Last week my great-great aunt Mary Maloney passed away. Sadly I hadn’t even been aware that I had a great-great aunt alive, let alone in the same city I was living in. Oh and she was a nun.
I’m still trying to get over the fact that I had an aunt-nun and no one told me. Do you know what the chances are of me getting another relative to become a nun? Zilch! I’d even say my chances are in the negative since all my family is either married or Mormon! Life can be unfair, but it’s even more unfair when it is fair but you don’t know it’s being fair until it becomes unfair again…
So Tuesday my Dad, Aunt Sue, and Grandma came down and we all attended the funeral together. It really was a sweet service and the more I learned about Mary, aka Sister Patricius, the more I realized I would’ve liked her. She was such a die-hard Husker fan that every game day she’d get dressed in her full nun gear and wear a Husker T-shirt on top. Pictures will soon be posted.
After the service we went to the burial where the funeral director confused my dad for a maintenance worker because he didn’t feel the need to dress up for a funeral. Oh and I kind of lost my Grandma at the cemetery, but I told everyone she just found some people she knew. I figure after 70 the cemetery becomes a very social place.
Finally we made it back to the retirement home (which I had believed to be a convent since it was full of nuns and retired nuns) for a luncheon. It was an hour of being force fed everyone’s unwanted scraps because they all knew I was Rick’s poor college student child with the ability to stomach anything that was free. Sadly this is a very accurate description of myself… Oh and during the time my family decided I should start trying to date a lawyer. The painful phrase “Been there, done that” was all that came to mind… But at least no one called me an Old Maid.
We were the last to leave and finally came to the coat rack so I could retrieve my dress coat. It wasn’t there… I knew for a fact I had left it there, and my dad and Uncle Mike had both seen me take it off. I quickly called any family that had been there and asked the administrator for help. No one had seen it.
The administrator looked sad that we couldn’t find my coat and said thoughtfully, “Well we haven’t allowed anyone in except for the funeral, so all that leaves is the assisted living or the nuns….”
The way she trailed off when she said nuns gave this uneasy feeling that this wasn’t the first time something had been taken, or that it may in fact have been a nun. As much as I wanted to have a man hunt through each patient and nun’s room I resolved to just leave my contact info in case someone gained a guilty conscience for what they’d done.
I was still mulling over how possible it actually was that a nun had taken my coat, but such a thing is too crazy to happen, right? Well as soon as we got in the car my grandma started telling me all these stories of nuns stealing money when she worked with them as a nurse. There were a few other nun stories too, but frankly even I’m too embarrassed to write about them. Let’s just say nuns did not seem like an innocent group of women anymore.
So in my lifetime I’ve had my checkbook found (and used as evidence) in a homicide investigation, gotten lost and stranded on a mountain, picked up hitchhikers, and been swindled by nuns… I figure if I am the type of person that can be victimized by nuns/and or retired nuns suffering from dementia then I probably deserve to stay single.
Oh and for all you fans of the battles my Dad and I have, I certainly got the best of him Tuesday. We were at the grocery store at the military base and I yelled across the aisles, “DAD DO YOU NEED ADULT DIAPERS STILL? THEY’RE RIGHT HERE IF YOU STILL NEED THEM!” That made the day Lauren-1 Dad- 0 
Sally
Okay, seriously. This was just the thing I needed to read today. (Consider your VTing done. Kidding. Kind of. But not really.)
I never really had much opinion on nuns, as the only interaction I had with them was from movies: Sister Act, the Sounds of Music, and the Blues Brothers. Until, of course, I went to a Catholic college. Then I got the full tour. Sweet old ladies who fall asleep while her class is watching a movie; hip, young, and all about service; running off with a priest, marrying him, and coming back to teach at the school where they met….
But I’ll never forget Sister Joan. You don’t forget a nun who T-bones your car.