Auntie...................

Two years ago today, my 'maiden' aunt Willy passed on. She went to that big Bingo Hall in the sky. (Her joke, not mine!)

She was 90 years old, suffered from COPD for the last 20-some years of her life. Smoked like a chimney most of her life, quit about 15 years ago. What did her in though was her falling, breaking a hip, and just not being interested in recuperating.

Auntie was my mother's sister, the second child of Anton and Johanna Van Straaten.
They had six children (that I know of):

Jo, the oldest (in the picture sitting next to my grandfather)
Willy, to her right, Corry, the next in line to her right.
The boy on the left is my uncle Anton, number four, then my mother Riek, and my youngest aunt Ans.

Grandfather was a fun man. He worked for the "water department" What he actually did there no one can tell me. Grandmother was a homemaker. She died right at the end of the war, just before the Swedish airplanes flew over and dumping much needed (and famous) white bread, and oranges.

There must have been other children, I vaguely recall twins mentioned, babies who died, but since in those days no one talked about these kind of affairs, my mother just doesn't remember.

I recall my grandfather very clearly. He lived with us. He was a jolly man, he took me to school, kindergarten, every morning and picked me up after, stopping at Jamin, the candy store for a sweet. Always ready to make fun, play tricks one someone.
My grandmother was a very quiet, shy, prude, hard working woman. My aunt Willy told me they were the most mismatched couple she ever knew.

My grandfather died when I was about 5 or 6. I can still picture the tableau: grandfather in bed, the priest giving the last rites, my uncles (the brothers in law) kneeling by the bed, rosaries in hand, praying hard.
It's just that particular 'picture' I have in my memory bank, don't remember anything else, not the funeral, the Mass, nothing. I also don't know what he died of. I know he fell off a ladder....

At this point I would like to mention, that a few years ago I had the opportunity to "tour" my old home, where my mom, dad, me and my little brothers, grandfather and aunt Ans lived.
When we entered the room that used to be my grandfather's, I had this incredible experience.
In a flash I "saw" my grandfather on his bed, my uncles kneeling on the floor. It lasted a nano second, but it was very clear, and gave me the biggest goosebumps.

My family moved to a new part in town in 1954, Aunt Ans got married, and when grandfather died, the house was sold, the money divvied up, and the belongings were dispersed by some sort of lottery. This procedure seems to have started quite a rift among the sisters and brother, and the animosity among them is still strong to this day. I remember talk about a fight over an umbrella, of all things.

Aunt Jo was married and had a bunch of children. I remember visiting them when I was young, but later on we pretty much lost contact. (Until I started this blog, and I found three of my cousins :>)
Aunt Corry and Uncle Bert and their son Ignatius emigrated to the USA in 1956(?). They started out in San Francisco, then started a small restaurant in Mill Valley, bought and ran a few motels, and ran the Bayside Coffeeshop.

Of course you know the story of my mom and dad.

Uncle Anton (the spitting image of my grandfather, a hilarious man and always a real hoot at parties!) married and had four kids. The oldest daughter was a week older than me, and like the other family, we hang out until we got older. This cousin died of cancer about ten years ago, I never kept in touch with the rest.

Aunt Ans was my god mother, and the coolest of the lot. She was better educated than her siblings, she went to the equivalent of high school (whereas my mom went to a school for homemakers) I spent a lot of time with my aunt and her family, and we were pretty close up until my departure to the States. They had three children. (I met THEM again during my last visit to Holland)

And then there was Willy.

Willy never married. She was quite the party girl in her haydays though. She was a bit of a rebel.
She was engaged when she was 17, but his family didn't think she was 'good enough' for them, and the engagement ended. As far as I knew she never had another man in her life.
There is a tale floating around that she did have a 'friend' in America, but my uncle did not approve of him, so off he went. Ignatius might be able to shed some light on that story.

So Willy ended up living with her sister Corry and brother-in-law Bert. First in Amsterdam, later in the States.
As far as I can recall, Willy was always like the third spouse. Unmarried siblings often just went to live with another family member.
My uncle passed away after a very succesful life as an entrepeneur. Leaving the two sisters.
At the time of his death Willy had been living on her own for a few years, but after uncle died, she and her sister hang out more and more. Especially when my aunt Corry became ill they became once again inseperable.
To make that long story short, my cousin Ignatius moved his mom to live with him in Australia, leaving Willy by herself in California.
At the time we were in California as well, so I promised to keep an eye on Willy.

