
My cousin Christine called me today to tell me my Auntie Betty died on Friday. She'd had an aortic aneurysm on Thursday while she and Uncle Tony were on a bus. She was taken by ambulance to a hospital, and they asked Uncle Tony if they should attempt to save her life. He was shocked and said yes. She survived the oporation and on Friday Uncle Tony, Christopher (their son), Christine (their niece), and Devinda (Christine's husband) were with her. Christine told her who was there and asked her to blink if she understood. Auntie Betty blinked. Then, soon after, she died. Auntie Betty was 87 and in the early stages of Alzheimer's - she was my father's older sister, and he died of Alzheimer's. Apparently their mother died of an aortic aneurysm - something I never knew. In this case it probably spared her the degradation of Alzheimer's disease. She will be cremated and her ashes taken back to England to be put next to the grave of Jeremy, their eldest son, who died when he was just 5 or 6, of a combination of... whooping cough and something else. Measles, perhaps. Well, I'm not sure. It was in the early Fifties.

It was a bad thing when my family blew up, years ago.
Where's my handkerchief...
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PLZ LEEVE A MEZZAGE KTHNXBAI