Loss

My Aunt died last week.

Over the past three years we had become close - our relationship really began during the time that my father (her brother) was dying of cancer.  I was trying my best to care for him, and she was trying her best to do so vicariously through me since she lived too far away to be by his side.  My father didn't come clean with anyone about the gravity of his illness - not really - I was the only one who watched it first hand.. who attended the hospital with him.  Who helped him try to eat.  I saw him lose more body weight than one could think was possible.  My aunt didn't know whether to believe my version or my father's version.  She didn't come to see him in his last year.  She was terribly shocked when he eventually passed away.

Her death was entirely different.  She had never been a picture of health due to a congenital heart defect... but no one had any notion that last week she would go to bed and never wake up.  She was 57 years young.

Grief is strange - its phases are mapped out by psychoanalysts and I suppose they aren't far from the truth.  Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, resignation.  I certainly went through these steps (sometimes slipping backwards) when my father died.  It took more than a year to get to resignation.  The 'bargaining' stage might better be termed 'second-guessing,' or perhaps another stage with that theme needs to be inserted.

"If only I'd..."
"I wish I had have..."
"Maybe it would be different if..."
"Why didn't they listen?"
"Why didn't I see?"

Everyone I have known that has lost someone very important to them has spent at least some time asking themselves the above questions.  They wonder what they could have done.  They want to go back and make something right.  They wish some variable that was within their control could have changed the situation.

But the situation cannot be changed.  We all know it, and yet it is impossible to lose a loved one without going through the phases... no one gets to skip ahead to 'resignation.'

My Aunt had a bad heart, they say.  Well... I know differently.  She had an amazingly powerful heart.  She cared .. deeply.  I will miss her, even though our relationship consisted solely of telephone conversations - sometimes daily and other times just a few times a month, depending on life's events.  I hear her voice in my head - her laugh - I hear her saying my name.  We shared a connection that now must live on only inside myself.  And it will.

I plan to paint a Violet in her memory and send it to my uncle - the man who she adored for more than 35 years.

I love you, Auntie Vi.  I picture you with your brothers now.  I see you all smiling.