posted on Apr, 26 2017 @ 11:41 PM
a reply to:
silo13
Something similar to this happened in my family when I was four years old. An "Aunt and Uncle" who were actually distant cousins lived on the next
farm. Their children and grandchildren lived far away so the neighborhood children were treated like their grandchildren. I spent many happy
afternoons with them, "helping" to feed the critters or snapping beans on the porch watching the lambs play in the farmyard.
This happy state of affairs was shattered when she got a diagnosis of inoperable cancer. At that point in my young life I'd never lost a close loved
one. I overhead my mother telling my grandmother that "Aunt Etna" didn't have long to live and my heart broke. A few months passed and they were
moved to a care home then she had to be hospitalized. In those days they didn't let little kids go to hospitals so I never saw her after she left the
care home. I cried every day because I missed them so much. Most afternoons after Daddy got off work he would take me to see Uncle Fonza. In the
afternoon of Good Friday, my mother got a call saying that Aunt Etna had died. It was expected of course, and my mother's words to me as she sent me
to tell my grandparents, who lived next door and didn't have a phone, "Tell them that she's passed from her pain." I did. They cried for a bit but
their main concern at that time was for Uncle Fonza. He was apparently perfectly healthy so it surprised me when my grandmother said, "If their
prayers are answered, he won't last the night."
I stayed with them for a bit and then started home. I saw my mother on the porch beckoning me home. When I got there she told me she had just gotten
another phone call, this one from the lady at the care home. She had gone to his room to tell him about Aunt Etna's death. She consoled him for a
bit then asked her to call his sons and let them know and allow him some time for himself before she told the other members of the household. She
made the calls he had requested and returned to his room some thirty minutes after she'd left him. He was dead in his chair just as she'd left him.
She remembered hearing them say that they wanted to die together but she never to that day really, really believed in the power of prayers.
That was the saddest Easter of my life. My parents did their best to distract me with Easter bunnies but their funeral on Easter Sunday was the first
funeral of a close loved-one I had ever attended. That was 59 years ago and the events of the afternoon they died are still very clear in my memory.