Endings

It’s now the final day of the year so I suppose it makes sense to make this my last post for the year. I got the news early yesterday that my aunt has died. My grandma was the oldest of nine kids and Aunt P was one of four sisters. She was the last sister remaining. Now it’s just the two youngest sons left in the family, and both are close in age to my mom. Growing up, Aunt P was one of a couple from that family that I saw most often. Her daughter is just a few months older than me and I had sleepovers at the house many times when we were in Pennsylvania. Aunt P was one of those larger-than-life people, loud and brash but a lot of fun. I remember her for an unending number of crochet projects over the years. It seemed she was often with a crochet hook in her hand when I was at her house. I also remember her presence at so many family get-togethers and she loved to play cards and she also smoked all the time. The last time I saw her properly was when I was home with Lego Lover in 2010. We stopped by her house with my mom and grandma and had a good visit. Lego Lover found her very overwhelming, though, and stayed in the car most of the time even though Aunt P tried to persuade him to come inside.

For the past several years, Aunt P has been living with Alzheimer’s, one of the cruelest of ailments. Since the pandemic began, she’s been mostly locked inside the care home where she lived and her kids weren’t able to visit for over a year. The best they could do is see her through a window. I assume things have improved in that area because my cousin and her brothers were with her the last few days of her life. I’m so glad they had that opportunity. I suspect for my cousins, it’s more of a relief than anything. After all, Aunt P has just not been the same in recent years. When I last saw her in 2017, the person I remembered seemed to have disappeared.

So this is an ending and a goodbye to Aunt P and this year.