They named her Vicky because she was born on Queen Victoria's birthday
I think this journal will very soon be deleted or at least stop being used, but I just have one thing I need to post here before I'm done with it.
I just found out my Aunt Vicky died - she had a massive stroke a few days ago and passed away in the hospital this evening. I'm a little confused about how to feel.
She was in her 60s for sure, and she's always lived the kind of life that most of us don't consider much of a life at all: she was in a long-term care facility where she lived in a room with three other women and had round the clock nursing care. She got around in a motorized wheelchair and her hands and feet were completely twisted with arthritis. And although she was the sweetest woman I've ever met, her brain capacity could not have been more than that of a small child.
She was handicapped in every sense of the word.
When I was growing up, visiting her in Montreal was always bittersweet for everyone. My mom loved her sister to pieces and it was my mom who looked after many of her affairs until my mom died in 2004. We would visit her almost every time we were in that city, and every time it was a heart-wrenching experience.
She would bawl her eyes out when we arrived and wouldn't stop crying until after we left. I think she was just genuinely happy to see us; my mom especially. I don't think she got visitors too often. Perhaps most women of her age would have liked to receive a card or flowers, but what really got my Aunt Vicky going were stuffed animals. I remember the last time we went up before my mom died, I think it was near her birthday, we got one of those bears that let you record a message into it. We sang "Happy Birthday" into the bear so she could hear it whenever she wanted. She snuggled that bear so hard and cried even harder whenever she played the song.
Right now I wonder if she held onto that bear and that memory, or if she was even mentally capable of doing that.
The last time I saw her was a while after my mom died. We went up to Montreal as a family to tell her, and we realized that nobody has told her that my grandpa - her father - had died maybe less than a year before my mom. So we had to tell her that possibly the two most important people to her child-like mind were dead at the same time. It was brutal. She was almost out of control, hysterical. I think we were all just getting used to the idea that my mom was gone and it just ripped open our wounds again, even worse than they were before.
As we all stood around her, some of us cried out loud and others just tried to wipe away the tears that were streaming down their faces. She just kept screaming, "Daddy's dead? No! Cathy's dead? No!" It's an experience that will haunt me for the rest of my life.
Like many people with a less-than-able relative quite a distance away, I'm now feeling the terrible guilt of not visiting her "enough," whatever that is. I know my mom felt it when they were still alive, and she spoke often about moving her down here so she could be near my mom and her brother, my Uncle Steve, who along with my aunt has been looking after my Aunt Vicky's affairs since my mom died.
The family has been so fragmented since my mom died, I wonder who will come out for her funeral. It's terrible but I desire to see them all so badly and I'm looking forward to the opportunity. It's even worse that we can't all get together on our own for a normal occasion not related to death.
However, it comforts me that Vicky has passed. Her life has always concerned me and disturbed me a little. She lived for watching movies like Titanic and her peers in the facility were much older than she was. She had a yellowed picture of my grandparents above the shelf in which she kept her VHS tapes. I can see it in my mind; they looked young and healthy and happy. Like everyone should be remembered.
Unfortunately I never knew her as young and healthy, but she always seemed happy. Perhaps that was a result of her limited brain functions, but it has always been a bit of a relief. None of us could understand how someone could seem happy under her circumstances, but she was never mean or cranky when we visited.
If there is an afterlife of some kind - and I hope there is - I can picture my grandparents, my mom, my mom's oldest brother and now her sister Vicky altogether; young, healthy, happy. My nanny was the first to go 22 years ago in March of 1986 (then I was born in May), and the others have been lost along the way. I wish I had known them all better, and I wish I had known my nanny at all. And I'm sorry I didn't get to know Vicky better now that I'm an adult, but I suppose I haven't gotten far enough into adulthood yet to really be able to take those matters in my own hands...
I just found out my Aunt Vicky died - she had a massive stroke a few days ago and passed away in the hospital this evening. I'm a little confused about how to feel.
She was in her 60s for sure, and she's always lived the kind of life that most of us don't consider much of a life at all: she was in a long-term care facility where she lived in a room with three other women and had round the clock nursing care. She got around in a motorized wheelchair and her hands and feet were completely twisted with arthritis. And although she was the sweetest woman I've ever met, her brain capacity could not have been more than that of a small child.
She was handicapped in every sense of the word.
When I was growing up, visiting her in Montreal was always bittersweet for everyone. My mom loved her sister to pieces and it was my mom who looked after many of her affairs until my mom died in 2004. We would visit her almost every time we were in that city, and every time it was a heart-wrenching experience.
She would bawl her eyes out when we arrived and wouldn't stop crying until after we left. I think she was just genuinely happy to see us; my mom especially. I don't think she got visitors too often. Perhaps most women of her age would have liked to receive a card or flowers, but what really got my Aunt Vicky going were stuffed animals. I remember the last time we went up before my mom died, I think it was near her birthday, we got one of those bears that let you record a message into it. We sang "Happy Birthday" into the bear so she could hear it whenever she wanted. She snuggled that bear so hard and cried even harder whenever she played the song.
Right now I wonder if she held onto that bear and that memory, or if she was even mentally capable of doing that.
The last time I saw her was a while after my mom died. We went up to Montreal as a family to tell her, and we realized that nobody has told her that my grandpa - her father - had died maybe less than a year before my mom. So we had to tell her that possibly the two most important people to her child-like mind were dead at the same time. It was brutal. She was almost out of control, hysterical. I think we were all just getting used to the idea that my mom was gone and it just ripped open our wounds again, even worse than they were before.
As we all stood around her, some of us cried out loud and others just tried to wipe away the tears that were streaming down their faces. She just kept screaming, "Daddy's dead? No! Cathy's dead? No!" It's an experience that will haunt me for the rest of my life.
Like many people with a less-than-able relative quite a distance away, I'm now feeling the terrible guilt of not visiting her "enough," whatever that is. I know my mom felt it when they were still alive, and she spoke often about moving her down here so she could be near my mom and her brother, my Uncle Steve, who along with my aunt has been looking after my Aunt Vicky's affairs since my mom died.
The family has been so fragmented since my mom died, I wonder who will come out for her funeral. It's terrible but I desire to see them all so badly and I'm looking forward to the opportunity. It's even worse that we can't all get together on our own for a normal occasion not related to death.
However, it comforts me that Vicky has passed. Her life has always concerned me and disturbed me a little. She lived for watching movies like Titanic and her peers in the facility were much older than she was. She had a yellowed picture of my grandparents above the shelf in which she kept her VHS tapes. I can see it in my mind; they looked young and healthy and happy. Like everyone should be remembered.
Unfortunately I never knew her as young and healthy, but she always seemed happy. Perhaps that was a result of her limited brain functions, but it has always been a bit of a relief. None of us could understand how someone could seem happy under her circumstances, but she was never mean or cranky when we visited.
If there is an afterlife of some kind - and I hope there is - I can picture my grandparents, my mom, my mom's oldest brother and now her sister Vicky altogether; young, healthy, happy. My nanny was the first to go 22 years ago in March of 1986 (then I was born in May), and the others have been lost along the way. I wish I had known them all better, and I wish I had known my nanny at all. And I'm sorry I didn't get to know Vicky better now that I'm an adult, but I suppose I haven't gotten far enough into adulthood yet to really be able to take those matters in my own hands...