My Aunt Mary died over the weekend.

I HATE being in Florida!

Like Ole’ Blue eyes said, “…regrets, I’ve had a few…” Being in Florida is one of mine. Yeah, yeah….I know; I’ve got a good job, good friends and I’m close to my son. However, that doesn’t take away the pangs in my heart for being away from what I will always consider home. Rhode Island is where my family is, for the most part. It is where I grew up and where I had always imagined myself growing old and living out my life.

When my father died I picked up the responsibility of helping out the older family members. First it was my Uncle Kav and Aunt Ruth. I took them to doctor’s visits, had dinner with them, dragged over a VCR and movies to entertain them and spent time with them. Then, as I grew older that responsibility grew. I was always visiting sick family members in the hospital and at home.

Granted, being 1300 miles away from elderly relatives is not a difficult as being 1300 miles away from my son; I know I made the best decision I could have at the time. I still can’t stop the feelings that I had let down part of my familial responsibility. I make regular phone calls and always try to visit the rare times in back home. Of course more and more those visits are solitary ones to graveyards.

I have lots of good memories of my Aunt. When I was young they had a camper parked in the yard which was always filled with my cousin Cindy’s comic books. They were always the same ones and I read them over and over again. There was something different and exciting about just being inside the camper even if it was just sitting on blocks in the back yard covered in leaves. I don’t ever remember seeing that camper actually placed on the back of a pickup to go camping.

The house my uncle built for them was always a place of wonder for me as a child. It was a showplace which my Uncle Jim had designed and built himself. There were little touches which even a young child enjoyed. A laundry chute from the bathroom down to the basement laundry room. The toilet separated in the bathroom by a half wall and my uncle’s workshop in the basement.

The biggest area of mystery to the house was my aunt and uncle’s bedroom. It was separated from the rest of the house by a long, windowless corridor. I was never allowed to go down that corridor as a child. It looked much longer than it actually was. The chair rail and lack of lighting gave it the resemblance to “the last mile” the convicts walked in all those movies I had seen. Years later, when I was in my 30’s, the house was used as a staging/dressing area for one church related appearance or another and I was sent to that bedroom to change. I stopped for a moment at the top of that hallway. For a moment I couldn’t bring myself to take the first steps. I was breaking a lifelong rule, a taboo. The bedroom turned out to be a simple a functional room. That comforted me as my heart beat returned to a more normal level and the adrenaline left my system.

Her door was always open to me. When my parents joined them on cruise vacations I stayed with my cousin. She had a quirky sense of humor but when you were able to get her to laugh or even smile she made the room light up.

She taught me one of my biggest lessons of my youth. I had borrowed some money to help pay a traffic ticket. In my young, male mind I had to have the whole amount paid all at once. So, I kept saving trying to get it all in one lump but never quite making the goal amount. It had never dawned on me, at that age, to pay what I could as I went.

It’s ironic that she would pass with me owing her again. She had helped me out two years ago. I won’t go into the particulars of it, suffice to say I might not have learned that old financial lesson completely. Chalk up another regret, I guess.

I’ll miss you, Auntie Mary.