A Tribute to an Extraordinary Person

My aunt died at eighty seven and for most of her life she remained a potent life force.  A woman whose vibrancy and love of life were infectious.  A strong, positive person, she lived her life with a lot of intensity.  She was brilliant, courageous and beautiful, with light blue eyes and glowing skin.  She loved the sun but she took care of her skin, never letting her catch  her without a big hat and cream, and as a result, she always looked younger than her years.  My aunt aged but she never got old.  The old cliche "Young at Heart," really applied to her.  I never heard her complain "about old age."  I never heard her whine about her aches and pains.  She accepted the limitations of age with grace and fortitude.  I believe her strength came from her keen awareness of death, of the fact that no matter how long you live, life is ultimately brief and should not be wasted.  She had a tragic life but she refused to become embittered.  She simply went on month after month and year after year like a gigantic redwood tree, weathering the storms of life on her feet.  Her branches were whipped and battered with the merciless winds but she never sank to her knees and she never gave up.  She was a real visionary with an eye on the future.  She was seventy nine when she made her last trip to America and she took in the relatives and sights of the city she loved with the delight of a child.  We shared precious moments with her never realizing that in a couple of years, she would be heading for that long, excruciating goodbye.  We couldn't have foreseen then that Alzheimer's would begin corroding her brain little by little, eventually stripping her of her magic and dignity.  We couldn't have known that this marvelous woman, who loved to talk and share her experiences, would become a mere spectator in the game of life she had once controlled so completely.  Had we seen it coming, wouldn't we have told her how much we loved her?  Wouldn't we have thanked her for all the good she did to each and everyone of us during her lifetime?  Why did we take her for granted?  Was it because she was in our lives for so long that we began to think of her as being eternal?  It all  happened so gradually, so insiduously, yet the clues were there long before the illness took a hold of her - if we had only been able to see them.  She began neglecting her teeth in her sixties because she had heard that too much brushing ruined the enamel (that was a red flag right there but none of us saw it).  We scolded her and she went back to brushing them daily.  She still talked up a storm but she began straying from the subject by jumping to the past and had to be redirected.  We secretly made fun of her, attributing it to old age catching up with her.  She had began to die and none of us knew it.  Proud and courageous she went into that good night the way she had lived, not wanting to bother anybody and bearing her condition till it became unbearable, then she finally submitted to it, grudgingly accepting my sister's part time help.  When I finally went back to see her, I was struck by her thinness and fragility.  She was incoherent and didn't know me, not on an intellectual level but I'm convinced that on an emotional one she did, and her eyes were glad to see me.  Those beautiful eyes which had once danced with so much life, intelligence and excitement, were now saddened by the limitations of her illness, by the cruel realization that she had changed irremediably.  I believe that through the fog, confusion and betrayal of her mind, she knew what she had lost and she was mourning that fact the only way she knew how.

Mercifully, she died on May 10, just two months short of her eighty eighth birthday in the arms of my brother, a very special person whom she loved unconditionally.  He held her hands and told told  her to hold tight, not to be afraid, that he was there beside her, that she wasn't alone, that she would never be alone anymore, a beautiful gesture that help her pass peacefully.  It was a marvelous, courageous thing to do and none of us could have done it.  We would have panicked, we would have run around screaming.  It takes real guts to view death up close and personal and have the spiritual fortitude to face it.  It also takes a lot of love and compassion to help a dear member of the family pass away in this fashion.  She knew that emotionally and that's why she chose them, we're certain of that.  She arranged it that way and he rose to the challenge subliminally.

Her last three months were very painful as she began losing her balance and falling down a lot. She had also began having trouble chewing her food but I was thankful she didn't get to the end of her brutal illness, she died still being able to give and receive love. She didn't become a vegetable like other more unfortunate souls. She stood by her terrace and said goodbye to her garden, which had given her a lot of joy throughout the years and which she had loved and nurtured like a child. She kissed my sister's hands over and over, silently thanking her for the love, care and attention she had shown her during her last years. She silently said goodbye to her son and her little house, the house she had lived in for some sixty years or so. And as for me, there were no goodbyes between us, there couldn't be. We had been too close and we had loved each other too much for us to ever be able to say goodbye. She did send me a signal, however, to let me know that she was fine, happy, and that I shouldn't mourn her death, that I should celebrate her life. She sent me a signal in the form of a huge, beautiful black robin with a red, flaming chest who flew over my head when I stepped out, and making sure I had seen him, flew gloriously into the horizon. That was her spirit, her way of telling me "live, live now, don't cry for me anymore. Live your life as I have lived mine, fully, intensely, fearlessly."