Another first.
Life is all about irony. Just when you get comfortable with something, fate comes along and gives you a nice bitchslap upside yrou head to make sure you’re paying attention and to wake you up.
So last week when I was waxing about Alzheimer’s, a terrible disease that I’ve seen take Madame X’s grandmother (who was just a wonderful, terrific and special person) and has been the thing my Aunt has suffered from it for these last 8 years or so. She finally succumbed in her battle.
I hadn’t seen my Aunt in quite some time the last time being a birthday party for her at the home she was residing in coming up on three years back now. How three years passed so quickly, I can’t tell you but I would always ask after her whenever I get together with my cousins.
The thing was there was really nothing new to report. She was at the home and they would go see her but the woman she was, the person she had been was long gone – Elvis has left the building.
I can’t say I was particularly close to my Aunt, I can’t say I had heart to hearts with her or anything like that but she and my Uncle opened up their home to me each and every holiday over the course of my lifetime and I have to say it was a welcome island of stability in what was otherwise the sea of chaos most of my life has been.
I was talking to a relative the other day and I commented on how we would spend every Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter and other celebratory occasions over my Aunt and Uncle’s house and normally while we would be enjoying the meal, conversation, each other - they were in the kitchen making or fussing over things making it nice for everyone.
In Judaism (although we are none of us Jewish) there is a term: Mitzvah. On Wikipedia it is described as such: The secondary menaing of Mitzvah refers to a moral deed performed as a religious duty. As such, the term mitzvah has also come to express an act of human kindness.
That was my Uncle and Aunt, they were kind people.
So getting back to my Aunt though...
Even after she got sick, when the family would get together I would make it a point to sit and talk with her, even though most of these conversations would be circular in nature. I would want to engage her, if only to show her some respect and appreciation for all the nice things she had done for me through the years. But watching her take that final step and become nothing more than an empty shell was hard, I didn’t want to see that.
And as hard as it may have been for me, I can only imagine how hard it was for my cousins and the struggle they went through dealing with it.
So, the other day when the post about the Elvis Costello song Veronica went live (written a bunch of days in advance) and I wrote about people who just weren’t there anymore, one of the people I was talking about was my Aunt and then the very next day she was gone.
And I got the news via email and I can’t say it hit me at first other than to think it was a bit of a good thing because she wouldn’t endure this living death anymore. And when I read it, I can’t say I felt anything other than relief but then when I spoke to my cousins later in the day it hit and even now it hits and I found myself tearing up and crying.
And I think for a lot of us that was the kind of reaction. We were glad her suffering was over but the flip side was she wasn’t here anymore. And it made me realize that even though I didn’t see her and even for my cousins or their families there was a comfort in her still being here. There was simply by default of her being alive a connection to that beautiful past we all shared and that connection was still very much alive but with her passing it is gone and now shuffles over into the realm of memory.
I know everyone is going to miss her.
I know I will.
And that first?
Well, now is the first time I am a pallbearer and while it is not something I welcome because of what it means, I am glad to do it because it gives me that one last opportunity to do something for someone who had done so very much for me.
