She died on a Saturday. It wasn’t a particularly exceptional Saturday. It was cold, even though the sun was high and searing its way through a cloudless sky, the kind of day when a fine mist can be seen dancing a top still waters. She was my aunt and for a long while I was angry toward her for his choices she’d made and the people she’d hurt along the way.

An alcoholic for twenty years, by the time she’d tried to pull herself together it was all too little too late. The damage was done so this days was inevitable, but it still came as a shock. It came as a shock before there was no forewarning, though my mother would later tell me of the death of a bird which crossed her path the very day before she died. I know, his means nothing to most people, but isn’t it possible that the stars did align to deliver my aunt to my recently departed grandfather?

I’d always made feelings about my Aunty very clear, but I lacked any true sense about the woman beyond the drunken car crash and alcoholic stumbles. I’ve heard that when she was younger, she quite the strong willed woman. After entering into the workforce at just 15, of her own volition might I add, she’d know a reliever successful career for a woman of time. However, this wouldn’t be what would define her, that is down to the men in her life.

Lovers, husband and son. These are the men that left a mark on her soul, though I don’t profess I know the true nature of her relationships as I’m piecing together a jigsaw puzzle without corners. I’ve learned that she was to be married one other time before settling down with the man she’d know to be her husband. Both men, though, shared one quality. They were controlling.

Now, when I say controlling I’m sure no one would have lifted a hand to her because I fear and hope that she’d give as good as she got. But, rather it was a mental, metaphysical control. Her current husband would dictate the way she talked, making sure she pronounced every word perfectly though he himself sounds as common as a fisherman on market day. The extent of the control, I confess, I’m not sure of. I am sure, however, that she changed and changed even more with the birth of her son.

As a mother, she’d take on the traits of her husband, controlling to the point of standing over him while he ate. Though I have no doubt it was through good intention, children should be left to grow not smothered. Smothering a child leads to contempt and British behavior, but I’ll admit I wasn’t the dream child either because those in glass houses- well, you know.

To say that she never loved or never cared would be grossly misleading. I know for a fact that beyond the alcohol she was a loving, caring woman, though very strong willed, so, strikes too much for her own good. But, I know she had a lot of love insider her. I learned that she loved her own grandparents as much as I love mind, that she’d be content to visit them and stay for hours. I learned that, though she was a recovering and struggling alcoholic, she never let my own grandma go without fresh flowers.

However, her need- not love of drink was an ever looming pendulum above her head. It had been a twenty year affair with alcohol and it ruined her, though I’m not entirely sure of the reason she started and speculating wouldn’t be fair to her. I often think my aunt should have been given some sort of punch card for the hospital or a membership in the high dependency unit. She’s been there over Christmas, though spring and summer. A woman of all seasons, if you will.

I never liked to visit her in hospital because this was a woman who’d often take me out while my mother was working and I have to admit that, at the age I was- around 5 or 10, I had no clue that the plastic bottle she’d carry with her was filled with vodka, not water. Even still, I did love her. She was family and you love family, which made it all the more harder to see her as a shell of herself. Emaciated from not eating and weather worn from the drink, it made me think we’d lost her already even though she fought on. Does it make me a completely bad person that I wished she’d have died years ago? Before you make that judgment, let me just say her quality of life since the stints hospital decreased ten folds, by the true end I figured she’d ultimately just stopped fighting. She was tired and who can blame her? I certainly don’t.

You could say I’m trying to reconcile my feelings with her because for a long time all felt was animosity and ambivalence, yet that isn’t fair. I don’t, in fact no one, knows why she started drinking. And, for a long time I was furious that she refuses to help herself when it felt like a world of care was being offered to her. My mother certainly couldn’t have done anymore than she tried to, so it’d with this that I’ve come to the conclusion that her rehabilitation was only as strong as the weakest people around her. Unfortunately, that, in my opinion and speculation, was her son and husband.

I never liked her husband or the home they’d made, he was the gold standard of ‘something not quite right’. Aside from that I can’t out my finger on exactly what I never liked about him, there never seemed to be anything behind the eyes or a falsity in his emotions. Maybe the house, in a way, reflected this. Though it was clean (not in recent years, however) there was always a stagnant, stale smell to it. A musk that would stick to the inside of your nose that I couldn’t quite shake, as if the cleanliness was something superficial.

The falsity carried over to her care, at least in my opinion which means jack shit. When you see someone inneed of help, real help, surely you’d everything in your power to give them or get them what they need? My mother was a great advocate of this, but there’s only so much she could have done without the help of my aunties son and husband. When it came to the help they provided her it seemed only there to just gloss over the issues, when ultimately she needed someone to help reach the root of her problems. To constantly be there to help her through such difficult time day in and day out and, like I said, my mother was only one woman up against an army of the willfully blind. However, I believe that they now understand they could have done more and been a little kinder. And, I guess I’m happy with that and I myself feel as though I understand her more than I did. Yet it comes with its own guilt, because I spent so much time hating this woman without truly understanding her and that’s as bad as anything else.

I guess to tend I should say that, on reflection and at the time of writing this, I’m sad. I’m sad that no one could have helped her and that she had to endure the way she did. I’m sad that I was angry at her for so long instead of trying to help in some small way. But, she’ll always be remembered as the woman she was before the alcohol. The kind hearted woman that brings my grandmother fresh flowers and the head strong woman who seemed to have such a bright future ahead of her. That’s how she’ll be remembered.