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Light a Candle
I barely remember my early childhood with my aunt. What I remember, going back in time starts when I was 12. My aunt Chede was a special vibrant woman. She loved music and taught me to love it. She especially enjoyed RnR. Growing up in the 80's she took me to my first concert when I was 12. She didn't have any children so she dedicated her life to me and my sister as if we were hers. She treated us like we were her own but like a great friend of years with the same tastes in almost everything. Living in the country made it perfect and very easy to create the most wonderful Christmas parties. My aunt was like thunder. Always happy, with a positive attitude and loved clowing around. She made everybody laugh but she had class too. She was quite the elegant lady. At a point in her life she got divorced and suffered a lot. Then, after trying her luck at love for a few years she finally decided to live her life with her family, best friends, nieces, brothers and sisters, traveling. When she discovered she had breast cancer she was devastated. Everyone was. Biopsies over and over again, she went into all the normal stages of an ill person, being denial and suffering the strongest during all this process. She got a first mastectomy and had her treatment orally and radioactively. After more or less two years of the cancer being controlled, it spread to her other breast and this time it was very agressive. No more pill treatment but harsh chemo which caused her hair to fall like all other cancer victims. She had her chest all black, burned from the treatment. But she always kept a smile on her lips and her jokes kept rolling. Still this didn't save her from this terrible condition. A year after her second mastectomy, on a cold hospital bed, having barely met my son who was 8 months by then, without being able to speak or emit any sound and without being able to open her eyes, my beloved aunt died of breast cancer. I remember holding a picture of my son wearing his first Halloween costume and having her turn her head sideways but not being able to look at it. The next day she died. It was a closed casket funeral in which I grieved a lot. I still miss her, her smell... and having things around my home that belonged to her didn't help at first but now they do. I started looking at things positively, still missing her but positively looking at the big picture. Taking care of my health and remembering my good times with her. Still I cannot hear certain songs that remind me of her without having a good cry and loving words for my aunt, now my angel that watches over me.
