My aunt died on Thursday. It wasn’t a sudden death. Our family knew it was coming. We just didn’t know it would be this soon.
My aunt Cathy was born with a hole in her heart and Down’s Syndrome. Out of all the possible hands to be dealt in life, she got one of the worst. When I was a kid, I didn’t quite grasp what Down’s Syndrome was. When I was five years old and my aunt was twenty-five years old, we fought like we were the same age. We’d fight over the other touching each other’s stuff or eating the last piece of pie. I knew she was older than me, but I realized that she was different from all the other adults. I just didn’t fully understand how she was different.
Sometimes we’d be sitting in the back of my parents’ car on some trip somewhere, and she’d be listening to her tape player and she’d sing out loud along with the music. It bugged the shit out of me and I would reach over and turn off her tape player or turn down the volume on it. She’d holler and slap me, and I’d wind up getting yelled at by my parents. And there were times I wanted to go somewhere, but we couldn’t because Cathy was spending the night. Sometimes we couldn’t see a movie that I wanted to see because Cathy wouldn’t enjoy it. When I was a little kid, there were plenty of times that I resented her being around all the time. Hindsight being what it is, it seems really stupid, but I was a little kid and all I knew was that I wasn’t getting what I wanted because of my aunt.
Then as I got older, I came to understand Cathy’s condition better. I didn’t resent her anymore. I knew it wasn’t her fault she was the way she was. But where childhood resentment existed, now came embarrassment. In my early teens, I was embarrassed by my aunt. I didn’t want anyone to know I had a mentally retarded family member. There were times I didn’t want to go places with her and my family because I knew there was a good chance I’d run into someone from my school and then they’d know about my horrible family secret. This embarrassment lasted up through the end of high school. I remember that I didn’t want my first girlfriend to meet Cathy because I thought she might worry that our children would be born with Down’s Syndrome. I know this was a stupid thing to worry about, and also, Christine Louie wound up being a huge bitch anyway.
When I hit college age, I finally got over my resentment and embarrassment, and I started to see Cathy in much the same way that all the other adults did. She might have had the mental capacity and temperament of an elementary school kid, but she loved her family deeply. The older I got, the more affection Cathy showed towards me. When I stopped picking on her like I did as a kid, she started greeting me with hugs and “I love you, Brandon.”s. She’d tell me that I was a good nephew and that she missed me. After I moved to Japan, she’d tell me that she would miss me before I headed back to Japan from each summer visit to the US.
The last couple trips back to the US though, Cathy was quickly deteriorating. Alzheimer’s had set it on her and the light in her eyes was disappearing. She no longer had the energy she once did. She started losing a lot of weight. She didn’t talk up a storm the way she used to. Then she started forgetting where she was. She didn’t know how to walk up stairs. Then she started falling down. She couldn’t feed herself anymore. She couldn’t use the bathroom. She couldn’t get out of bed. And then she was gone.
The deterioration took a while, but the majority of it was fast at the end. I saw her at Christmas last year, and even then she was having trouble feeding herself. My dad told me to make sure I hugged her goodbye the last time I saw her, because it probably would be the last time ever. And he was right. She passed away at 6:12AM on Wednesday, May 25th 2011. She had just turned 47.
On the bright side, Cathy was never expected to live past 10 because of the hole in her heart. She got a bonus 37 years that no one ever thought she’d have. So even though the end was awful, she had twice the life the doctors said she’d have. And she loved her life. She enjoyed herself. She made the best of the hand she was dealt, and I think we could all learn a thing or two from my aunt Cathy.
I’ll miss you, Cathy. I love you.
You can see her obituary here.
