I don't plan on ever having children. I am far too airheaded and not near attentive enough to detail to keep a toddler in line. However, that doesn't mean I don't want to be the cool aunt (or uncle, or whatever a gender neutral term is for the sibling of a parent). I come from a family of eight, and I have five wonderful siblings, so chances are my destiny is to become the cool aunt.

I was talking to my mother about this as we drove to New York last weekend. As all my aunts' and uncles' children (save one, who I have only met two or three times), I never really had the "cool aunt" figure in my life. What I wanted was someone who I could tell things to before I told my mother, a role model who not only scolded me when I messed up but helped pick me back up when I was breaking. My mother, silent for a moment, told me that to her, that person was her Aunt Mary Joan.

Aunt Mary Joan was my great aunt, a woman I never really got the chance to know but understood based on how she affected the people I have had the chance to know. She passed away last May; my family was in New York for her memorial service.

My mother and two of her brothers would spend a week up in Niagara with Mary Joan during summers. She would dote on them, read them stories, buy them things in shops and be a shoulder to cry on when needed.

As I have learned more about her, I've realized that my Aunt Mary Joan and I are a lot alike. We both love children, but had (or will have) none of our own. We are fiercely loyal to our families, even when we must distance ourselves from them. At the memorial, everyone called her fierce, and they were right; she was a fierce, strong, independent woman, stubborn and disciplined but ready to open up and love all the same.

We also are both afraid. From how I understand it, Mary Joan and I both suffered from anxiety, an anxiety that could be debilitating at times. That hasn't stopped us both from living full independent lives though. Mary Joan was a teacher well known in her little town on the edge of the country. Everyone, it seems, either had her as their teacher or knew someone who did. I even met a woman who, after having Mary Joan as a teacher, was inspired to become a teacher herself. Now that's a legacy I want to follow.

Leaving New York and the funeral behind me, I carry back physical reminders of her as well as the mental ones: a book of folklore, a rainbow afghan, the gears to a music box and most important of all, a ring. The ring is silver, thin, and on the top the simple silver band transforms into the shape of an owl in flight. My Aunt Mary Joan loved owls. Her gravestone, instead of a family crest, has an owl. Her house was full of them -- salt and pepper shakers, glass figures, magnets, old embroidery -- all covered in owls. I also find it funny, given the owls, that her mother's name was Alice Minerva. Minerva, of course, is the Roman goddess of knowledge and wisdom. Her symbol is an owl.

I don't know if my Aunt ever put this together. I like to think she did.

We never know how people will influence us. I know my Aunt Mary Joan influenced me. She made my mother who she is, and my mother made me into who I am. I can learn from her strengths, her goodness and her heart. This is how she will live forever: she will influence me, and has, and in reading this she has now influenced you. Make the world better, because you need to, and be there for the ones who need love. Let wisdom be your guide. And, most of all, never forget where you came from. As difficult and painful as that can be, where we came from shapes us into who we are when we decide how we will let our pasts and ancestors influence us.

When it comes to my Great Aunt Mary Joan, I'm not just going to remember. I am going to let what she did to make me who I am in.