The Passing Of My Aunt

 My Aunt Pat passed on Sunday.

You might remember that she had a rough go the last two years:  first a cancer diagnosis (two different cancers), then a heart attack in reaction to her first chemotherapy treatment, then a series different chemotherapy sessions in which she seemed to rally a bit.

She stopped chemotherapy in December so she could have a Christmas feeling somewhat normal.  As it turned out, it was her last chemotherapy session.  A diabetic, she developed sores on her feet and the infection prevented her treatments from restarting.  And the cancer aggressively returned.

We had the opportunity to stop by and see her when we were up at The Ranch packing up the Barn.  She was, as she had ever been, awake and involved in the conversation.  It was good to see her, as always.

She entered hospice the Friday past as she had stopped eating and was having problems supporting her weight.

The doctor at initial diagnosis gave her 3 to 18 months.  She made it to 15.

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My Aunt, as the saying goes, was a complicated person (as we all are, I have come to understand).

Her childhood and early life remains a mystery to me; she seldom spoke of it in my hearing.  She "arrived", as it were, when she married my Uncle, my mother's older brother.  Wife of a military man, she traveled with him as they went to various stations: Kaua'i, White Sands, Japan, Norway, and a final stint in San Diego before moving back to The Ranch.  She had three sons, who were for most of my life the closest cousins that I had.

My Aunt was very concerned with creating a good atmosphere - a help when your husband is a Naval Officer.  I always remember her houses being elegantly and tastefully decorated, the meals having all the right plates and silverware.

By the time they moved back to The Ranch, my sister and I were finishing up high school.  We saw them on family holidays, all the more so when (with the passing of my maternal grandmother) she began sponsoring the Family Day Christmas Dinner (which were, unsurprisingly, filled with some exotic and delicious things to eat).  She extended that celebration easily another 20 years, until relocation and grown up 2nd generation children started having lives of their own.  It gave a little life back to The Ranch, where I remember from my childhood my Great Aunt and Uncle having Christmas celebrations with 70 people or more there.  

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It does not escape me that my Aunt's death falls on the same week as the closing of The Ranch.  I certainly cannot attribute one to the other, but it gives a certain finality to the nature of things.  I had personally committed to making sure I visited monthly as long as my Aunt was alive; I owed her that.  Her passing, and the passing of The Ranch to other hands, punctuates the fact that the visit two weeks ago was, the final visit in more ways than one.

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With her passing, I now have a single living Aunt on TB The Elder's side.

Of that generation on my mother's side (the side we were always closer to), there remains only my Uncle and a handful (less than five) of the children of my maternal grandmother and her sisters.  The remaining are all in the 70's and 80's at this point.  The next generation more or less started with me.

It is an odd place, this sense of finality and in a way aloneness, but one that has slowly build over the years.  First the passing of one's grandparents and their generation of great aunts and uncles, then of one's parents and their generation.  

And then, slowly into one's own generation.

This is the way life has always been, at least in the "good" times, where parents outlived their children and people lived into their 70's and 80's and beyond.  For all that age brings, it is a good reminder to me that it remains a privilege to grow old, a privilege many do not obtain.

Ave atque Vale, Aunt.  May we meet again in happier climes