Family

You know the old adage "You don't know what you have until you lose it?" I have found that to be true again and again.

Only today, I became acutely aware.

Today was a celebration of my aunt's 86th birthday (PHOTO, in striped dress) . She is the only sibling to my father (PHOTO: far right), who, at the age of 63, died in 1989. My grandmother-their mother- passed on shortly after. I somehow think the pain was too unbearable. The loss to great. I think she simply decided to stop. Feeling, living and breathing.

As I sat in the room with some wonderful women, enjoying our mutual love and respect for this woman; mother, aunt, grandmother and friend. I began to cry.

Not only for the wonderful things she has meant to me and done for me throughout my life, but also for the painful reminder that she is all I have that somehow links me to that hardy oak of a family tree.

Her hands are that of my grandmother, her stories are that of people who are no longer with us, and of the memories that no one thought to write down.

Until now.