On realizing I'm the grownup in the room...

When the death of an aunt means the end of an era.

Yesterday my Aunt Paula died at age 78.

The family had been working to get her from Chicago to Florida since March, and she finally made it - though with some serious setbacks along the way - and, just a couple of weeks after traveling she was released to hospice care, dying just a few days later.

As I wrote about in early April, Aunt Paula was a force and a fixture in all our lives; the “cool aunt” and in many ways the glue that held my extended family together, a home all the adult kids could gather at and still feel like kids for a weekend. She had a big personality and a large circle of friends, stories for days and all the best snacks.

Aunt Paula worked as an actress in the Chicago area in the 70s and 80s, and here’s one of her print spots.

I’ve lost lots of people in my life: both of my parents, most notably; but also all my grandparents, multiple aunts and uncles, cousins and friends.

None of these deaths have been easy, and obviously losing my parents was devastating. But there’s something about the combination of this particular loss, at my particular age, that’s hitting me in a uniquely poignant way.

I realized yesterday a part of why that is. When my parents died - my mother when I was twenty-two, and my dad ten years later - there was a sense both that they were too young to die, and also that we, my siblings and I, were too young to lose them. It was a novel experience, and not in a good way - but something about that novelty and our youth created a buffer as the “real” adults stepped in to help us navigate it all.

When my father died, after suffering a stroke in a McDonald’s outside of Las Vegas where he’d been on a road trip with his siblings, it was Aunt Paula who called to deliver the bad news that he wasn’t likely to make it. “Things don’t look good, honey,” I can still remember her saying, and that’s when I shifted from numb and hopeful to actively grieving: if Aunt Paula said it, it must be true.

I was still the kid in the room, waiting for a grownup to tell me what was going on.

But Aunt Paula wasn’t particularly young to go, and neither are my siblings and cousins and I, now all solidly middle-aged, particularly young to lose her. At our ages, this kind of loss is just expected. We have a few elder relatives left - including my Uncle Bruce and his wife Kay, who tirelessly managed Aunt Paula’s care for the last month and a half - but they’re mostly far away, and far outnumbered by us “kids”.

After my dad died, we all spent the weekend at “home” - the house he’d lived in with my stepmother, the one we’d visited for years. Even though by this point we all had kids of our own, we were the kids, crashing on pull-out sofas and in tents in the backyard, eating up all the snacks.

My stepmom eventually remarried and moved, but we still had another “home” to go to in the fourteen years since: Aunt Paula’s. Her house in the Chicago suburbs was a refuge from the harsh realities of adulthood; a place to burrow in, enjoy chips and dip and bottomless drinks, and bask in the attention of a wise elder who doled out adoration, advice, and admonishments in whichever proportions she deemed necessary.

Aunt Paula and I at my brother’s wedding in 2003 (that explains the hair, friends) My life was a mess and as I recall, this is photographic evidence of her lovingly telling me to get my s*** together.

One of the hardest things to come to grips with in this stage of life is that I am the grownup in the room, and that there’s really nowhere to go “home” to except the home I create for myself and my own family.

It’s a weighty responsibility, more than feels bearable at times. The presence of a loving and stable elder who provides a soft place to land can help you forget, even if just for a few hours or a weekend, that the difficulties of life are yours to manage—not just for yourself, but for all the people who depend on you.

But then it occurs to me that, for decades, Aunt Paula was that person for us—even though she no longer had those people for herself. She assumed the position of the adult in the room for us “kids”; and though I’m sure at times it also felt like too much to bear for her, we’d never have known it. How could I do less?

Change can be devastating and disorienting, and there’s more of it in this season of life than I always feel prepared to face. But then I remember the generations before me who also had to learn to face this reality: at some point, we all have to become the grown-ups.

I’m fortunate to have, in my Aunt Paula, an unforgettable example of how it’s done.

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