You know, I am the reluctant caregiver, it seems. As much as I resented (let's be honest about it here :>) having to take care of, first my mother in law, and then auntie, as time went on, it became clear to me that this was just my dharma. These folks were tossed onto my path for a reason.

Willy lived an hour and a half drive from us, and when she started to really have problems with her health, I convinced her to move closer to us. I found her a brand new apartment with a lovely balcony, close to everything, even a new casino. (Willy was a gambler!!!)
Life went smoothly for a while, until Wheelie and I made the decision to move back to Georgia.
California had not turned out to be the place we would be able to retire to. Life was just too expensive, our child moved back to Georgia and the other kids could care less where we were.

Now, moving has never been a problem for us, we just DO it. But this time we had to consider Willy moving with us. In hindsight it might have been the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back. I took her out of her little world, as limited as it was.
I really tried to make the move as painless for her as possible, I organized the move, took care of everything, found her a new apartment here.
At first things seem to work out fine, but then she started having severe problems with her lungs. She ended up in the hospital and in a nursing home for 6 weeks. After that it was decided that she could not live in her own apartment anymore, and the hunt was on for a room at an assisted living facility.

Through pure Grace, I found one. I visited 4 or 5 facilitites in this area, and the one I really liked had a waiting list. I decided to put her on the list, and we were going to have her move in with us until a place became available.

As these things often work in my life, the day she left the nursinghome, we got word that there was a room for her! I had placed her belongings in a storage facility and stopped the lease on her apartment. Things just fell into place, even though I schlepped, ran around, talked to people til I was blue in the face. After all was said and done, we moved her into a lovely studio apartment.
She didn't really comprehend what was happening though. It took a few weeks before she understood that she did not have to cook for herself, that she didn't have to do clean, vacuum, do her laundry. It was all done for her. They even took care of her medications.
Even though her COPD was now considered "severe", she was, in my eyes, doing pretty good.
She loved watching tennis and golf, everything else she considered garbage :>) She was safe, surrounded by a very caring staff, beautiful room, which I made as Dutch as I could.

We would go shopping, go to breakfast on Sundays, she was always the ornery, bitchy little lady.
But she always made me laugh, and by holding up the mirror to her, she could laugh at herself as well.
But she refused to be social. She would not come out of her room except to eat, she didn't even participate in Bingo anymore.
I guess she had had it with life.
She started telling me she wanted to die, that there wasn't anything left to do anymore.
It drove me nuts to hear her like that, I was trying so damn hard to make her life run smoothly.

I wasn't listening!

BUT, and better late than never I guess, I stopped and learned to listen to her. Not argue, or correcting her, but really listen.

I tried to get some stories out of her about her childhood. Not much was forth coming I'm afraid, except that she used to love to go out and party, and that her siblings were old stick-in-the-muds.
She had some pretty tight opinions, didn't like certain people. Was 'against' anyone who was different, be it black, hispanic, asian, gay....I never was able to reason with her about these things. In the end she would just humor me, so I would shut up :>)

On St. Patrick's Day she was changing her clothes for dinner. She slipped and fell in her bathroom. She broke her hip.
Was taken to the hospital, 45 miles from here. The doctor gave me the decision: to operate or not. Considering her condition with the COPD, he didn't see much point in hip replacement surgery, but he could jack it up with a screw or two.
I asked her, she didn't care. So we opted for the screws.

She came through the surgery, but things just went downhill from there. Back in the nursing home for recuperation, she just refused to go to PT, she developed an infection in her leg (great nursing staff...NOT!!) and she basically slipped into oblivion. She never made it back to her assisted living facility apartment.

She wasn't particularly religious in the last years of her life, but when I asked her if she wanted to see a priest, she seemed relieved, said yes, and so she received the last rites. After the priest was done she simply said: "Now I can go." She wasn't kidding.

Two days before she died she mentioned to me: "Isn't it strange...all my sisters and my brother are thinking about me right now...I can feel it..."
Of course they were. I made sure everyone was being kept in the loop. Amazing though, how she was able to "feel" that!

We put her on palliative care/hospice on Sunday, which meant, more morphine, and letting things just flow.
I visited her that Monday morning. She was already unconscious. I held her hand for a while, brushed her hair, and said goodbye. I had some errands to run...would be back later...

I wasn't home a minute or the phone rang...she was gone...

That was two years ago...

My new charge is going to turn one year old in a few weeks...

Life certainly has an interesting way of....what?....

Never a dull moment...

Learning something new every day......

And interestingly enough...people from your past coming back into your life.....

How marvelous!


SGMKJ!