I got a call from my cousin Tim. My aunt Sally passed away today. Her lungs finally gave out. She'd had lung cancer for what seemed forever, and wasn't able to breath without an oxygen tank. Every so often she'd have an attack and someone would take her to the hospital where they'd get her breathing and send her home. Tonight, everyone decided enough was enough.
With standing room only in her hospital room, people from all around the Bay Area streaming in to say goodbye, she, and they made their peace with her passing. And then they turned off the life support.
She was such a feisty woman, and I love her dearly. She loved me and my dad like crazy. I spent two weeks in Oakland with her the year after my father died. She was a wicked good card player, and we'd sit at her tiny dining room table and play Solitaire for hours on end. Sometimes she'd just let me sit there with her in silence. Sometimes she told me stories about my dad, stories I'd never heard before. I learned about a different man than the one I'd grown up with. Sally told me about the time that my dad played Taps at my uncle's funeral, after he died in the war, and tears streamed down his face. Or how he drove a cab to make money while he played in a swing band, and would go dancing every night. How things had fallen apart with his first wife, and that I had a half-sister out there somewhere that was 30 years older than me.
When the EMTs arrived to rush Sally to the hospital, three Mormon missionaries sat around her performing CPR and praying for her. They had knocked on the wrong door, but as she stood in the doorway giving them directions, her lungs gave out and she collapsed. The EMTs said that if it hadn't been for the missionaries, she would have died in minutes.
She had a great deep laugh, too loud and hearty for such a thin woman. Her house was always filled with her kids, and her grandkinds, and endless stream of cousins, even the neighbor's children. Her dog Squatter, almost as old as Sally, always trotted next to her. She'd lived in that same house for 42 years, with the stone garden out front, and the tall shade trees rustling in the wind.
Word must have spread fast to all of Sally's kids. Everyone had accepted that it would probably be soon that she would pass. They came from all corners of the West Coast, ready to say goodbye.
She was the last living connection to my father, and I always promised myself that I would get around to calling her again, just as soon as life settled down and I was ready to talk to her. When I did call on rare occasions, it always reminded me of my dad and I wept when I hung up the phone. I promised myself that I would make it to her funeral and say my goodbyes, but it's going to be on Saturday and I'll never make it. She outlived all the rest of my aunts and uncles, and sometimes I thought she would outlive me.
Just as the hospital was packed with people saying their good-byes, so too am I sure that there was a line of people waiting to greet her when she got to heaven. I will miss her.
I love you Aunt Sally, take care, and save a game of Solitaire for me in heaven. I know I'll see you there.
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