As I watch friends and coworkers deal with death, I sometimes feel like I can’t relate to their suffering.  Both my parents and my grandparents are still alive. I’m not close to most of my family so many deaths have passed virtually unnoticed. When it comes to family, and family emotions, I always feel disconnected. Separated. I can’t identify.

But every once in a while I am reminded of my loss. The great loss of my life (so far) happened way back in 1988. I lost my great aunt. My mother’s aunt, and my grandmother’s sister: my aunt Edith. She was so much more than a great aunt to me; she was like a second mother. She radiated love. A beacon of light in my dark, troubled youth, she loved me with everything she had and I felt it, without words. Edith taught me so much more than how to make pancakes and coffee; she taught me about compassion.

I must admit, the compassion lesson did not sink in until long after her rapid demise from leukemia. But once I was older, and more mature, I could look back and remember her compassion and effortless grace. She was quiet, like me, and warm, unlike me. Where I am cool and aloof, she was engaging and charismatic, but never showy and boisterous. She had sweetness and depth, a rare duo.

Edith was always there for my mother, which is how she became such a central person in my life. She was there to watch me when my mother needed to work, or just be a young woman, unshackled from a child at such a young, and unprepared age.

It’s easy for me to wax poetic about how much better my life would have been if she were a part of it for longer, and how much I would love to sit down with her now, as an adult, and share a cup of coffee and a chat. But what still floors me to this day is how much the sight of her grave or the mention of her name can catch me unaware, and send me into tears and the depths of loss. I never seem to get over it.

So I guess as much as I try to deny it: I do know death. I can relate. And I am so sorry for all of our losses.