My Aunt Tootie died today.

I have found much solace over the years in these words from Dietrich Bonnhoeffer. I like Bonnhoeffer's realistic view, and his honesty to not pretend that "God will make it all better" (in the sense of taking away all the pain), but that instead God will make the pain itself a source of gratitude.

I didn't want to post anything earlier for fear of family getting bad news from a facebook post so wanted to make sure that the news has gone out - the sadness I feel today is from the death of my Aunt Tootie, my mother's older sister, who had been a mainstay in my life and in my mom's. My mom lived with Tootie and her family when mom was a teenager (all six of them living in a basement for years, because no house was on it yet), and in the last six months or so of her life, mom moved back in with Tootie (this time in a house, not just a basement, but the same one!) so she could die in the comfort of home under good and loving care. Tootie's house and the home she made were always a kind of sanctuary, especially as I grew older. Many laughs, lots of extraordinary meals (she and I love duck, and we got to have a couple ducks these last few years), God only knows how much coffee, cake, pie, and cookies, and more love than one can quantify.

Here is Dietrich:

“There is nothing that can replace the absence of someone dear to us, and one should not even attempt to do so. One must simply hold out and endure it. At first that sounds very hard, but at the same time it is also a great comfort. For to the extent the emptiness truly remains unfilled one remains connected to the other person through it. It is wrong to say that God fills the emptiness. God in no way fills it but much more leaves it precisely unfilled and thus helps us preserve -- even in pain -- the authentic relationship. Further more, the more beautiful and full the remembrances, the more difficult the separation. But gratitude transforms the torment of memory into silent joy. One bears what was lovely in the past not as a thorn but as a precious gift deep within, a hidden treasure of which one can always be certain.”