A Cold Day

I went back to Milwaukee this past Sunday. My grandmother's sister, my Aunt Liz, passed away. High school kids were off on Monday, M-i-l was in town and available, so the kids could manage without me for 36 hours. They were fine.

The funeral was sad, as all such events are. My parents, grandfather, and sister's family were the only ones there. Grandpa David will be saying Kaddish for her, since there is no one else to do it. Liz never married, no children. Her friends are mostly gone. She wasn't alone in the sense that she was always close to my grandmother, but still... I was given the opportunity to say a few words in her memory. I said how much she cared about me and my siblings and our kids, how we were just like grandkids to her. She never missed sending a card for each of our birthdays, for Chanuka. She was at every Simcha, every graduation. I said that I would miss her very much. What I did not say, and I should have said, and wish I had said while she was alive, is that I loved her. I doubt Liz ever got the love she deserved. I wish I had given that to her when I could.