Melancholy

My aunt is dying.

She isn't my real aunt, but my grandmother took care of her for most of her life, so she has been around since before I was born - I think. I mean, I dont remember a time when she wasn't.

She's an older lady - now - and she's got cancer, which runs in her biological family. It's the craziest cancer I ever heard of - it's everywhere. I mean EVERYWHERE. By the time I was told of her condition a few months ago, she was already in stage 4 or 5 - whichever one is the last stage before it kills you. It took the wind right out of me.

I know I had nothing to do with her contracting this disease, and I always knew she would die one day, but I feel a sense of guilt, knowing she is going to die this way. She is a white woman, with some sort of slight mental incapacity, and I remember, as kids, my cousins and I gave her hell. She was always the one left to babysit us and we made her cry on more than one occasion. We never listened to her and we always mocked her for how she talks. Things changed, of course, as we got older, and understood her story and her place in our family, but now that we are all facing this certainty, I can't help but feel horrible about those days I can't take back. She was always so sweet to us, despite our treatment of her, and even now, she never missed Christmas. Every year she would make sure to get everybody something, even if it was socks or dollar store trinkets, and I remember clearly how I felt when I opened the last gift she ever gave me - wine glasses. I looked at her, to say thank you, and she said she got them because she didnt think I had any.

I didn't.

Over the last couple of months, I've said several times that I was going to go by the house to see her - my aunt had taken the reins of being her caretaker after my grandmother died almost 15 years ago - but I never made it. Tonight my sister came by and told me that she is in the hospital, not expected to make it through the weekend. Again, it took the wind out of me. Hearing the description of her current condition and what the cancer had been said to have done to her breathing made me feel so pathetic. I hate that I never made it to see her when she still was able to hold an actual conversation. She can't talk now. The doctors took her off all the antibiotics and are administering heavy doses of pain medicine to make her as comfortable as possible, and have moved her to hospice. It's too late for me to go see her tonight, but the sad part is, if it wasn't, I dont know if I would have the courage to go.

I lost a FEW special people to cancer, the closest to me being my Aunt Judy. She lived in the Bronx, so I was unable to be there in her last hours too. I loved that woman with everything in me. I fear that going to the hospice will be about her and not the woman it's supposed to be about. She deserves better than that. I havent felt this conflicted in a long time and I dont know what I'm going to do.

I didn't feel so good today, so I said I wasnt drinking tonight, but I guess I lied. I guess I will sip on it now, pray on it later, and wake up to the destiny of my decision....