My Aunt Florence

If there's one thing I've learned recently, it's that things really do get old and break.

***

My aunt Florence died on February 16th from non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, at the age of 77, eleven days after being admitted to the hospital, and three days after admitting to herself that it was finally time to inform her identical twin sister—my mother—that her life was about to end.

She went to the hospital February 5th to get some test results, but never went home.

I drove my parents to the Emergency Department at VGH on Valentine's Day. My aunt had apparently suffered a heart attack while being prepped for a battery of tests and ended up staying in the Cardiac Care Unit. She was lucid when we arrived, albeit feverish, but nevertheless managed to crack a joke. I said little more than a hello before being shooed away by the nurse (there was a two-visitor-at-a-time limit). It was unnerving to see her—basically my mother—lying there dying. My cousins informed me that they had just been given her prognosis: she was at the last stage of the cancer and had at most two to three weeks to live. My aunt's husband, who worked alongside my father at their grocery store for over 30 years, was a broken man.

Florence died two days later, at noon on a Friday, while I was at work complaining about my tuna salad sandwich.

***

The service and burial took place in our hometown. My aunt had recently moved from there (last October, to be exact) to be with her younger daughter and son and their grandchildren. One of her last wishes was to be laid to rest beside her parents. It was granted.

Because my aunt's condition took a sudden nosedive, she was spared a protracted body-wasting battle. She looked good, arms peacefully crossed, hand over hand.

As the coffin was being lowered, her son-in-law, Tony, was near the edge of the grave, gently rocking the infant car seat holding Aunt Florence's three-month old grandson. Diminished, life goes on.

***

The reception was at the Chinese Canadian Society building, formerly the Jehovah's Witnesses' Hall, with food provided by the Pine Cafe (a local Chinese institution). The experience was for me like the penultimate scene in Cinema Paradiso, when Salvatore returns for Alfredo's funeral. On the wall was a photo of my father when he was in his fifties. And in person, but without the bad makeup of the movie, were Mrs. Yuen, still pretty after 30 years; the once young buck Tony L., still strong, but greatly greyed; the red-faced Fook G., now with a walking stick; and Monty M., still worthy of a few mean laughs but much, much, older.

And in some weird way, I love these people and wouldn't want them any other way.

***

I told my cousins that their mother was always kind to me. They confided that I was one of her favourite nephews.