My Aunt, my Dad’s much only sibling, died last Sunday. She’d been fighting bone cancer and was at home recovering from a bad turn. She was 84, much older than my Dad who knew her more as a mother figure than a sister. I, of course, only knew her as ‘Auntie Doris.’ A jolly lady who lived with Uncle Ken in what my childhood memory had as a huge house with a magical garden in a leafy suburb of London called Chorlywood.
Uncle Ken died way back in 1984. He too succumbed to cancer, and very quickly too. But his death never really affected me as I hadn’t really known either of them particularly well, and as a child I must confess I was more interested in their magical garden rather than them.
The strange thing is that Dad and I were talking on the phone on Sunday when I called to say Hi. We’d been chatting for about half an hour or so when he announced he had some “rather sad news.” I guessed at what the news would be as it surely wouldn’t be that important to have taken such a back-seat in our conversation. “One of the dogs has died?” I said. “Well no. I’m afraid Auntie Doris has.” He replied.
For a couple of seconds I said nothing as my brain struggled to put the death of my aunt into context with this conversation about recycling that we were having. Did my Dad really just tell me in that matter-of-fact way that his sister, his only sibling, had just died?
Terrible as this may seem to say, I didn’t even know she had cancer. I hadn’t seen her for nearly 10 years, and it wouldn’t have been much less than about ten years before that time that I’d last seen her too. So right then I didn’t feel a loss, I was just shocked that Dad mentioned this almost in passing.
Her funeral was on Friday. That’s pretty quick by any standards I imagine, though I’m no expert in these matters. I was in Essex (near London) anyway this week attending to various meetings, seeing my Grandmother ‘Yogi’ and my Brother too. I don’t often go down south as it’s so far away in English terms, and I had planned to leave on Thursday and head back home but when I learned the funeral would be Friday and that both my Brother and Sister wouldn’t be able to make it, I felt like I should attend if only for my Dad’s sake.
Friday was overcast and foggy following a week of good weather, classic movie funeral weather I thought to myself. I got to the crematorium with quite some time to spare so I sat in my car and watched another funeral party arrive, the people all dressed in various black suits and officially mournful looking clothes.
When Mom and Dad arrived we went and joined the others waiting for the hearse to arrive with the coffin. We followed the coffin in and the funeral got underway. It turned out auntie Doris was a Christian, and loads of people were there to celebrate her life.
Her youngest grandson gave a moving tribute and toward the end as the Vicar was talking about “saying goodbye to Doris” my Dad started to cry. The strange thing was that my Mom did nothing. She didn’t comfort him at all. I looked across at her and couldn’t believe she wasn’t making any attempt to comfort her husband, so I put my arm around my Dad. That was the first time I think I have ever done that, certainly in a way of support like that. It really choked me to tell you the truth.
Afterward we gathered outside and friends and relatives greeted one another. It struck me that we were the outsiders. People would speak to us and some even said to my Dad “I didn’t even know she had a brother.” ‘Way to be sensitive’ I thought to myself.
The experience made me feel sad that I didn’t know her better. I felt quite disconnected, but the funeral also demonstrated that I come from an emotionally fragmented family. My mothers inability to comfort Dad as he cried made me feel sad. I’ve often said we share the same name but not much else and that was a graphic demonstration on that very fact.
The wake was held at auntie Doris’s house, the house with the magical garden. We chatted for a while with Christine and Andrew, my cousins whom I haven’t seen in more years than I can remember. The house wasn’t nearly as big as I recall, but of course the last time I was there I was just a child.
The immediate family were in the living room and dinning room, huddled together like team players on a time out. We stood in the hallway marooned with another couple who knew Ken when he was alive but weren’t really close to Doris. And although we were family we were distant, like Hawaii from America.
I wanted to walk around and talk to people, meet my cousins grown up kids whom I had never seen or known there names before that day. I wanted to chat with Doris’s friends and maybe learn a little more about her, and perhaps my father too. But I couldn’t, I felt like a crasher, and more importantly I wanted to just be by my fathers side on this day.
In the end my parents and I went into the garden, to say goodbye to it I suppose. I wanted to see it one last time, to take a few moments for myself to remember uncle Ken and auntie Doris as I knew them, and maybe even to say sorry for the fact that I didn’t know them better.
