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I realize it has been more than a month since I’ve written. Sorry about that. After that last post, I couldn’t bring myself to write anymore. I couldn’t bring myself to cry, either. I shed a couple of tears the day after, but not enough, apparently. That finally changed on Saturday when I saw my psychologist. I didn’t even talk to her for ten minutes before I finally did what I needed to do: have a major crying jag. That was pretty much my whole session. All the anger and pain and the questioning of why this had to happen to my aunt came flooding out, along with a few other things (that I’ll get into in another post).

I finally feel calm enough to sum up the rest of what happened after June 30th. I don’t know if I can do it justice after such a long hiatus, but I’ll try.

After talking to my mom for a little bit, I went into the room with my husband. Nothing much was said as we got ready to hit the sack. I didn’t really sleep that night, except towards the morning. I finally got up and got in contact with my cousin. She had told me early on that she wanted me to do the slide show for her mom’s memorial. I was honored by being given such a task, and sort of worried that I wouldn’t be able to do her life justice. My mom and I went to get the photos from my aunt’s house that morning, and I took them with me to my in-law’s house to scan and clean up.

The week passed by quickly, and I managed to get the slide show together by the Wednesday before the memorial. I took it to my cousin and we went to the church to test it out on their system. It worked beautifully, and we were pleased. Never mind the snafu we had the next morning when we realized we didn’t burn a DVD of it as well. That was taken care of, and we went to the memorial later that day.

I’m not sure I can adequately describe how beautiful and sad the celebration of my aunt’s life was, so I won‘t even try. I will only say a few things about it. The church was packed full of people, and this was not a small church. The people that were asked to share memories of my aunt spoke from their hearts, and it was very emotional for everyone. My cousin paid a loving tribute to her mom, which brought nearly everyone to tears.

The service ended, and we were allowed to file by the box that contained my aunt’s ashes. I felt numb as I did so, trying to reconcile myself to the fact that where once there had been a vibrant person, now there was only ashes. I couldn’t do it, of course, and the wall just grew around my emotions. I still don’t think that wall has come down, although it is slowly crumbling.

We went out to the main hall and were greeted by a solid wall of people, all getting in line to say some kind words to my uncle, cousin, her husband, and their baby. It was crazy, but nice to see that my aunt had a huge network of support in her life. It was also nice to see my mother’s younger brother and his wife, plus two of my cousins whom I hadn’t seen in forever. Honestly, I think the last time I saw them was when they were babies. Another casualty of no one talking to each other in my family. *sigh*

We moved on to the wake, which had to be held in a gigantic public area. It was great to see how everyone had banded together to try and make things easier for my aunt’s family. There isn’t much to say about that. It was nice to sit and talk with family and nice to see everyone reminiscing about my aunt. I just wish this had all happened under different circumstances.

So that is pretty much the end of the story for the first two weeks in California. I wish it had been better news. I wish I could have said that she was in full remission and recovering. I wish a lot of things had happened differently. Sadly, life doesn’t work out like that. Life can be a horrendous bitch about certain things, and this was one of those things.

And it sucks.