Aunt Marie’s loyalty was to her family

If you didn’t have a personal collection, Aunt Marie started one for you.

Coin sets.

Beanie Babies.

Hallmark Christmas ornaments.

Bracelet charms for the girls.

Tie bars or tacks for the guys.

I don’t remember telling her I liked trinkets with old advertising slogans or logos on them. But I must have said something at one point. Pens. Lighters. Shoehorns. Plates. Coin banks. I collected them all, without trying.

She gave me enough coffee table sports books to cover all the coffee tables in my neighborhood.

She once stood in line for hours to buy building bricks after The Arena in St. Louis was torn down. She carried several of them one by one to her car, which was parked at least a block away. Why? “I heard you say you wanted one,” she told me.

She’d wrap a box of Kleenex to ensure you had as many gifts under the Christmas tree as others.

Aunt Marie was always giving. Gifts. Time. Help. Money. Opinions. Whether you asked or not.

Marie Tockstein died Sunday evening, March 6, at age 89. She was my mom’s older sister. She was a retired schoolteacher in the Cahokia School District. She was proud of her roots. She grew up in East St. Louis. Went to St. Teresa’s Academy. Worked her way through SIU-Edwardsville to become a teacher. Active in the old Immaculate Conception Catholic Church in Centreville until it closed.

She never married. She chose to stay home and care for her dad and mom, my grandparents. She cared for my ailing mom for a few years after my dad died. She once told me she never fully understood the childhood death of her little sister, Virginia (Jean), from a heart ailment. Maybe that’s why she was a caregiver, forever. But I never asked.

In her own way, Aunt Marie was symbolic of the Greatest Generation. Grew up poor. Talked about the Depression. Worked hard for everything she had. Put herself through college. No sense of entitlement. Shared her success with others.

What will I remember most about my Aunt Marie?

Easy. Her unconditional, unwavering loyalty to her family.

Second: Her holiday attire. Aunt Marie wore ugly Christmas sweaters way before there were theme parties. With gawdy, dangling earrings to match. They had to hurt.

When I was growing up, she was a chauffeur. She took us on summer field trips to Springfield, the zoo and St. Louis museums. Every Christmas season, we went to the Famous-Barr store in downtown St. Louis to see Santa Claus. There was always a cheeseburger and milkshake involved.

She drove my Grandpa Tockstein and me to and from hundreds of Cardinal games. She listened to the game on the radio to know when to leave her home in Alorton to pick us up just outside the stadium.

She protected us boys. One summer, my grandpa hired his three grandsons to pick peaches at the small orchard next door to his home in Alorton. It was miserably hot. We stayed indoors in the A/C, drinking little bottles of Coke and eating Grandma’s peach cobbler while Aunt Marie was next door picking peaches for us. We got paid. She did not. Mum’s the word.

She was all about family. In her later years, early in every conversation, she always asked me, “Have you spoken to your two brothers lately?” When the answer was no, I got that quick, stern look, which was like a lecture.

Nothing brought a smile to her face faster than a call or visit from one of her great-nieces or nephews.

She enjoyed lunches with her cousins and aunts from St. Louis.

“They’re all special. They’re my family,” she would tell me after visits.

She enjoyed the role of aunt and great-aunt because it was mostly fun and no discipline.

Her idea of baby-sitting was to let the kids pour bubbles on the kitchen floor and slide around like it was an ice rink while eating doughnuts and M&Ms.

I asked her a few years ago, while she was in the hospital for a heart issue, if she had any regrets. Sure, she said. She would have traveled more. Adopted a child. Taught a few more years. Married, maybe. She wished she would have been more like her sister, Betty, my mom — more independent, outspoken and fearless.

She died at the Shrine. She was tired, bored. Gave up her car months earlier. Kept falling down. Broke her hip. She had lost her spark. So had life around her. And she knew it wasn’t coming back.

I thought about her Easter Sunday as I shoved a fistful of jellybeans into my mouth. She would have asked me if I wanted some M&Ms, too. Reminded me there’s a Coke in the refrigerator. And asked me, “Have you talked to your two brothers lately?”

This story was originally published April 2, 2016 at 6:10 AM with the headline "Aunt Marie’s loyalty was to her family."