In Memorandum
I wrote this little less than a year ago, and never ended up posting it because it wasn’t my place to mourn someone publicly I wasn’t close with anymore. And also because my contribution to the family affair of my aunt’s funeral was to feed everyone. I’m only good at a couple things in life, but writing and cooking are two of them. But the mother of one of my best friends passed away unexpectedly this week, and when I was standing in their kitchen helping eat one of their many donated casseroles (after having delivered one of my own), I made the comment to my friend that I’ve become something of an old hand at funerals. This wasn’t meant to elicit sympathy, but actually in my own stumbling way meant to offer comfort. In the last, oh, five? years I’ve been to a good many funerals — a good neighbor, my dad’s best friend, my aunt, on Monday my best friend’s mom. I don’t know the grief of losing a parent, but I’ve been around the process enough that when a loved one’s world loses gravity, I know how to provide a small gravity well to keep them out of the void. Usually it comes in a baking pan — for my aunt’s family it was 80+ enchiladas, for my friend’s family it was mac and cheese.
Having had that conversation about getting good at holding the grief of others, I figured enough time has passed that I can mourn my aunt for myself, and in so doing add a little piece of her back into the world for those who aren’t done grieving yet, either.
My aunt isn’t doing so hot.
That’s a grievous understatement, and perhaps a little morbid since she is my aunt and it is not my place to announce, but she’s not doing so hot. And I want to take a moment while I weep silently on my couch to tell you what I remember about my aunt, who is my mom’s older sister and who helped raise me in my very early years.
I remember a lady who loved nothing more than to spend her resources — her time, her talents, her money, her energy — on gifts. I learned to swim because she bribed me with a bright blue snorkel set once I could swim the length of her pool without a noodle or water wings. I have a hand crocheted blanket done up in my favorite colors on my couch that is large enough to cover two grown adults and heavy enough to keep me from floating away in the winter as I sleep. There’s a second such blanket on my my mother’s couch, and a third in our dog’s kennel because even our dog knows there’s no better place to cozy up than on one of my aunt’s blankets. I remember a woman who always had the guest bedroom, and then the second guest bedroom, and then the third always made up for guests, since she was a woman who couldn’t stand a void and wished to fill it with company whenever she could. I remember an aunt who bought me swim suits and jeans when I was in high school in an attempt to help me look a little less like I wanted to crawl out of my own skin. I remember an aunt who was always happy to help you with your hair and your make up if you were going out, or even if you weren’t. I remember an aunt who quite literally spent hours doodling the names of her siblings and her in laws and her nieces and her nephews in elaborate calligraphy, and I remember us all thinking it was a strange Christmas gift to get our own names like that but now I think it was because she loved us all so fiercely and didn’t know how better to express it than the magic of calling our names to her as she sat on the couch.
And as I sit here on my couch, weeping fat heavy tears, I weep for the people who are losing these things — the gifts, the time, the smile. She has a daughter my age, and a son in college. She has a husband she’s been with through thick and thin for 30 years. She has a father, two sisters, a brother, and the accompanying brood of nieces and nephews like me who she lavished and loved no matter where she was. There’s not really any satisfying conclusion to this it just… is. And I think that’s the hardest part of this. It just is.
