And So It Begins
My great-aunt Florence died today. I think she was 89 [edit: she was 90]. Won't be able to make the funeral on Monday, because I’m here in New York.
Update, March 10:
I think I can talk about this a little more today than before. Even though we were all expecting it, because she's old and I think also had Parkinson's, it's still hard. She's the first of my relatives to die since I can remember, and it doesn't feel good to not be there. She's also one of the people I most respected in my mother's family. I guess I'm going to try to sum up what I know (or think I know) about her.
She was about 12 when her mother and siblings moved from Pesche, Italy to the United States to join their father. It's a fairly remote village in the middle of the country, in the mountains. Her mother, who my mom respected a great deal and after whom I take my middle name, felt that assimilation was very important. As a result, a lot of their culture and language was lost. It must have been miserable for her at first, stuck at the age of twelve with her eight-year-old sister (my grandmother) in a first-grade classroom because she didn't know English. One of her sisters was run over at a fairly young age while playing in the street; their father died before his time too. She got married to a guy named Orin, and I think she loved him a lot, but he died because of heart problems pretty early on. She never married again.
She lived in a house full of knickknacks and hard candy, and she crocheted a lot of afghans and things. She made great pizzelles, and I never did find out how she did it before it was too late. She wore some pretty wild colors and cool shoes - teals and purples and pinks. She was nice, and I don’t remember her getting into the kinds of bitter or sarcastic arguments that the rest of that side of the family seems to enjoy. My memories of her are all as an old lady, so I don't know as much about what she was like earlier in her life. But she told stories sometimes and kept old pictures and movies around. Once she went to Hawaii kind of by accident to help a friend move; another time she went on a road trip out west with her husband and other family members. Once her husband died, her younger brother Joe took on the responsibility of taking care of her. They were together so much that when I was little I thought they were married like all the other pairs of aunts and uncles; I didn’t know they were siblings. Uncle Joe took care of her long before her health and mind started failing, and is continuing to do so now by making most of the funeral arrangements. I hope he’s doing okay; he’s the other person I really respect out of the bunch and I don't think the others really acknowledge how much he did for Aunt Flo.
Aunt Florence was the only person of those who were born there who ever went back to Pesche, or to speak and read Italian. Other members of the family moved to Canada and Argentina, and she tried to keep in touch with them too. She had my mom translate an article about one of the Argentinians and his hotel business recently because she didn’t know Spanish. One of the last times I saw her, she showed us videos of her visit and talked about what it was like to leave Italy, and what it meant to be able to go back. Apparently her grandparents had wanted desperately for her to stay with them instead of leaving with the rest of the family, and it was a close thing that she didn’t. A childhood friend of hers was still living there when she returned something like 50 or 60 years later, and everyone was happy to recognize each other and meet again. Pesche was mountain country, and potatoes were a major crop. The streets are too narrow for cars, and in the pictures she showed us it looked like they still had a village well and used hearths for cooking. Everything seemed made of stone, which I guess you can get a lot of in the mountains.
We didn’t visit her too often outside of holidays because she lived in Orange Village, which isn’t really near my grandparents or parents. I know she was active with the Kiwanis Club annual rummage sale near there, and the time I went there is one of the only times Skot ever met her. I didn’t know much about her for most of my childhood, but what I did learn made me want to get to know her better. I don’t know what’s going to happen to all of her stuff, but I hope that someone holds onto her photos and videos and other life-history type things. I didn’t see her when she was in the nursing home or hospice, and I’m kind of glad I can remember her being more active, but I’m sorry I can’t be there Sunday or Monday. Despite trying to acknowledge the inevitability of her passing a while ago, her death has hit me pretty hard. Hers is the first; other older relatives will probably go too within the next five years or so. But I also just really thought she was a cool lady. Bye, Aunt Flo. Bye.