spot.  But I forgot to do my customary glance to the left (or right if I am coming from the other direction) to acknowledge my Aunt Rozie who lies in repose in the small cemetery across the highway from the church.  She was the only girl born to Karoly and Barbola Csaszar, preceded in birth by one brother (my father) and followed by three more.  I know virtually nothing about her life as her life was a very brief one.  She died when she was one year and one month old.

There are no more Csaszars of her generation alive to tell me exactly what happened to little Rozie, so I can only go on the memory of what my father told me.  It was said she was sick and the doctor who treated her prescribed the wrong dosage of medication.  By the time he reached my grandparents to tell them of the mistake it was too late.  This might not be the entire truth, but it is the gist anyway.

I cannot imagine the devastation my grandparents must have felt when their baby girl was taken from them.  My father was only two years old at the time, and my grandmother was pregnant with her third child.   When I think about it I am able to see deeper into my grandmother’s psyche and understand her a little better.  You see, anyone outside of the family I’ve ever heard speak of my grandmother says she was a kind and generous woman.  I believe that, but my family was not privy to that side of her.  She always held a grudge against my mother.  I think she had hoped my father would have married someone she handpicked instead of someone he chose for himself.  She would not even wear the corsage my mother provided for her at their wedding, and she refused to attend the reception.  This belligerence carried over into her treatment of my siblings and me.  We were seven more reasons her beloved son could not give her his constant undivided attention.

Let me clarify something here.  I, personally, have warm feelings towards my grandmother.  She lived with us from the time I was born until the day she died.  I was 11 or 12, but she had been sick and bedridden for several years before she died.  But before her sick days I remember her warming a blanket in front of the gas heater and then wrapping me in it and rocking me.  She used to make me Cream of Wheat and toast and coffee for breakfast.  I remember her many times asking me to sit in her lap, or come into her room to visit her.  But, I saw how she was around everyone else.  I heard the Hungarian rants when my father came home from work.  I saw my father torn between his family and his mother, and choose his mother’s side more than once.  On the other hand, I am the child who was left in a hotel room with her when we all went to a cousin’s wedding in Louisiana.   I heard her crying and felt her sadness for being left behind for one of the before or after wedding events.  She told me things one might only confide to a best friend.  I’m sure she thought I was sleeping, but I heard.

So these are some the reasons I think about my Aunt Rozie, and wonder what life would have been like had she grown up.  She would have been the only girl in the family so surely my grandmother would have taught her things about her Hungarian heritage such as cooking, or songs, or poetry; things that a mother shares with a daughter more easily than she shares with a son.  Now this is the part where speculation turns into imagination.  I like to think if my Aunt Rozie had lived….

  

•  She would have adored her older brother, of course, because he would have doted on her.  And to her younger brothers she would have been bossy, like my oldest sister, and she would have had great influence on their lives.
• Because she and my father would have been close she would have been a fixture in our house, and I would have had an aunt who would tell me funny stories about growing up on a farm with immigrant parents and four brothers.
• She would have taught me Hungarian.
• I wouldn't have her grave marker on display in my bookcase.
• Being the only daughter she would have made sure her parents’ house was kept in good repair and remained a place of family gatherings.
• My grandmother would have gone to live with her instead of us after my grandfather died.
•  My grandfather would have lived longer because she would have watched his health.
•  My grandmother would not have cared who my father married because her attentions would have been more focused on her daughter’s life instead of clinging to her son’s.  That being said, my grandmother would have had softer feelings towards my mother.
•   My grandmother would have had softer feelings for my siblings and me because she would have had softer feelings for my mother.

Most importantly, had my Aunt Rozie grown up my grandmother would have known more happiness in her life instead of grief.  Even my imagination cannot fathom what that would have meant for my family.  

To imagine is fine, but imagination is not reality.  I know for everything there is a purpose, and, as the song goes, I (often) thank God for unanswered prayers.  Still, my mind wanders and wonders.