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Yesterday I was cleaning out my account to get under
my disk quota. I came across a large gif file, a
picture of my aunt Karen which
I had scanned for my cousin last year. I had left the
picture in my ftp directory, waiting to do something with
it, and then forgotten all about it until yesterday.
My aunt Karen died of cancer four years ago. She was living in Virginia when she died, although earlier, from 1980 to around 1988, she had lived in San Jose, not far from her sister (my mom) and me and my family. Two things: first, I never went to go see her while she was in the hospital. I wish I had. Second, she was getting better. After months in the hospital, with injections and treatments, she was starting to recover; then she slipped in the bathtub in her hospital room's bathroom, which started a hemmorhage that killed her later that night. In this picture, she is young, probably about 23, and she is with her new husband, Jimmy, a cop (now retired) who flew planes. (They later divorced.)
At the memorial, by a lake in a park in Virginia, several geese fussed and fluttered onto the gazebo where we were having our service. One in particular was loud with its honking and it made us all laugh. There was a special connection between Karen and geese, and to this day my mother insists that the goose was the spirit of Karen, come to thank us for seeing her off. My aunt Karen taught me how to drive, when I was 16. She was the coolest aunt imaginable: once, when I had a big party at my parent's house (they were on a trip; I was 17), she came by and had some beer and flirted with some of the guys who were there and then left and didn't say anything to my parents. Karen raised two sons (Mark and Jeff) and one daughter (Wendy). Mark lives with my family. Mark and I don't talk about Karen much. But it seems unreal to both of us that she's gone. I miss her very much. |
