Only the most special people...

As you may know from my last post, Christmas morning went pretty well. Christmas afternoon, not so much. After my parents and I opened our presents and had our amazing breakfast (thanks Mom), we got a call. This call was something we really did not want. My Great Aunt is an amazing woman. She is so influential that my siblings and I just called her "aunt." She is effectively a second mother to my mother. My aunt is intelligent, fun, thoughtful, and practical. But a few weeks before Christmas, she became very ill.I am still not sure of the specifics, but she was so sick that she was bed-ridden in her local hospital in Maine. Her sister and brother (my grandmother and great uncle) decided to drive up to Maine and stay with her. My mother wanted to go as well but my aunt told her to stay home.The following weeks felt as if we were on a small boat in a big ocean. One day she would be good. The next day, crappy. I'm sure the doctors also had chewed down fingernails. After a while the good days were bad and the bad were, well you get the idea. Eventually she signed a DNR. She felt what the doctors knew. There was no more that could be done for her.On the day before Christmas, they moved her to the hospice ward with nothing more than a morphine drip. On December the 25th, around midday, she died.We were all devastated. This inspiring woman who seemed like an angel on earth was now gone. Of course we all dealt with it in our own ways. My mother and sister cried. I was depressed. My dad and brother, stoic as always. Don't get me wrong. They were sad she had passed on, but they are not fans of heart-sleeved shirts.One of the few things that brought us solace was something my sister's mother-in-law told her. She said, "Only the most special people die on Christmas." I would like to believe that. So I will.