Passages

My aunt died 2 nights ago.   She would have been 95 next month.   She was my mother's younger sister.

She was the last remaining relative in my immediate family of her generation, the one that grew up during World War II.  My own father was 32 when he enlisted in the Army, after Pearl Harbor and he was 42 when I was born.   He died in 1998 at the age of 88.   Mom died in 2000 at the age of 82, from pneumonia.

Aunt Claire and my uncle always enjoyed coming out to visit the horses.   They lived in San Diego and it wasn't too far of a drive for them.   Then they sold their house there and moved to Indio, within 5 minutes of both of our grown children who often stopped to see them.   My uncle died a couple of years after their move and they continued to stop in and check on my aunt.  She was more of a grandmother to them than their own grandmother, who had passed, like I said, in 1998, so she never got to see her great-grandchildren.  But Claire often had dinner with our daughter in Indio and her family and loved on the grandchildren like they were her own. 

Rest in peace, Claire
September, 1924 - August 26, 2018