Aunt Barbara’s Death

My dad and I traveled to Cambridge, Massachusetts in 2011 because his sister died unexpectedly. I lived in Portland, Oregon, and he lived in NW Indiana, an hour from Chicago.

Crypts at Mount Auburn Cemetery, the same cemetery as Aunt Barbara’s ashes

Massachusetts, Part 2

8/19/2011

I think I’m over the initial shock. I didn’t know Aunt Barbara that well — I haven’t seen her since I was five years old, and she wasn’t very communicative. However, I did cry quite a bit after hanging up the phone yesterday. She wrote a couple of anti-Bush & anti-war limericks while I dwelled in Kansas, so she made a good impression on that score. She was the only relative of mine with a PhD; it was in economics, and she wrote her thesis on women and economics. My dad says her condo is within walking distance of the university.

I would have liked to have gotten to know Aunt Barbara better. I found her on Facebook and had her e-mail address, but she wasn’t interested in communicating with relatives. Given what I know about relatives, this isn’t hard to understand.

I’ll hopefully get the plane ticket tomorrow morning. I plan to fly to Chicago or South Bend, Indiana, on Wednesday morning or early afternoon. Next my dad and I will drive out to Cambridge — he said it’ll take three days and he’ll teach me how to drive his Prius. He wants to stay at a hotel near the condo; I thought it would be more frugal to stay at the condo, if we get a key, but he…