Nana, Grandpa Al, Aunt Carol, Mom – 1951

This is not at all the post I’d planned for today or for these photos. But life has its moments. Almost 40 years ago my mom passed away, quite suddenly. The family fallout over the next few years created an ever widening rift between “our” family and “hers” that gradually left us estranged from her younger sister and our cousins. The details don’t matter, nothing was done intentionally or maliciously, and it wasn’t adversarial between the two sets of kids, but basically, we almost never saw them again. Here and there we reconnected, at a wedding once, via e-mail, and at one point one of my two cousins and I met up for a bite while I was living in NYC and he was living north of the city for a brief period. And, Facebook reconnected us in a vague way – we don’t really chat much, but we’re at least “friended” and sometimes comment on each other’s posts.

And, early this morning, after a long bout with illness, my aunt passed away. We knew it was coming, my cousins have posted regular updates for friends and family to see as they struggled through these last months. I’ve had no direct contact with her for years and while I’ve felt and feel sympathy and empathy for my cousins, I didn’t think it would really impact me all that much – she’s someone I’ve only had a single conversation with in something like 38 years and that was almost 20 ago. But here I am in tears because it feels like another thread of connection to my mother was just snapped.

I don’t even know whether she liked roses, but yesterday I spent an hour or so wandering through the Rosedal garden, snapping photos of the early spring blooms. And I offer them up in memoriam to my Aunt Carol, to my mom, to family.