17/366 – Colourful Life

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January 17, 2012 – Have you ever known someone so colourful, so full of life, so wonderfully alive and yet so solidly grounded in a relatively simple existence? That’s my Auntie Clara. Although she’s not really my Aunt by blood. She is a integral family friend, more of an extended family matriarch, stretching back something like 75 years.

I sent her an invitation to our wedding in 2009 and she called me to say that she’d come if it had been in the spring, but February was a bit daunting to come down … in her 99th year on the planet.

99 and she would answer emails. 99 and she would have travelled to Vancouver for a wedding if it hadn’t been winter. On that same phone call she told me that she had just moved into an apartment. She told me that she had been prodded to move and in her words… “I told them I’d move in when they found me a ground floor apartment that allows cats. And wouldn’t you know it Paige! Six months later they called me up and said ‘Mrs. Johnston, we have that apartment.’ What was I to do? I had to move in. Now what am I going to do with my house…do you want to buy a house?” She proceeded to tell me all about the people at the complex, who did what, where people were from.

Sharp as a tack.

I saw her that summer at my cousin’s wedding in Salmon Arm. She had shrunk in stature, but even at 98 and a bit she was still the same Auntie Clara. Colourful, alive, not a memory missing, maybe a bit hard of hearing, but that was it.

When I think of Clara I think of Siamese cats, funky jewellery, Scotch and Drambuie, the Blarney Stone, swimming at the cottage, trains, lazy summer days and pennies crushed on the tracks. She had a zest for life and an interest in people and their lives that few can comprehend. One of my funniest memories of her was about 20 years ago. She was somewhere around 80 or 85 years old and was completely miffed that she’d received a speeding ticket. She even tried to lie her way out of it by telling the young officer that she was late for a charity function. She was heavily involved in charities, but nto that day, she was just speeding. And I clearly recall her indigation  when she said “And wouldn’t you know it, that young man, he didn’t believe me, and gave me that ticket anyway!”  We all had a wonderful laugh. She said we couldn’t blame her for trying.

I feel grateful to have had the opportunity to have had her as a part of my life all these years.

I received an email from my Uncle yesterday. It said that at 101.5 years of age it has been discovered that Auntie Clara has a congenital aneurysm – since birth – and that it has finally made itself known. Last Thursday she went for a walk to the Mall to get her newspaper, and she collapsed on the sidewalk. At the hospital they performed a scan and discovered the aneurysm, which has been slowly but actively bleeding into her brain for a while. Operating is not an option. It would have to be here in Vancouver, which would require a 5-6 hour trip in poor weather conditions, and the trip might be worse than the cure, which has a very slim chance of succeeding at her age. Rae says that she is sometimes active and lucid, mostly not. It could be 24 hours, it could be two weeks, but the decline will continue.

She always seemed immortal to me, to all of us I imagine. My grandparents have all passed away, but somehow it never felt that way because Auntie Clara was still there and she was the embodiment of all their memories. It’s hard to imagine this world without her wit and laughter in it. It will be a little less colourful when she is gone. And that makes me very sad.