(no subject)
My great aunt Lorraine is dying. She was diagnosed with cancer last year, so she probably didn’t have long anyway, but she had a stroke last week and isn’t expected to live past next week.
This is incredibly depressing. My whole family has been really close to Aunt Lorraine for years. She lives about eight hours away, so we didn’t get to see her often, but whenever she was in town, we’d have a huge party with all of our aunts, uncles, cousins, and assorted friends. Every year she’d send all her (great) nieces and nephews cards for our birthdays, and she always included a handwritten note in each on this special stationary she always had. I don’t know what she wrote to everyone else, but she’d usually include stories about past generations of our family. Aunt Lorraine was the one who told me about a relative of mine a few generations ago (she was either Lorraine’s aunt or great aunt) named Hannora. Hannora was a full blooded Irish lady who had the family temper and loved to dance an Irish jig. Apparently I look almost exactly like she did when she was my age. Similar names, same temper, almost the same appearance, same passion for Irish dancing. Although she’d been dead for years by the time I was born, I felt a certain affinity for her. I don’t know, it’s like I found a kindred spirit, albeit one who lived five generations before I did. I would never have known of her if not for Aunt Lorraine.
That’s another thing; my grandma (Lorraine’s sister) has been dead for twelve years, and my Aunt Rosie (the third sister) has been dead for longer. Lorraine is almost literally the last tie I have to the history of that side of my family, and it’s incredibly depressing, particularly to someone like me who values information about the past, to think of that tie being gone forever. She’s the last member of that era of my grandma’s family too.
So I guess what I’m saying is that I’m feeling incredibly sad about the whole thing right now.