Besides Mother and the Amazing Aunt Tammy my best friend Snookie is my hero.  You remember me talking about Immaculee Ilibagiza?  Her demeanor, faith and forgiving nature reminded me of Snookie.  Yes she’s still human and gets angry but doesn’t bother holding a grudge or turning vicious because she knows it’s pointless and never really seems to get ya anywhere.  Believe it or not I’ve always wished to be more forgiving, and strive like hell to someday reach that goal.  But you and I both know I’m not there yet.

Ah hell, my Aunt Kaye passed away tonight.  I did a search for her, but I never really actually wrote about her (on here); there’s only a few snippets.  And it’s bloody impossible to describe someone you’ve known for a lifetime inna few paragraphs.

She had been sick for the past three years and was diagnosed with Primary Pulmonary Hypertension, which caused a multitude of other complications and thus her prognosis was terminally ill.  She was a long time smoker, never took care of herself and rarely went to see a doctor.  She didn’t do housework (she would buy another set of dishes instead of washing the ones she had); she wasn’t just a non-exerciser she preferred not moving a muscle at all; the only green thing she ate were M&M’s or peas inna can; and sadly becoming truly ill was her life long dream.  She was forever having phantom pains or declaring she suffered from some obscure illness.  So when her wish finally came true noone was terribly surprised.

In the beginning she wasn’t even supposed to last 3 three months, then it was 6, then a year; etc, etc.  However she just kept going to the point where even the doctors started asking, “Why aren’t you dead yet?”

She was whiny, always negative, unpleasant and completely uninterested in anything that wasn’t about her.  It was all you could do to find out how her daughter was doing, and even when ya got the info it was always trailed by negativity or how she didn’t care for her son-in-law and all the horrible things she just knew he was doing.

So five hours and one minute later after her death I’m writing to you about how unfortunately she was quite often a mean, manipulative, lazy, controlling and self-centered person throughout her entire life.  Both Mom and Dad are always talking about how she led such a sad life.  But despite it all I remember having wonderfully outrageous fun with her.  It couldn’t have been and it wasn’t all that bad.  I remember one New Year’s Eve at Aunt Kaye and Amy’s apartment.  We were sitting at the dining room table scarfing down your typical New Year’s Eve type munchies; she squirted some Easy Cheese onna cracker and said inna monotone voice, “It’s a wonderful life.”  And we all fell outta our chairs laughing at the sheer pathetic-ness of it all.  

Thanks to my asinine, uppity self-centered lil grudge I hadn’t talked to her for more than a year, and it’s a lil late now.  I’d been saying for months how I was gonna call her and just get over it, but when I actually got to the phone all I could think of was, “Oh God, I’m not up to talking to her right now – she’s so tiresome.”  I absolutely meant to do it before my surgery but of course I kept dragging my feet until it was too late to call back in the Midwest.  Then I totally meant to call after the surgery.  I thought maybe I would get a chance to do it today (she’d pulled outta these things in the past), but I knew that chance was lost the moment I heard Mother screaming like a wounded animal in the hallway.  

I wish I could tell Kaye we got the phone call while I was in the damn bathroom, she would’ve loved that.

You can’t feel sorry for me and you shouldn’t; it was my doing and my decision.  I ignored or kept inventing excuses just so I wouldn’t have to talk to a dying woman who managed to knot my knickers more than a year ago.  Well whoopty shit!  Who hasn’t managed to do that?  What made her so special?  I guess it was because I loved her and she was related to me.

You know I was actually planning to take a trip over there once I felt better.  Well, we’re goin now.  

Because of the distance I still feel somewhat detached.  Somebody called up on the phone to tell Mom that her only sister had died, but that’s just hearsay.  The closer I get to Kansas I imagine the reality of the situation will start creeping up on me.

I know one thing for sure:  I’m going to be there for Amy.  I’m so proud of her; she’s done and doing things that noone thought she was capable of, but I always did.  Bless her heart, she was in class when they came and told her and the poor thing started vomiting up anything she’d eaten in the past few days.  But she’s gonna be ok.  In fact her and her husband just bought a house and she wants to start tryin to have kids.  She was able to show Kaye pictures of their new home before she went; Amy was so happy she got to show her.  Kaye and Amy were always apartment dwellers and it was always Amy’s dream to have a house of her own.

Kaye’s to be buried in the same cemetery as Grandpa was.  I wonder if her grave will be close to his.