The Aerie
My Aunt Marian died Sunday.
Now, this isn't the great ripping tragedy of my dad's death (sudden brain tumor, age 67), Steve's death (slow, vicious cancer, age 42), or Theresa's aunt's death (slow, vicious cancer, age 55?), or even my brother's near-death immersion in a swamp back in November.
Aunt Marian was 78, and was very sad after Uncle John died ten years ago. So she was ready to go and had said so.
Nonetheless, along with last summer's suicide of my youngest child's teacher, this will make five funerals in a year for our family.
The funeral will be Wednesday, the anniversary of my father's funeral.
Uncle John and Aunt Marian were where we used to go for Fourth of July in my family. I don't even remember what, if anything, my family did on the 4th in New Jersey. But when I was 12 we came to Minnesota for a visit and when I was 13 we moved back here to Minnesota, my mother's native state. Both years, and thereafter, we went to Uncle John's for the 4th.
Those were the last times that I saw my cousins by Uncle John on a regular basis. He and Aunt Marian had seven boys, which made their home an intensely rowdy place. We'd show up for barbeque and all the cousins would be swarming around, his seven, Aunt Mary's five, and our three.
Later we would treck across Falcon Heights to the State Fairgrounds, and watch the fireworks from across the U of M croplands (an odd thing in itself -- several acres of corn and soybeans planted in the middle of a city next to the U's "farm campus").
Uncle John was funny and friendly, stern with his own boys but kind to the rest of us. Aunt Marian was friendly but dour, a rail-thin South Dakota farm-girl whose capacity for pleasure always seemed limited.
With her passing the house (at a well-known Twin Cities intersection) may be left two her boys, Teddy and Bobby, labelled by one rakish cousin of mine as "The Dream Team." Suffice to say that if they worked together they might have a brain between them, but it's unlikely that they will work together.
We'll see where this goes...
Posted by Albatross at December 29, 2003 3:17 PM