the passing of an age

Ms Foxy, my mom's cat that had been her brother's.

This past weekend, my uncle died.  We've not been particularly close over the past twenty years, since I've moved to the South, leaving Pennsylvania.  But as a child, then as a teen, I do have fond memories of the times I spent with my aunt and uncle.  I spent many weekends with them, just outside of town, at their little house on the hill overlooking the dam where the area kids swam in the summer waters.  When my cousin was a baby and into her toddler years, I watched her often.  We called her "Pipshin" at the time.  She grew out of that nickname, I'm sure.  My uncle had adopted her when he was in his mid~forties, the age I am now.  He had had an entire lifetime before she came along, and yet, his most important role would be as her father, that would last him another thirty years.  He died at just 74.

Foxy lived til the ripe old age of 18.

My mother was five years younger than he was.  He was the closest sibling in age to her, with three older brothers than that yet.  All of them are gone now, my mother included.  It saddens me, in that mild way of resignation, not sharp horrifying painful grief, that all my Grandma's five children have died, passing from this earth, residing here for such a relatively short time.  Mild resignation because that is the way of the world, that time marches on and we age, cycling through our lives, dying off, and yet time continues, sloughing through generation after generation.

Last summer, I saw a few of my first cousins, other grandchildren of Helen Evert, nee Blass.  I also visited with some distant relatives, of extended family, grandchildren of our grandmother's siblings, grandchildren of those first cousins, grandchildren of grandchildren.  Our Aunts Flo, Ethyl, Lorraine, and a few others from that oldest living generation holding down the fort while the rest of us milled around them like moons revolving around these founding women who birthed generations of variously surnamed beings who have continued the life cycle, taking our places accordingly, here but for a speck of time.