In better news...

My Aunt Ruth is out of ICU and has improved considerably over the last 24 hours. Aunt Ruth is 90 years old, and is my one remaining Aunt, my mother's last sibling left. She's the one person keeping my brothers and sisters and I from being "the old ones"..LOL. She became ill last week and it was touch and go for awhile; my Uncle Jack told us she was delirious and not responding for a few days, and he was very worried about her. I'm so glad she seems to be getting better. I hope she'll make it through the winter and be able to come to my niece's wedding in June. It is quite special when you have a family gathering with 5 generations! Anyhow, I've always been very fond of my Aunt Ruth; she's a lovely woman, and very much the family historian. When we all visited her last spring for her 90th birthday celebration she told me several times that we need to remember that family is important, and made me promise that if she died, we would make sure Uncle Jack was okay. "He's been the most wonderful husband" she said, and it made me very happy to see how the two of them cared for each other after almost 50 years of marriage. Very inspiring.

It seems strange to me to think that but for Aunt Ruth, my sisters and brothers and I are now the oldest generation, and that to my nieces, nephews, great nieces and nephews, we are what my aunts and uncles were to us: the connection between the family past and their futures. I just never figured on being the old(er) Aunt who had all these stories of family past to tell..and truthfully, I certainly don't feel like I'm all that much older than my oldest niece, who is almost 45. I guess it's all in the perspective you take.

For the record, I plan to be that aunt who is a bit on the eccentric side, who is the "cool" aunt...the one who is a kick-ass 90 year old! God willing and the creeks don't rise, LOL.