My Aunt Dot, my mom’s little sister Dorothy… left us this morning after 93 years of life, laughter and love.

It’s sad to say good bye to all the adventures and experiences that this gentle woman knew over her life-time, until during some moments in the darkened early hours today, she quietly slipped away from us.

On her last evening, racked with pain and suffering, a sip of morphine, a surreal glance around the room through eyes that could now only dimly see, recognizing little, nor even the faces hovering near, watching intently as consciousness slowly left her being… yet hold! Is she a child once again, playing in a sun- drenched field of swaying Shasta, Lupine, Coneflowers and Black-eyed Susan, Blue Flax and Baby’s Breath dancing on the breeze of a new summers’ day, kicking a ball to her little brother Hal, or to her older sister Shirley, as they laugh and romp in the throes of youth and the delicious promise of so many tomorrows in their bright young futures?

Are they all three now together again, their soft young skin fragrant, silky haired and sturdy-bodied once more? What great moments must await these three in their unfettered, innocent lives ahead!

Even with the attendant tragedies that will surely visit over the years, they will have had their day, have had their opportunity to live, and been a part of humanity as it imperceptibly moved along its way. There were thousands who knew their names, befriended them, loved them, cherished their moments spent together and remembered them all their days. They lived in their time, left their love for humanity in the many faces that will carry on their memories, as testament that they once were here, that they lived, and loved, and were once, and would always be, part of it all.