A great communicator, like my aunt, keeps families together

I had an aunt in Oklahoma who was amazing.

Aunt Virginia was my mother's eldest sister. Mom was the third child of four. Aunt Virginia lived her whole life as a wheat farmer's daughter and wheat farmer's wife down in Oklahoma, with Uncle Charles. They were actually quite wealthy but you'd never guess that from their lifestyle or old farmhouse. She was a great cook and loved the family.

The other day, I was going through a stack of old papers and I found one of her letters to me. She wrote this particular one in 2006 and, as usual, it was full of her news, what she was doing, what she was cooking, the church, her friends, her quilting group, my cousins. She even gave me an update on my brother, Rex, who had just moved to Oklahoma. They helped get him settled in his new house in Blackwell, where mom and Virginia and their siblings grew up, not far from Virginia's little town of Nardin. Aunt Virginia wrote to me at least once a year, usually on my birthday, right up until the year before her death. She outlived all her siblings. She died a couple years ago.

Now that I think of it, my own frequent "updates" to my family and friends are a lot like Aunt Virginia's letters to me. I even remember my mom reading Virginia's letters to us while growing up: how the wheat fields were doing, what the neighbors were saying, how the harvest was going, and so on. She was a lovely woman and lived a simple, hardworking, family-and-church-centered life.

Aunt Virginia was a Christian and a Presbyterian. She never served alcohol in her house but didn't mind or prevent it if people brought their own. She never even ate in a restaurant until she was in her late 50s. One time when she was visiting my parents in Denver, they took her to a restaurant. She lived a whole different way of life from a different era. They ate at home or at church.

Virginia was also our family genealogy historian. Much of the family history I know on my mom's side was from Aunt Virginia. And so she also kept in touch with all of us in the next generation. She was quite a person, and made a big impression on me. She made me understand my own strong mother better, and their rural roots. Even though they went different paths in life - mom leaving Oklahoma and farm life, Virginia staying - we were all in touch and my family spent a month every summer on my grandparent's farm in Blackwell down in Oklahoma. So we also spent lots of time with Virginia and Charles on their farm.

I always think of Oklahoma as "down" because it was a long, two-day drive, almost straight south, in our family station wagon. Being on the farm was a big part of shaping my own outlook on the world. We lived in a town in northern Minnesota so it broadened my outlook a lot, and I learned to ride horses and watch for tornado clouds with my grandfather. Those old farmers knew how to watch the sky and clouds and understand the potential tornado weather. A few times we went to the "root cellar" in the middle of the night with threatening weather. You had to be below ground if a tornado hit.

After my beloved Baheej died, I decided to stay in touch with family like Aunt Virginia and started my frequent email updates. The initial reason was to let our children know I was OK so they wouldn't need to check on me. However, it became more than that. It was a way to reach out and stay in touch with both family and friends.

Recently, after eight years, I thought I needed to take a new approach, something more of a two-way street instead of a bulletin-like update. So I started sending out "checking-in" emails instead, with questions to learn more about what others were doing.

So the point is: Communication is vital, especially for the bereaved and those living alone. Families often have a member who helps keep other members in touch and grounded in their family history. That is often your mother, an aunt, a sibling. This is so io important. When I think about it, Aunt Virginia played a big role in that, especially after mom died. And so did my elder brother, Nic. He'd call and keep tabs on us. He just stepped in and took over that role.

Aunt Virginia made the absolutely best Southern fried chicken (and white milk chicken gravy) you've ever tasted! She soaked the chicken in milk. Then she'd fry up that chicken in her own farmhouse kitchen, and make mashed potatoes and gravy for the field hands during the wheat harvest in July. She'd take it all out into the field to serve them a delicious lunch. And watermelon. We ate it all, too, on our annual visits. Thinking about you dear Aunt Virginia.

• Susan Anderson-Khleif of Sleepy Hollow has a doctorate in family sociology from Harvard, taught at Wellesley College and is a retired Motorola executive. Contact her at sakhleif@comcast.net or see her blog longtermgrief.tumblr.com. See previous columns at www.dailyherald.com/topics/Anderson-Kleif-Susan.