A door closes

I hadn’t seen my Auntie Shirlee is many years and then only briefly. This morning in Toronto, my aunt died.

She had Parkinson’s and was essentially dependent on others for every aspect of her care. Most of her days were spent alone in a nursing home, with a nurse in to feed, bathe and change her and my aunt, in constant pain, was miserable.

Since having a stroke several years back, her speech was labored and difficult and she could rarely be understood, but she did manage to communicate to her daughter that there as “no point” to her life and that she was done.

I am sincerely glad she has peace now.

Her daughter worried that my aunt’s heart was too strong to give up, but I think she knew her mother wasn’t long for this world and when I spoke to my cousin this morning, I could hear relief in her voice.

She was a figure that loomed large in my childhood - and she had fabulous stories. She said she could see ghosts and told us that once, while visiting Mexico City in the late 70s, she spent hours one evening inside a hotel room talking to the spirit of a suicide; apparently while she sleeping, this ghost woke her and told her his story. I don’t recall the details now, but I do remember that she had a fairly large collection of these kinds of encounters. We were mesmerized by her tales - I do remember that.

She was a clothing designer and created the outfits my twin and I wore to our Bat Mitzvahs in 1979 - plaid skirt, velvet jackets with plaid piping and a soft linen shirt underneath. She also designed wedding gowns (she designed my mother’s), and cocktail dresses and if I close my eyes, I can smell her shop and see the sewing machines lined up, the boxes of sequins and the vast array of colors of thread.

She loved animal prints as well, and not only painted lions and tigers all over her apartment as a mural, she wore such prints nearly always: my mind’s eye of her is bleached blond, wearing wooden earrings, and wearing a leopard print jacket, accompanied by a kick-ass grin.

The funeral is on Sunday morning, so I will head to Montreal tomorrow for it and for a few days of the Shiva. My dad’s dodgy health has had my mom pretty much constantly worried and now that she will not only host me and my two sisters (and my sister’s kids), but the Shiva and its innumerable guests, my mother is a bit of a basket. I am going to be with my mother, so I can shoo her upstairs to the comfort of her room (and humongo tv)  and deal with the family and extended family and whatever family dynamics (and oy, will there be dynamics) that present during the seven-day mourning period.

But, mainly, I will go to be with my dad, because he has only one sibling left and despite the fuss and bother he thinks I will undertake to get there (so minimal), I am going to hang out a few days to help and be moral support. My job will be to tease him, make him laugh and to hug the stuffing out of him.

My father had asked me me to consider speaking for the family at the funeral, and I think I may just get up, at Paperman’s Funeral Home, to address the assembled with words my Auntie Shirlee’s little brother can’t say without crying. I wasn’t that close to my aunt, but my dad will miss her terribly, and I cannot help but recognize the hole her death has made in the fabric of the family.
Another door closes.