Aunt Kate

Aunt Kate passed away this week on December 2nd. Today they announced her funeral on Thursday December 9th. I feel bad that I will not be able to be there with her family. We can't travel at this time.

She certainly had a lot of issues these past few years after having multiple strokes and suffered from Alzheimer's along with diabetes and being a cancer survivor. She was 89.

Aunt Kate was always one of my favorites from my father's family. She was about eleven years younger than him. Sadly their mother, my grandmother, died shortly after giving birth to her in 1932 due to complications from cancer. She never knew her mother.

I had a long phone talk with her a few years ago when I called her when my granddaughter was born. We talked a lot about when she was living as young person in Germantown. She reminded me again that she was my first babysitter. She also described handing me across the porch railings at the family house at Greene and Logan to the nuns next door. Yes, my father's family lived next door to a convent. 

I was at her wedding when she married Uncle Bill at St. Francis of Assisi our parish church down the street from our house. I was a four year old kid but I remember that day as the first special church event of my life with the extended family all there. All my aunts and uncles were there along with the older folks like Nana and Aunt Nellie. I also clearly remember my sister Betsy being the flower girl at the wedding. Coincidently we would also joke that Betsy would also be a babysitter for Aunt Kate's children. 

When we were kids our family visited with Aunt Kate and her family all the time. We were always going over to the house in Glenside. We also went on vacations together up to the Poconos or down to the Jersey shore.

Another memory of Aunt Kate was the day my father died. I was notified by a Navy chaplain to call my family ASAP.  I called home from the base several times but the phone was busy. Apparently I eventually got through right after the family at home was notified that dad had died from a ruptured aneurysm. All I could hear was people loudly crying until Aunt Kate came on the line and although her brother had just died she calmly talked to me and gave me the information I needed. Within hours I was flying home on emergency leave but I never forgot her voice on the phone that day. I can hear it right now softly in my heart.