I wanted to take a moment to memorialize a wonderful woman. This lady was a very important part of my childhood and my life in general. Barbara Munn (Walton) was my father’s older sister and a constant in our home during our childhood.
Although she was incredibly kind she was one of the toughest and most resilient people I knew. Although she never weighed much more than a hundred pounds she did her best to protect her younger brother, my dad, as they grew up in a succession of foster homes in the 1940s and early 1950s. They had a special bond and even as adults they teased each other relentlessly.
She didn't have an easy life but that didn't tarnish her kind heart. My aunt Barb enjoyed a glass of red wine at night, crocheted colorful blankets, had an incredible laugh, liked to read, and was also an amazing cook and baker. She was the first person to babysit me and made most of my birthday cakes when I was a boy.
My brother and I were pretty rambunctious boys, by today’s standards anyway. As we were growing up there was nothing my aunt Barb wouldn’t try. She’d go down slides, swing on swings, ride our mopeds, played baseball and football with us, sometimes she’d end up with bumps and bruises as a result (but that never deterred her).
She was always so genuinely interested in my writing career and stories about our travels. It became a ritual for me to send her an autographed copy of each of my new books and kept them on a shelf together in her house.
Sadly, a few weeks ago my aunt succumbed to complications of Alzheimer’s disease, after a long fight, as her little brother (my dad) did three years before. The world is a little different now without her. I can imagine her and my dad are together again somewhere in the otherworldly realms teasing each other, laughing, and probably even trading a few playful punches.
Rest easy, aunt Barb. Thanks for all you did and everything you were. You’ll never be forgotten.
~Eric Vance Walton~
Thanks for reading! All for now. Trust your instincts, invest in you, live boldly, and take chances.
(Photos are original.)
Poetry should move us, it should change us, it should glitch our brains, shift our moods to another frequency. Poetry should evoke feelings of melancholy, whimsy, it should remind us what it feels like to be in love, or cause us to think about something in a completely different way. I view poetry, and all art really, as a temporary and fragile bridge between our world and a more pure and refined one. This is a world we could bring into creation if enough of us believed in it. This book is ephemera, destined to end up forgotten, lingering on some dusty shelf or tucked away in a dark attic. Yet the words, they will live on in memory. I hope these words become a part of you, bubble up into your memory when you least expect them to and make you feel a little more alive.
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