Nora Lee Turcott Hoffmann (1936-2022)

   

Thank you, Aunt Nora Lee.

Thank you for making your home at the crown of Oak Hill a weekend sanctuary for me throughout college. For starting my addiction to red licorice by providing enormous vats of Red Vines to plow through during the long nervous stretches of Broncos games. For burgers and ice cream picked up at the Hasty Freez drive-through as we drove back through Albany from church in Harrisburg. For always finding a bit more wall space to memorialize our parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins, making every visit to your home a loving lesson in family history. For omelets with three, or four, or sometimes even five eggs (if you lost count), filled with cheese and diced lunch meat, covered in chives you’d just chopped up, all of it cooked to golden brown perfection, breakfasts so delicious that my best friend cleaned his plate and said, “Wow, that was great – and I don’t even like eggs.” For preparing corn on the cob for my freshman roommate from France and laughing when he asked, “How do you get the corn on these things?” and laughing still more when he asked why they were called “French” fries. For angel food cakes filled with chocolate pudding and lavishly basted with chocolate frosting, once for my birthday, but other times, just because. For filling up that Broncos mug I’d gotten for Uncle Willie as a gift so that I, at least, could pay proper tribute to my favorite team at mealtimes when he, strangely, preferred to down his draft of milk from other tankards. For finding a recipe for homemade egg nog when you learned that I had a weakness for it too.

Thank you too for so many happy occasions and delightful moments. For throwing the Halloween party at your home in Monmouth when Uncle Willie dressed up as Long John Silver, complete with peg leg and eye patch. For hosting my college graduation party with guests coming in from up and down the state, from Portland to Eugene, in the spring of ’88. For helping, in 2010, to make Brenda feel welcome during her first visit to Oregon with yet another festive gathering in your home. For referring to my 1975 greenish-yellow, hail-damaged Volkswagen Rabbit as a “rig,” just like Uncle Willie’s and Wayne’s much more proper trucks. For traveling to Clarksville, Arkansas, in 1997 with my mom to visit a hillbilly flea market in Eureka Springs and meet an Ozarks novelist friend of mine named Donald Harington, whose books would soon start showing up in your home back in Oregon. For coming to the coast in the summer of 2001 where I could videotape you and Uncle Willie answering some of my oddball questions and where you would bravely try a fresh-cut piece of tofu before declaring it, with a wince and a smile, maybe the worst-tasting cheese you’d ever tried. For Fourth of July gatherings to watch the fireworks from the balcony deck, for Thanksgiving meals with more pie than anyone could eat, and for Sunday suppers in the living room when the football was over, watching the news with you and Uncle Willie.

And thank you, most of all, for being perhaps the most genuinely happy person I’ve ever known. For running outside and exclaiming in sheer joy when you learned that I had managed to fix the cassette player in your car so that Slim Whitman could ride again, speed-yodeling you up the gravel road as you came home from another shopping run. For pulling a big grin whenever you talked about the pictures of Uncle Willie in a cowboy hat, sitting a rearing horse or lounging James Dean-like against that black sedan, his elbow caught in the holster on his hip. For joyfully handing the phone over to Uncle Willie whenever I called from St. Louis and still laughing at the things I’d gotten him to laugh at when he’d hand the phone back to you later to say goodbye. For making the sadness of your impending departure from our lives somehow bearable by continuing, almost miraculously, to be you right up until the end, finding a way still to laugh and remain truly joyful even as your illness advanced, suffering injuries and indignities but still making light of dangerous falls and black eyes and other painful challenges that would have had most of us feeling sorry for ourselves. For providing, over the last 21 months or so since beloved Uncle Willie passed, a humbling example of how even death can just be a natural part of a beautiful life, embodying with your courage and honesty a simple truth that it's all too easy for most of us to ignore most of the time: the goal is not merely to prolong life as long as possible, but, instead, to live as well and lovingly and joyfully as we can during the time that we are given – as you so marvelously did.

            

Thank you, Aunt Nora Lee, for letting go of this life so graciously and lovingly to now go and spend forever with Uncle Willie in a heavenly jamboree, with Roy Clark picking and Buck Owens grinning, with John Wayne playfully joshing Jimmy Stewart as he lets him win another arm-wrestling match, with fresh homemade apple and cherry pies popping out of the oven every other minute or so, and with the smiles and laughter and love never ending.

Thank you, Aunt Nora Lee, for making it unnecessary even to wish that you will now rest in peace. You had peace and joy aplenty during your long, generous life, and now you’ve got some serious partying to do with Uncle Willie forever, making Heaven as warm and loving and joyful a place as you always somehow made this earth.

Thank you, Aunt Nora Lee!