On the loss of an Aunt

 Today's entry was not the planned one but as one increasingly realizes not every eventuality lends itself to such an approach not least anything involving people.

We received a telephone call on Wednesday from Mum's brother in law saying my Aunt who had been unwell for a period moving into a care home about five miles away for about eight months following a fall, showed that she wasn't really safe to be 'at home'  even with some supervision, had died having contracted pneumonia on New Years Day.

That didn't particularly surprise me as I had seen over a two year period when I visited her, a marked deterioration in her condition an her moving from limited informal oversight from family and neighbours to more formal care workers coming in and a 'careline' being put in although she always looked after her personal hygiene and ate well.

My Aunt was one of the central characters in my life because I often visited her at least once a week if I was 'home' myself as it was a home from home where given the many issues and incidents on my weirdo family history that would break out. I go spending hours with talking about things as she'd try to settle me down from the drama around my home life having left often with a book, some money and my plushies.

She lived with her parents because she needed a some support although she worked for a good number of years at automotive factory locally until taking retirement and so that unit was in my ways an alternate family for me that did accept what we know would see as a more child-like regressive Littles side from my teens and older.

She and her neighbours knew I was a Little buying me selection boxes, children's annuals and the like.

They also spend a lot of time talking to me about pasts, my families pasts, their pasts and how we ended up where we did encouraging me to talk more about what was was on my mind and why it was troubling me.

This was a link I kept up for a very long time so outside of my regular at least once weekly  visits I go with Mummy around birthdays and Christmas, chatting along the way with her neighbours and indeed it did get to me this christmas past as it was a ritual I missed from the previous year.

The one thing I know is I'll miss her.