I had plans to make all kinds of posts about what's been going on with my life and my epic roadtrip to Vermont and what I've been reading and watching.
But we just got a call saying that my great-aunt Helen passed away today. So those are going on the back burner.
Helen was my grandmother's half-sister. She and her sister Sue, or Sophie, were extraordinarily close and extraordinarily driven. They put themselves through college, worked for the war effort in World War II, and while they were both courted by men they never married. Instead they lived in apartments a couple of blocks apart, or on different floors in the same building. Since my grandmother lived in Florida and didn't bother to make the trip to see us more than once every few years, Helen and Sue became my stand-ins for grandmothers. They lived in New York and we'd see them often. They gave weird presents that they picked up at flea markets - cat sweatshirts, electric toothbrushes, paperweights for an eight-year-old - but because Helen was an editor, she also gave us books, many of which I still have. Helen was brilliant and uncompromising and sarcastic and funny and always, always treated me with respect, whether I was five or fifteen or twenty-five. She was always supportive of my ambitions and was - and is - one of my role models for living a happy and successful life regardless of what other people might think or what expectations society might try to impose.
Her health had failed in recent years, and she was spirited off to live with my mom's horrible cousin and her gay husband in Virginia (long story). In some ways I mourned her when she left New York, when she wasn't able to live independently and senility started to steal the personality I loved so much. But now she's really gone, and I mourn again.
But we just got a call saying that my great-aunt Helen passed away today. So those are going on the back burner.
Helen was my grandmother's half-sister. She and her sister Sue, or Sophie, were extraordinarily close and extraordinarily driven. They put themselves through college, worked for the war effort in World War II, and while they were both courted by men they never married. Instead they lived in apartments a couple of blocks apart, or on different floors in the same building. Since my grandmother lived in Florida and didn't bother to make the trip to see us more than once every few years, Helen and Sue became my stand-ins for grandmothers. They lived in New York and we'd see them often. They gave weird presents that they picked up at flea markets - cat sweatshirts, electric toothbrushes, paperweights for an eight-year-old - but because Helen was an editor, she also gave us books, many of which I still have. Helen was brilliant and uncompromising and sarcastic and funny and always, always treated me with respect, whether I was five or fifteen or twenty-five. She was always supportive of my ambitions and was - and is - one of my role models for living a happy and successful life regardless of what other people might think or what expectations society might try to impose.
Her health had failed in recent years, and she was spirited off to live with my mom's horrible cousin and her gay husband in Virginia (long story). In some ways I mourned her when she left New York, when she wasn't able to live independently and senility started to steal the personality I loved so much. But now she's really gone, and I mourn again.
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