Aunt Rhonda

This January 9th, it will be 18 years since my eldest sister, Rhonda Winders, was murdered by her husband. I was 17 years old at the time. She was 35. So many big things have happened in that span of time: my high school and college graduations, my first “real” job, meeting my husband (coincidentally, also on January 9^th), getting married, and having a child. As a young adult, after such a devastating loss in my family, I could never see myself in my current role as a wife and mother, as one of the mainstays of any other family.

I am now 35 years old, the same age as Rhonda when she died, and have now spent more of my life without her then with her. I was so young when she died, and with the 18-year age gap between us, we were rarely under the same roof. I struggle with her role in my life because she has been gone for so long, and I have come so far personally since then. It would be a lie for me to say that I think about her daily, and I’m not sure I think about my other three siblings daily, either- we really aren’t that close of a family. For a long time, I wondered what she would be like after she left her husband (which she was preparing to do, the most dangerous time for a woman in an abusive situation), if she would remarry, where she would go. And I thought about more mundane things and wondered if she would dye her hair red as my sister Jana and I had, if and how she would have changed her style in the 2000s, if she would still take in every stray animal.

There are a few physical reminders of Rhonda in our home, most prominently a stuffed Kermit the Frog that sits in my son’s room (though not in his bed, because Kermit’s mouth doesn’t close and that was too distracting, which probably would have cracked Rhonda up). As my little one gets older, I want him to know about her, but I have trouble figuring out how. At age two, he knows Kermit belonged to Rhonda, and that’s about it. I plan to tell my son about her sense of humor, her love for animals, her silliness and irreverence, her impact on me as an artist, and her pride when I was accepted into college. The biggest thing I struggle with is how to address the fact that she’s not here with us and how that came to be.

As I think about Rhonda, I think about telling him about “Papa’s Mama,” Nancy Gleiner, who died in 2007 from melanoma (I am obligated here to tell you all to wear sunscreen). I was thinking about how to explain this to my little guy, and phrases were easy to come by- she was sick, her body was very hurt, and it stopped working. I don’t think he will ask about her any time soon, but I know that we talk about her around him, he’s been to her memorial bench, and he recognized that we were all very sad.

No matter how anyone leaves us, it’s hard and so painful, but the murder of a loved one is such a sudden, shocking, and horrific thing that leaves you with no answers, no justification, and no peace. Of course, I will not be revealing her cause of death to my toddler, and definitely not until it’s time to talk about other big issues, when he is old enough to understand. I don’t want to talk about “bad men who do bad things with guns” because that’s scary enough in a vague sense without it being a thing that happened to Mama’s sister. But, I do think it is important to let him know, when he is older and we are both ready for this conversation, that she was a victim of a violent domestic crime, because it is part of our family history. I want him to know that it is not okay to hurt others, to see your wife as yours or no one else’s. I want (and society needs) him to be a better man than Rhonda’s husband. In a way, I’m slowly setting him up by talking to him now about respecting others’ bodies.

The time will come when I need to have this talk with him, and I am saddened to the point of sickness in my stomach that this is real- that this happened to my family and continues to affect us- and I will have to talk about it with someone who is now so incredibly sweet and innocent.