Wrote the following comment on Mar 26, 2006 at 4:30 am
It is so easy to allow ourselves to be separated from people nowadays. It sounds as though age and distance divided your father and his sister – and it has been my experience that the longer you go without seeing or communicating with someone the easier it is to remain that way. They get further and further from you and your present life and eventually have little or no impact on it. This is a good reminder to me to make the effort to keep up with those that are not near to me. My own brother comes to mind.
Two weeks ago we attended the memorial service of some long-time friends’ daughter. This is a couple we have known for over 30 years and, in fact, the guy was a groomsman in our wedding. We have a long history with them and love them dearly. I’m ashamed to say, though, that up until 2 weeks ago we hadn’t seen them in almost 15 years nor communicated with them in 10. We were fortunate to be able to pick up where we left off and we spent several hours with them in their home after the memorial and left with plans to see them again soon. As I said, this shamed me because these friends are very, very dear to us. My excuse? Life, I suppose. It speeds along and before you know it a year has passed and then another and then another.
I’m sorry for your loss, Simon and for your Dad’s. I’m VERY glad you reached out to your father when he wept. He may never mention it but I know it was the right thing to do and probably comforted him more than you realize.
Wrote the following comment on Mar 26, 2006 at 12:14 pm
I sort of felt this way when my grandmother died. I was fifteen years old, and my entire life she had seemed to me like a sick and lonely woman who called on the phone every day and blessed me with every single saint she knew (a Catholic’s woman way of saying “I love you”) before I got to hang up the phone.
I was inmersed in my own drama at the time. The drama that involves entering high school, and having crushes, and wanting to be popular. I didn’t have time for this woman or for her house that smelled of oldness and despair.
When she passed away, I remember it was a Friday, because my mom called me at my friend’s house where we were having a party to tell me to come home. I demanded to know what was going on (throwing a temper tantrum, really: I didn’t want to leave the party), and that is when she told me my grandma had died. Why? A combination of things I suppose. Her age, though she couldn’t have been more than 75… her various sicknesses (she took medicine for everything under the sun), perhaps this addiction to the medicine, and mostly, I think, the knowledge that she was a burden to us.
Mollified, I came home. The funeral was held the next day. I remember the priest giving a short service, and when they were preparing to load the casket into the car, I started to cry. Because I never really met this woman, and because of the way I was sure I had made her feel, even though I knew that deep inside, she had loved me.
I regret not taking the time for getting to know the stories behind this woman. She was my grandmother and I must’ve had something of her in me… and sometimes I pray that my life won’t end like hers.
(This ended up sounding like my own death in the family story. I’m sorry).
Wrote the following comment on Mar 26, 2006 at 1:27 pm
hey, I’m not afraid of long comments Nenaluli. That was a good oen, thank you. And hey, thank you Karen too for your kind words.
Wrote the following comment on Mar 26, 2006 at 7:46 pm
i can really relate to some of this. at my cousin’s funeral we were told that my mom, me, and my sis could come (my brother couldnt). my mom didnt go cause of my bro, and me and my sis were told me could not “approach the family” it was horrible to feel so outcasted. my cousin was 12 and died of cancer….that was hard already, and then to feel like we were the total outcasts made it even harder. all of this is a looooong story (that has a lot to do with my issues with the “church” cause my uncle felt like God told him to do all this) but the point is….i feel ya.
Wrote the following comment on Mar 27, 2006 at 12:25 am
Man that sounds hard Sommer. My situation wasn’t so much like we were outcast, more like were were just not known by the majority of the people there. I am quite sure that had I wanled around and chatted to folks, they would have welcomed me. There was actually a lot of love floating around, you could feel it. Clearly my cousins family are very close, close in a way I wish we were. Instead though I come from the side of the family where my mother can’t reach out to my Dad as he weeps at his only sisters funeral.
Wrote the following comment on Mar 27, 2006 at 4:49 am
It was good of you to go back to the garden to say goodbye.
Wrote the following comment on Mar 27, 2006 at 6:44 am
heartache. yeah, i gotta deal with the distance too. but in some ways death can start to break down the emotional barriers, when you realize life really is short.
Wrote the following comment on Mar 29, 2006 at 2:55 pm
Simon,
I know this is late in coming, but I’m sorry for your family’s loss.