tears.

Today I shed tears for a woman I barely knew.

My adoptive mothers sister passed away from cancer last week. She was still in her sixties. I didn't know her very well...at all to be honest because she was excluded from the family on account of her being crazy and all.

It happened very quickly...or at least that's how it seemed. So quickly that I couldn't even tell you the type of cancer she had. She went from being in bad shape to dead in a span of a few hours. It was so quick that her son left the hospital being told she wasn't doing well only to come back later in the evening to find his mother dead.

They hadn't even removed her from her bed yet. He sat in a room with his dead mother. The doctors didn't even have the chance to stop and forewarn him.

I was told all of this by my cousins wife. She kept referring to her as "grandma". "Grandma Evelyn was dead." I didn't tell her that the woman who just died wasn't my grandmother, but my aunt. That my actual grandmother died four years ago...a funeral the woman she was referring to as "grandma" was not invited to. My grandmothers daughter and her children were not invited to that funeral.

It wasn't Beverly's fault (my cousin's wife). I was a little girl of four when she married into the family. There wasn't too much contact over the years because as I stated before, my aunt was crazy.

I could tell by the condescending tone she used to tell me my aunt had died that she probably still imagined she was talking to a four year old.

My aunt was three years older than my mother. Their baby sister passed when my mom was three, than soon after so did their father. At some point in time during her childhood, my aunt witnessed someone drowning at the beach, and was present when the body was pulled out of the lake.

She saw the body being pulled out of the lake.

She witnessed a lot of death as a child.

My adoptive mother is going to the funeral, but only to be supportive of her nephews whose lives she has been absent from because she refused to put up with her sister's shit. She is adamant though that my aunt not be buried beside her mother (she wasn't very nice to my grandmother so I kind of get that).

Their brother has no intention of flying from out west to come to the funeral.

I was not asked to be present (nor should I have been...???)

There was one other thing Beverly told me on the phone. My aunt had died lonely.