'The funerary corteges didn't end till fall...'
I guessed a premonition in her words, but little did I know how soon or how shocking. Hers was a life rather sought out by tragedy, and when I knew her, I often wondered how people so young survive. Except it's easy, really. When somebody dies, we rearrange ourselves around the ones left.
Another aunt died last week. She was 43. She wasn't sick. Only briefly, and not obviously deadly, last year. None of us knew she'd died until after. Those were her wishes, and I've been thinking a lot about what that says about a person. How little you might like yourself to decide that in death or dying, you are not worth witnessing.
But more so, to rob those who love you of a chance to say goodbye. I wasn't close to her for a decade, though I met her in passing last year at a protest. Was surprised how she smelled exactly the same as when she used to babysit me. The fondness that triggered in me, after all these years.
She wasn't a happy, well-contended sort of person. She was strict and anxious and riddled with frustration. She feared what it'd be to try, so she didn't. She used to bully her sisters' children because, to her, it was a form of love. She once adopted an abandoned boy but proved to be an authoritarian martyr, and he, in turn, abandoned her.
He also had cancer.
A little before she died, she decided her sister's children would burn in Hell and told her so. Her sister who, for years, has also been fighting a fierce, private battle against cancer. Who is one of the strongest people I know.
All I could think when she died was, thank god it wasn't her. Take the others, but don't take her. My good aunt. Is that a calloused thing to think? Probably.
It's tempting to forget someone's faults when they die; to deplore their sad death. But what about their sad living? What about the fact that she lived in bitterness all her life, friendless, unloved, pouring her anxieties, and repressed wishes into other people's children? Filling young heads with harsh judgments and baseless fears? Not going after the life she wanted for fear of what that might mean...eventually?
Do such things justify a sad, untimely death? Not really. Does that mean we didn't cry for her? Not really.
I find it strange how, when somebody dies, life starts rearranging itself almost immediately. The inner geographies of your life start bridging over the sudden gap. Tears come through long spells of normal. Lust for life rushes over you. Primal.
She is no longer. A sister who didn't get to say goodbye says, baffled, over scraggly phone line. She is one with the sea.
And we think, what a waste. To dream all your life of living on the seashore. To never quite dare. To find, only in death, the courage that might've made your life worth living.
At least it's a lesson. My friend and I say. A subtle warning to those who'd live near the Sea. Those like you or me.
