"I didn’t know I was this geeky until I discovered the online world through my office’s 2400 baud modem back in ’93." Time keeps creepin’ through the neighborhood
When my mother passed away in 1975 I had not seen my father for a while.
They were separated and visiting arrangements were a little
problematic.
When it was suggested I’d go live with my mother’s sister, my aunt
Ineke, I was all for it. She was married to my favourite uncle and I
was close to her two youngest sons. They lived what I at 12 years old (and for a long time after) considered the
high life. International schools, a lot of travel, all the toys in the
world.
It would have meant leaving Holland and growing up in Jakarta and Copenhagen. I think I was ok with that too.
My aunt and I would have eventually come to blows had this plan (One of several… boarding/finishing school in Switzerland was another. That would have been something.) got the
go ahead, I’m sure. I’d have been the rebel child. I eventually went to live with
my father instead and consequently did not see a lot of my mother’s family after that. I spent my whole childhood missing them and learning to do without. Then I forgot how to get back in touch, and they seemed to have forgot about me.
–
The last time I saw her, she got on my nerves as most of my adult
family members do. This was two years ago, at my uncle’s place. We had
Christmas dinner and she demanded to know ‘what I’d done with my
mother’s money’ and why I didn’t believe in God. That got my heckles up.
But she and her husband were very kind and welcoming to me on many
occasions, and she and I wrote letters for a while, that kept me in
touch with and part of the family.
When I got the news about my uncle two months ago, I was also told my
aunt, like her brother, had been diagnosed with lung cancer in the
final stage. The same disease, by the way, that took my mother.
God must have had an off day when he concocted our family gene pool.
My aunt, who was in Copenhagen for treatment, passed away Wednesday night. She was spared much suffering.
