Goodbye Aunt Lois

We found out Sunday that the last of my Grandmother’s siblings had passed away. My grandmother, the oldest of ten children, was 25 years older than her baby sister Lois. In fact, Granny got married later the same year Aunt Lois was born. They were still close, though. Not to minimize anyone’s grief as we don’t all show it the same way, but of the people I remember at my grandmother’s funeral, it was Aunt Lois whose grief was most tangible to me.

As much as Aunt Lois reminded me of a taller version of my own grandmother, I’m sad to say I saw her just once since my grandmother’s funeral in 2003. Every era in history has its pluses and minuses. The minus of our very mobile society is the loss of the ties that come with living with extended family on your doorstep. I barely knew my great aunts and uncles. A few I’m not sure if I even met. Of my grandmother’s nine siblings, I have solid clear memories of only three of them. I couldn’t claim to have known any of them well enough to have the feelings of deep loss I know her children, grandchildren, etc. must be feeling right now…

Feelings are very hard thing to quantify, never mind describe. The news on Sunday didn’t come with the gut-punch sorrow that crept through all the dark corners of my personal 2003. There’s an emptiness, of course. The only way I can describe it is as an echo from Granny’s death, a realization that another thread that connected us is gone.  Sigh… a chapter ends…

At any rate, my sympathies and thoughts are with my cousins in their loss. I didn’t know her as they did, but I knew her enough to know that she must have been as special to them as my grandmother was to us.