My aunt.
Today, - April 1st - I received word that the very last relative of my parents' generation - my formidable, 97 year old (almost 98, and still sharp as a tack) aunt - my father's older sister, who adored him, the person who was the matriarch of a vast family, - had died late last night, (just before midnight, March, 31) more or less lucid until the end.
She had continued to work (as a postmistress in the more than 200 year old house where she - and, for that matter, my father - had been born), until she retired at the grand old age of, yes, 83, and then, only with considerable reluctance.
So, life and death - among other things - are on my mind.
Tonight, my brother, (referred to as Decent Brother on a number of fora), remarked that he had always loved visiting that house, - savouring the sense of many lives lived, and the fact that he was able to feel a connection with his own roots, (I will freely admit to similar thoughts) the house my aunt left for the last time last week, when, laid low by a bout of pneumonia, she was admitted to hospital, something she would have hated, for she detested hospitals.
She adored my father (her baby brother) who loved her in turn; a relationship not unlike mine with Decent Brother. Indeed, she loved Decent Brother, for I think that he reminded her of my father.
She was a fully qualified music teacher (and gifted musician, some of my father's family - including my father - had music in the soul) who ended up succeeding her own mother, my grandmother, as postmistress, in a house where members of my extended family have lived for more than a century.
And, with her own salary to call upon, she was able to finance foreign holidays (disliked and intensely disapproved of, by her conservative husband, who never travelled, but hugely encouraged by both of my parents, who cheered her on), where she would head off (by herself, or in company with a congenial group, but never accompanied by her husband) to places such as Vienna (she loved Salzburg and Mozart) and Paris, and Italy, for opera, on short breaks - rarely more than a week, usually less, but undertaken regularly - for music and culture, which thrilled and delighted her, and which she regarded as sanity saving and soul preserving.
And would then return to her 200 year old plus house, her job as a postmistress in a village, (now a dormitory village for the nearby city) and her intelligent, conservative, somewhat suffocating, handsome, but uncomprehending and traditional husband - "Spartan", my brother remarked this evening, "but, I loved it."
My parents were horrified by the house, for they loved the conveniences of the modern world, - they had both known what it was like to grow up in and live in a spacious old house (my mother used to mock my adoration of sash windows) without electricity, warmth unless a fire had been set hours earlier, or the joys of modern plumbing, and both hated it - and this lovely, but ancient, house was tardy in discovering the advantages that the modern world might offer to older houses; "sell it," my father urged.
The location is amazing, and the house directly across the road has a lintel with the date 1799 inscribed. My aunt used to reply, "I was born here, and I'll die here." And she very nearly did.
Less than a year after my father's death in 2005 there was a robbery (armed robbery) at the post office (not the first).
My uncle, then still alive, well into his eighties, polite, still handsome, dignified and dressed in an impeccable (tailored) three piece suit, pressed shirt, knotted tie, calmly and clearly - articulate and eloquent - described in impeccable detail the raid - in what was his home (he had married into my aunt's family) to the police to their stunned amazement.
Apparently, he had rushed into the post office - from the adjoining living room - this is a house where the walls are about three feet thick - so, the internal door from the living room to the post office was almost like a small hallway - to try to defend his wife. They (the police) were expecting to speak with a gibbering wreck, for this was a man, an elderly man, who was suffering from the cancer that claimed him a year later.
Meanwhile, my aunt, then aged 82, rose for work the next day, before 7 am in the morning, ready to open the post office for business as usual, - people in the village needed these services, especially the elderly not all of whom were computer literate, or had children who lived online; the smashed glass of the broken sash windows swept away, the post office opened the day following the armed robbery - precisely on time, - I remember the loud sound of the "tock tock" of the second hand on the large, clear, extremely legible, ancient (but very accurate), classic clock in the post office - as was insisted on by my formidable aunt.
The young police officer that the police had detailed to stay with my aunt and uncle overnight (lest they were traumatised) was stupefied. He phoned my cousin (my favourite cousin, whose daughter is autistic,
@Apple fanboy, will know of him; he is their youngest child and youngest son) to express concern, wondering whether this determined detachment was an expression of, or a case of, delayed shock.
My cousin laughed: Nah, this is normal. Don't worry. The day she doesn't want to get up - classical music on the radio in the background - is the day we need to worry.
And, last night, that came to pass. Decent Brother had said to me (when he phoned earlier in the week to let me know that she was in hospital, and wasn't expected to "come home") - "you know, when she realises that she can't return to the house she loved, she will just say, "I've had enough, time to move on"".
And that, I believe, is what she has done.
