My Beloved Aunt Cathy

I am unsure how to begin this post because I am unsure how to encapsulate the loss of my aunt Cathy White into a compressed and composed "blog". However, it also seems strangly appropriate because with each new technology Cathy's ability to express herself grew. I think that Cathy would have loved typing out a blog post to all of us.

For anyone who does not know Cathy White died sometime early Thursday morning while sleeping in her fathers home. Details of the funeral and visitation can be found at http://www.daleymurphywisch.com/. While I could not be there, everyone who saw Cathy after she died said that the scene was one of peace and ease. And for myself, I choose to believe that if Cathy felt anything it was just her muscles, always so tight, releasing the spirit so long traped in such an inept body.

In many ways Cathy was always a paradox. She was the best listener I knew but she was hard of hearing (which may have helped when I played her my oboe solos). She was the most open human being I have met but she was unable to speak (I am certain that I am not the only one to have relied on this paradox when I needed to confide a secret). Cathy White was my image of strength, and energy and endurance even though she was never able to stand on her own. And most amazingly, Cathy was given a life full of obstacles and operations, discomfort and disability and yet she was always grateful and joyous. How lucky I was to grow up with such a teacher.

And how lucky I was to learn what caring for a loved one meant from my granny Harriett and my Papa Phil, my aunts, uncles and mom and dad. Each would say that the privilege of knowing Cathy was leagues beyond compensation for the effort of caring for her. This is undoubtably true. But that truth lives beside the truth that Cathy literally never took a step that someone was no behind her. Cathy never ate a meal alone. And Cathy never went to sleep that someone had not just tucked her in. Harriet and Dick and Phil have a relationship that is evidence of the boundlessness of that love. I think that growing up with Cathy has made the kind of love I am capable of giving deeper. Because I cannot be in Beloit this week to give som of that love, I would like anyone who reads this to hug these people and send them love and thoughts and prayers by the bucketload.

Finally, I am trying to embrace this loss with the grace and even joy that I think Cathy herself would. Last Sunday, James and I were cuddling up for a nap, and talking, and I fell asleep midsentence and he laughed and I woke up and he said "I just felt all of you relax, and I thought of Cathy in the hot tub." Now I love the image of Cathy in a hot tub, but I also love that the image that my husband has of my aunt, whose condition is defined by its spastic nature, is one of my aunt relaxing. Cathy's most enduring lesson for me is by accepting life as it comes, grace and peace and joy may be found anywhere if one has the strenght to see it.

Peace and joy, my family. What a loss. What a woman.