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Monday night my great aunt Concetta (called Connie) died. She was nearly 91 years old, and I last saw her last year at her 90th birthday party, and then a week later at another great aunt's funeral. Last fall she fell in the street, and it took a long time for the injury to heal. And that was the decline of her health.
She was a grand lady, who had nieces and nephews, great nieces and great nephews and great-greats as well. She never married, and she lived in the same apartment she was born in, in 1915. She was the last of the "Original Recipe" (what another great aunt called the five brothers and sisters of the family, born to Great Grandma and Great Grandpa, both Italian immigrants, who arrived on Ellis Island in 1906. Great Grandma bore 12 children, only 5 lived, and of them, my grandfather was the oldest, the first to survive his first year, and favored child of his mother.) left.
One of my (male) second cousin (one of dozens of cousins, first, second, third, etc.) had this to say about the females of my family:
"The five 'V' women here in this room are equal to a platoon of hardened marines."
And another one of my (female) second cousins added this:
"And not one of us are equal to Aunt Connie."
The first second cousin's sister add this:
"Show no mercy, take no prisoners."
Saying goodbye to someone like my aunt is so hard to do. She was tough, independent, stubborn, and she had a lot of people who loved her. She is interred in the same mausoleum as her brother and sister-in-law, in the same wall, so she will have her two best friends with her through eternity.
I hate mausoleums. But my great uncle did not want to be buried under ground, so when he died in 1998, they put him in a great big mausoleum. Of course it wasn't completely built yet, so they had him in a holding area. All told, they moved him three or four times. His daughter joked that he moved addresses more in death than he had in life. He moved only once in life, from his parent's house to his own (which was right across the street). So his wife is interred next to him, her brother is right below them, and my aunt is at the end of the row.
The rest of the empty spots on the wall belong to various family members not yet deceased. I asked a cousin by marriage what she thought of having this decision taken out of her hands, that where she will be is already taken care of. She said as long as she was with her husband she was happy. But I think the resolve crumbled a little bit when she saw the large mosaic right next to her final resting place in brilliant colors of Christ being cut down from the cross. She kind of smiled a little. "A nice Jewish girl from New Jersey is ending up here?"
This morning before we left the hotel my Uncle Vin and I took a short walk around by the Hudson River and watched this guy pull a striped bass about two and a half feet long from the river.
Driving home five hours in the pounding rain kind of sucked. All in all it was a surreal couple of days.
She was a grand lady, who had nieces and nephews, great nieces and great nephews and great-greats as well. She never married, and she lived in the same apartment she was born in, in 1915. She was the last of the "Original Recipe" (what another great aunt called the five brothers and sisters of the family, born to Great Grandma and Great Grandpa, both Italian immigrants, who arrived on Ellis Island in 1906. Great Grandma bore 12 children, only 5 lived, and of them, my grandfather was the oldest, the first to survive his first year, and favored child of his mother.) left.
One of my (male) second cousin (one of dozens of cousins, first, second, third, etc.) had this to say about the females of my family:
"The five 'V' women here in this room are equal to a platoon of hardened marines."
And another one of my (female) second cousins added this:
"And not one of us are equal to Aunt Connie."
The first second cousin's sister add this:
"Show no mercy, take no prisoners."
Saying goodbye to someone like my aunt is so hard to do. She was tough, independent, stubborn, and she had a lot of people who loved her. She is interred in the same mausoleum as her brother and sister-in-law, in the same wall, so she will have her two best friends with her through eternity.
I hate mausoleums. But my great uncle did not want to be buried under ground, so when he died in 1998, they put him in a great big mausoleum. Of course it wasn't completely built yet, so they had him in a holding area. All told, they moved him three or four times. His daughter joked that he moved addresses more in death than he had in life. He moved only once in life, from his parent's house to his own (which was right across the street). So his wife is interred next to him, her brother is right below them, and my aunt is at the end of the row.
The rest of the empty spots on the wall belong to various family members not yet deceased. I asked a cousin by marriage what she thought of having this decision taken out of her hands, that where she will be is already taken care of. She said as long as she was with her husband she was happy. But I think the resolve crumbled a little bit when she saw the large mosaic right next to her final resting place in brilliant colors of Christ being cut down from the cross. She kind of smiled a little. "A nice Jewish girl from New Jersey is ending up here?"
This morning before we left the hotel my Uncle Vin and I took a short walk around by the Hudson River and watched this guy pull a striped bass about two and a half feet long from the river.
Driving home five hours in the pounding rain kind of sucked. All in all it was a surreal couple of days.
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