Alice died today. She was 99 years old and doing well when she fell the beginning of April and broke a hip. She was my mother’s younger sister, nineteen when I was born.
Now there is no one left who’s known me all my life and who was occasionally mistaken for my mother as we both had blonde hair and blue eyes. Her husband, Dick, died the beginning of April. Since they were inseparable for 75 years, it wasn’t a surprise that Alice wanted to be with him. Her four grown children and I understood.
At least . . . I think we understood.
The news, although anticipated, is still so fresh that the reality hasn’t sunk in. It will take a while. In the meantime, I’ll cherish the items in my own home she gave me: her secretary, the Hummel, the handmade quilt, various books, the tanzanite ring, and the apple cake recipe. Most of all I’ll cherish the letters I wrote her over 20 years (which she returned to me a while back), and our Friday telephone conversations that took their place as writing by hand became more difficult.
I’ve thought of Alice constantly since she took a turn for the worse several days back. And what keeps coming to the fore is that I never called her Aunt Alice, unless I was referring to her in conversation. As a child, I nicknamed her Owl-see; as an adult she was just Alice.
It wasn’t our biological connection that made our relationship special. It was Alice herself.
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