I don't know what to say, how to say it, what is appropriate or what is too much. It's all too much right now.
My Aunt Kath died during the night last night.
I've not shared her story on my website, her three year battle with breast cancer, because I felt that it was her story to tell and always the news, good or bad, was hers. She always read my blog and whenever we got together she was in the know on what was going on in my life. It is always so humbling when someone takes interest in you like that. She left comments from time to time, and in a while I will hunt for them. The pink breast cancer ribbon in my sidebar is hers.
Wicked, August 2008
We had become a fine fun group, my Aunt Kath and my mom, my sister Sant and her girlfriend Leslie. It was good, and it made me happy. It made her happy too.
She fought her metastasizing disease bravely through the stages, through every God-forsaken organ it spread to, right to the end. She fought for her life and for her family. More than anything she didn't want to leave her boys. She won't.
We kept up with knowing her treatments and what tumor marker number she was at. Ironically, and hitting so close to home, the test I just went through last week. My mom, Sant, Leslie and I spent the day with her on Sunday after she was admitted to the hospital. We discussed Jon and Kate and painted her fingernails and her toes. The girls and I snuck out to the car while she rested and demolished a bag of chocolate chip cookies. (Not that that has anything to do with anything, but it gets honorable mention just the same.)
She lost all of her hair through radiation and chemotherapy, and also her taste buds and appetite, and she lost weight. Her voice quieted and her mobility tapered. Cancer is the most unimaginably violent disease. It doesn't have to say a word.
Thankfully, my Aunt Kath hung on to her sass and her zest and would still happily inform you when you were being a pain in the ass, even if she could only say it quietly. The rear window of her SUV displays the little boy peeing, like you sometimes see him pee on Ford or Chevy. Her little guy pisses on the word Cancer. In pink, even.
I thought, when we left her on Sunday night, that we would see her again the following weekend. Then the next afternoon when her CAT scan results came back they let us know that she had only about a month left. It wasn't that we were unaware of how bad she was; it was just still so hard to believe. And then when everyone had gone home to rest, late last night, she slipped away quietly.
My Aunt Kath was fun loving and happy. She worked in Special Education at a Middle School up until last fall, and she loved her job like most people hope to love theirs. She didn't stop working until she practically couldn't walk into the school building anymore. At only fifty-two years old she leaves her husband of thirty-two years, and her sons Danny and Jonathan, twenty-two and twelve. She leaves all of us, for a while at least.
And she will be missed.





