It Comes in Three's

This morning I found out one of my great aunts passed away during the night. She was my grandmother's youngest sister. We had no reason to see this coming. She had been having some very minor health problems with vomitting but we didn't think of it as life threatening.

She was closer to my dad's age than my grandmother's. All my life she was the aunt I was closest to. Although she was my father's aunt, she and my mother have been very good friends over the years.

Three of the four sisters died this year. The oldest has Alzheimers and is in a nursing home. She never had kids and so the youngest sister had been taking care of her. It looks like we will have to move her to another home so that she is closer to family.

In our family, deaths always come in threes. We usually are spending time at the 2nd funeral, wondering who is the next person. This is three and unfortunately we have two more who are close. One is the great aunt with the Alzheimers who isn't in good health. The other is a cousin who was in an accident a few years ago and has been a quadpeglic. This last year he had a large tumor removed. Now he has cancer of the laranyx and it can't be operated on and he has just a short period of time left.

I have been very blessed to grow up in a large extended family that is close to each other. But these are the times that make you realize it does come with some pain too. I will miss my aunt Kathi. She was a big hearted woman who was sugary sweet without being nausating. In some ways this hurts more than losing my grandmother. Kathi wasn't done living her life. I can picture her in Heaven giving someone hell for taking her before her work was done. My grandmother was done and ready to go. I'll miss her but I understood it was time. This time I can't accept that.

I feel so bad for my cousins who lost their mother and grandmother. I can't begin to imagine how much they hurt right now.