Inconvenient Love
By Kimberly J. Soenen | May 17, 2026
Our family lost a legendary loved one this week. My Aunt Dorothy.
My favorite Aunt Dorothy.
She was born in 1933.
Aunt Dorothy lived in New York City on Riverside Drive as a little girl. Her sister, Shirley, was diagnosed with brain encephalitis at the age of five years-old. Aunt Dorothy’s family could not afford to care for both a disabled child and my aunt so they sent Dorothy to Miami and Chicago to live with extended family.
Danny Thomas—whose real name was Amos Muzyad Yaqoob Kairouz—and Anthony Abraham (who we all knew as “Uncle Anthony”) helped to raise my aunt with their large, supportive families. Thomas (Amos) was born in Deerfield, Michigan, raised in Ohio and made his way to Chicago around 1940. He eventually spent time on the west coast and Miami for work. Best known for being an actor, producer and entertainer, Thomas (Amos) is also the founder of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital which first opened its doors on February 4, 1962. For this reason, for decades, all of my cousins have played an integral role in fundraising for St. Jude and raising awareness about the needs of children who are ill.
Dorothy married my mom’s oldest brother, Joe. Uncle Joe and Aunt Dorothy nicknamed me “Fred” as a very young child. I was a tomboy from the beginning and they embraced it. Until the end of her life, Dorothy still called me “Fred.” Every birthday card, every phone call, every hello at the house door began with an warm, comedic exclamation: “Fred!”
No matter when I visited my aunt and uncle over the years, there’d always be homemade food on the table, even if I had said before the visit that I had already eaten. Well into their 90’s my aunt and uncle were still cooking. These meals slowed us all down healthfully. You see, catching up was the thing.
As an adult, Dorothy was a cigarette-smoking, scotch-swirling aunt, but I understood those vices possibly veiled hurt from the separation from family and the distress or longing Shirley may have caused. Aunt Dorothy had a lightning-fast wit and a get-to-the-point expectation in conversation. If you could truly crack her up, it was a hard-won win.
Nobody rocked red lipstick like Aunt Dorothy. In her older age, she appeared weathered, but her laugh lines were so deep. Her eyes projected a weary sadness and a twinkle at once revealing she had chosen love and humor over bitterness and resentment.
My cousins eventually got Aunt Shirley into a support facility outside of Chicago for disabled persons after moving her from a facility in Long Island, New York. I consider myself lucky because from the time I was little through my young adult years, Shirley was at every family holiday meal in her wheelchair. Like Aunt Dorothy, she had a great sense of humor. I was able to witness at a very young age, at very close range, how families with medically-complex relatives are impacted emotionally and financially.
Above all else, Aunt Dorothy valued family and extended family. I am the youngest of eleven cousins on that side of our family. At every gathering, I witnessed my older cousins laughing with Shirley, lifting her, helping her to eat, and lifting her wheelchair into cars. Shirley could not walk on her own or communicate like everyone else, but she expressed herself just fine.
I saw it all: the toileting, the messy eating, the collaborative logistical planning required for transportation and, sometimes, frustration or exasperation.
But she was loved. My cousins demonstrated inconvenient love.
The main table in the dining room of Uncle Joe and Aunt Dorothy’s home was always headed by Uncle Joe during our holiday meals. There were always spill-over card tables and extra chairs set out for unannounced friends and people dropping by for baklava and coffee after dinner. Lebanese cousins were always coming and going and gatherings always included friends, and out-of-state friends, who needed a place to stay for a few months. Our holiday tables included homemade grape leaves, tabbouleh, hummus and so many other treats made by my aunt.
There was one prayer—the only prayer—my Uncle led at every meal when I was a kid and he still says it to this day. As a kid, everyone in my family would bow their heads in prayer and close their eyes, but I kept my head up and eyes open and would watch my Uncle Joe:
Bless us, O Lord, and these Thy gifts,
which we are about to receive from Thy bounty,
through Christ our Lord. Amen.
Short and sweet. I always liked that one.
He was honoring our family and the food and expressing thanks for our health and the time we all had together. I did not realize as a little kid or even later as a young woman how hard it was to gather so many people for meals or how lucky we were back then to spend that kind of time together. Now, as families splinter and fragment without any thought, I long for those big, slow, long shared meals.
A few years ago, two of my cousins were helping Aunt Dorothy and Uncle Joe clean out the basement of their longtime house. My cousins found an envelope of letters and postcards I had exchanged with my Aunt Dorothy over the course of my childhood and into my adult life over the years. When I was in college, living in Europe, traveling Central America, hiking in Turkey and working on farms in Norway and Oregon, we had always kept in touch. Sometimes her cards to me would include a $5.00 bill inside the envelope. Those letters and cards slowed around 1997 when email took over. I was not aware, but Aunt Dorothy had saved every card and letter.
Shirley died many years ago.
Witnessing how my cousins took care of her when I was in my young, very formative years, shaped my values and thinking around othering and dehumanization. The relationship with my Aunt Dorothy and the experience of seeing Shirley being loved unconditionally was one of my motivations for launching “SOME PEOPLE,” the organization I founded and direct that is dedicated to changing the American philosophy of health, healthcare and public health.
I recognize had Shirley not been lucky, her life would have had a much different, and likely much shorter, trajectory. When I see people in wheelchairs coming my way today, I am reminded that we can’t fathom what people have been through or what they carry inside. Chance, circumstance and luck impact us all.
One winter day years ago, I received in the mail that large envelope of letters Aunt Dorothy and I had exchanged, the one my cousins had found in the basement. On the following Sunday morning, I shook all of the cards, postcards and letters out onto the floor of my apartment, poured a cup of hot coffee, turned off my iPhone and sifted through all of them:
June 1992 | San Andrés Itzapa, Chimaltenango, Guatemala
Dear Aunt Dorothy,
Thank you for the graduation gift.
Today, I worked at a dental clinic with my friends, Amy and Phil. Amy is entering medical school this fall. We stumbled across the clinic in a rural area while walking and Amy asked if we could be of any help. We were wearing masks and gloves within minutes. We spent the day helping little kids get dental care. The dentists explained to us that the water in the region wasn’t drinkable in most places and drinking Fanta and Coke created cavities very early. I’m ok with blood and medical stuff, but seeing the kids wince in pain, scream and cry took its toll on me by the end of the day. Amy was stoic though. She will make a very good doctor. I don’t know what I will become.
Seems to me the civil war here impacts women and children the most.
More exploring ahead.
As ever,
Fred
August 1992 | Glen Ellyn, Illinois
Fred!
Glad you are back from Guatemala and El Salvador. We miss you. We hope to see you before you leave for Oregon.
Don’t forget your family.
Love always,
Your Aunt Dorothy
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
Donate to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital
Donate to BACKBONES
Donate to the Johns Hopkins Encephalitis Center