Mood:  down

My mother just called me to let me know that my great aunt Ardith died this morning at her home in La Costa ( San Diego County ) California . She was 89 years old and would have been celebrating her 90^th birthday on June 10. Aunt Ardith has been suffering from Alzheimer’s of a pretty advanced nature and was nearly non-verbal; the last two years has seen a rapid decline in her mobility and strength. We were all preparing ourselves for this coming eventuality.

My mother is doing her best to handle this, as today is my grandmother’s birthday as well as my grandfather’s memorial service in Arizona . Grandpa Zink died in February and was cremated. They are scattering his ashes today on the Colorado River near my uncle’s outboard motor shop on the river there in Arizona .

With the shocking death of my cousin Barbara happening in August, followed a week later by my cousin Harry’s death, and then my grandfather’s death in February (all of which my mother has not fully come to grips with yet), Aunt Ardith’s death is another blow to her and to the family.

I was very close with my Aunt Ardith. She actually flew to England and visited me while I attended college there in 1990. We spent a great deal of quality time together in London going to museums and seeing plays and musicals. Of all my aunts she was the least judgmental of my choices and the most accepting of the changes in my life. She was spunky and funny, and just a little on the wild side – a definite ‘different’ kind of lady in our family when compared with my aunts Peggy, Corrine or my Grandmother.

I am handling this well, as I know that she is through with her suffering, which believe me she was suffering locked inside a body and a mind that had given up, yet with a heart that just wouldn’t. She’s at peace.