Ami,
Thank you for your story and sharing about your aunt.
I am going thorough something right now concerning my aunt. She passed away last December 27 and I was the only one in the family with her in her final days.
Today I was on the very floor of the hospital where she was last November while she and I were going through her last days. We literally took it one day at a time and had each other for the first time in our lives.
She was ravaged by this family and had shut them all out in an effort to protect herself from them. She functioned on her own most of her life and had been abandoned by her husband leaving her with 2 small children. She had been raised in a very poor family with an alcoholic father who also had deserted his family, my Grandma and her four children. My aunt and my mother were teh two girls. My mother is the n of the fmaily and my aunt was the scapegoat. They were always close but with much conflict until my aunt finally learned how to have boundaries and limit contact with my mother, her sister.
Last September she began to lose her health at 78 years old. She was grieving her oldest son who had died in 1995 and then lost her pet dog not long after that. She basically shut everyone out in her grief. She functioned very well and took care of herself and had two loving neighbors that she let into her life.
I went to visit her one Friday evening and it was the beginning of the most amazing Divine appointments of my life. It has changed me forever and how I love and learned about love.
During that time she grew to trust me and I grew to love her. She had put her life on hold unable to find anyone to trust her love and self with.
As each day went by with the goal being her life and care, we were experiencing very wonderful gifts that I had never felt or been a part of before. I was such a transcending experience and the ordinariness of life disappeared as we went into a world that didn't exist before that for either of us.
At first I did what I thought I was supposed to do and I called my mother and my aunt's younger son. She had been estranged from them both for years. She did not want them called and had told her neighbors that they were never to call either of those two people. They respected her and knew she meant what she said and knew what she wanted. She had firm boundaries in place, but I was family conditioned and knew to let others know and try adn gather a support system for her and for me.
There was no response from either my mother or her son. Just cold indifference. I knew part of it concerned their attitudes toward me and part toward her. I thought differences would melt away in the face of need and old age and recovery or death.
It took me about 3 weeks of finding out the truth about her and me and them. I know now that the support I tried to put together was not meant to be. What I thought should happen did not. What was supposed to happen did.
She grew to love and trust me and I grew to love and need her. She became the mother I never had and I became the daughter she never had. She actually mothered me each night as I would leave her room to go home for the night. She was lying in bed thin and frail and knowing she was in her last days. She always told me to drive safely and the roads were slippery when they were wet. Dress warm and get something good to eat. Rest and she would see me tomorrow. She said she was blessed to have me and didn't know why I was taking such good care of her. She said she wished I could crawl up in the bed and hold her. I wish I had. I miss her. She mothered me more in those 3 months than my own mother ever has. She loved me and let me love her.
With my mother involved my whole life, I never knew my aunt that well. My mother kept me separate from everyone, now even my own 2 daughters. My aunt knew how my mother was.
Without anger as she lay almost physically drained and weak, her mind never failed. Her heart and soul expanded and she became herself and so did I. She would state certain truths and had filtered her life and experiences into those simple truths. She was not angry at my mother but she said my mother had always been selfish and self centered. My mother was arrogant even as a child and above my aunt in her own mind. And that my mother had always wanted my 2 children. She said she didn't know why. She just said it and let it go.
She needed someone to love before she died and she found someone and I was picked to receive that gift. I think it is a gigantic miracle that I was given that gift. not my older sister, not my younger sister, not my mother, not my cousin. They would not come even when called.
Now I know why and I am truly blessed.
The 2 neighbors were such angels and loved my aunt dearly. they turned her over to me and know the miracle it was.
I am missing my aunt more lately and I am more and more realizing what she taught me and how much it has meant to me. I am grateful I didn't miss the miracle and was open to this experience.
I would have never thought I could do what I did. I never thought about it. It just happened.
I am so grateful that I can share this here and be heard. I know how big a deal it is for a person to go through death, their one time death and Ii know how big a deal it is to be the one to share it with them.
I will never let anyone take that f rom me. It was given to me.
BR
