goodbye aunt ruth

my aunt ruth died last week. she was the eldest of my father's sisters. she made it to 91. there are only four of dad's siblings left now and six are gone (including dad).  i guess we've reached that point. aunt ruth looked more and more like our grandmother as the years went by. her voice came to match the same pitch, her weekly coiffed beauty shop hair increasingly white like grandma kate's. the same impatience if you were slow to play your card or made a dumb move in scrabble. her thrift - apparently no amount of leftovers was too little to save.  she had other parallels with grandma - losing her husband early and having to cope with a whole flock of children on her own.

she had five children, five cousins who i don't know as well as i know many of my other cousins. only two of them were in my age range. the others were quite a lot older than me and we never lived close to them. my impression is that only one of them has really stayed in touch with the family. i remember "brother bruce" calling my dad on occasion.

i have warm memories of the oldest of those cousins. the summer when i was 18, i lived with my horse trainer in rapid city and i went to visit aunt ruth frequently. barbara, her eldest, and her husband were there. in my memory, they were there that whole summer, but it may have been just a couple of weeks. memory is like that. it stretches out at times. especially in the long, hot days of summer.

i'd go over and have dinner with them and after dinner, we'd play cards. barbara and her husband would mix each of us up a white russian - kahlua, vodka, plenty of ice and a dash of cream. i was only 18, so it was deliciously illicit to me. it was legal in those days for 18-year-old in south dakota to drink "low point" beer, but white russians were a forbidden luxury until 21. and when it's slightly forbidden, it's that much better. and even aunt ruth drank them with us (that was decidedly un-grandma kate of her). i felt like i had joined the club. the club of adults. i don't remember ever getting tipsy from them and i don't remember if we ever had more than one. but i remember those card games very fondly. and to this day, when i drink a white russian (which is all too seldom) i think of those long luxurious summer nights when i was 18.

thank you aunt ruth. you will be missed.

too young to die

i don't keep in touch with many from my old high school class - it's been nearly 30 years since we graduated and i've quite literally drifted far, far away from them. but i'm friends with at least one classmate on facebook. late last week, she let me know that another of our classmates had serious cancer and wasn't expected to live much longer. it was just a few days later that i learned that he had died on saturday. i hadn't thought of him in years and he wasn't someone that i'd say i knew very well, despite being only 36 people in our graduating class.

when i was a kid, we had lived in the same neighborhood and biked around in a pack as kids do. but my main memory of that is that i argued with him that i was older than him because my birthday was in march and his was in may, not realizing he was a year old than i was. but it was because we were in the same class, so i assumed we must be the same age. odd that i clearly remember that silly argument after all these years.

i don't know what became of him after high school, what he studied, what he decided to be when he grew up, who he married, whether he had children, if he was happy. but i find myself thinking about him now that i know he is gone. 47 is far too young to die. i've since learned he had a very aggressive and rare neuroendocrine cancer. although i'd lost touch, it makes me feel sad to think that someone (nearly) my age, is already gone. how much more did he have to do? how old are his kids? now he won't see them grow up and become who they will become.

he still lived in south dakota, about an hour from where we grew up. and on sunday, the community pulled together and held a benefit auction for his family, since they are facing a whole heap of medical bills. i imagine when they planned it, they didn't expect that he would die the day before the event. those organizing the event shared it on a facebook page. all kinds of people and businesses in his community donated items to be auctioned for his benefit and to scroll through the timeline, looking at them is somehow comforting. it was clear that he was well-liked and respected and loved by people around him and by his community. and although i hardly knew him, it brings a little tear to my eyes to see how they rallied around him and his family.

it also gives me pause, because you don't see such things here in denmark, where a community rallies around someone who is ill and comes together to help. mostly because we have universal health care and there wouldn't be any big medical bills piling up around someone who was seriously ill. but i also think that we miss out on a feeling of community spirit that such events bring. there are times when i admit i miss that sense of community here in denmark and when i feel that the society is poorer and more selfish without it.

i suppose like any death, it makes us confront our own mortality and that's what's really giving me pause - someone my own age dying brings it a little closer to home. now don't get me wrong, i don't go around fearing death like a cloud hanging over me. but it does make me think that i should probably do a little bit better with the time i have, because you never know.

a change of seasons

it seems somehow both sorrowful and fitting to attend a funeral here in the liminal space of almost-spring. spring is only just starting to happen, but there is still evidence everywhere of last season. spring hangs in the liminal space between, waiting to fully burst forth, but being chased back by winds that are still a bit too cold and the rattle of last year's dried leaves.

it seems especially sad to die right on the verge of spring, to not see the lambs frolic in the green fields, to not see the magnolia unfold its delicate blooms, to only have seen the earliest snowdrops and bluebells, but to miss out on the tulips and the daffodils. but seasons come and seasons go and life has its seasons as well.

so to leave the here and now at this time and go to whatever might be next is perhaps fitting. the beautiful flowers of yesteryear making way for the new, fresh buds and blooms of tomorrow. a life well lived moving to the next level, leaving behind sorrow for those who are left here in the liminal space. but to have lived well and been kind and good-hearted and thoughtful to those who miss her now. to leave behind the pain of a cruel illness and move into the rebirth of green, the sunlight of a flower-strewn spring, seems somehow the best ending one can hope for. to have loved and been loved, to have laughed, to shed tears and have tears shed for you, to leave something behind, a mark on the world--in the form of children and grandchildren and a home that really feels like home...it's what we're all striving for in our own way. it's an achievement of the highest order.

and although the sun set on a life well-lived today, the sorrow is all ours, those left behind, who will miss her laughter, her kindness, her positive spirit, staying up late drinking one more glass of red wine, fresh soft-boiled eggs from her hens for breakfast, her fantastic dinners, those little fjord shrimp that sabin, at age 3, trotted back into the kitchen again and again, saying "mere, mere" until magda laughed with delight at how much such a little girl could eat. we're left with the good memories and an empty spot in our lives.

here at the change of seasons, a reminder that life is as cyclical and predictable as they are, even in their unpredictability.