My great aunt died this morning. On Monday she was diagnosed with cancer, and the doctors said it had by then spread throughout her whole body. It was all very sudden.

I remember on Christmas Day Aunt Hilda was walking around, just as active as can be, defiant... She didn't want to sit at the table where we put all our "elders" every year, she wanted to sit in the living room with everybody else: there among all the great grandchildren that were playing, among the presents, across from the white guy nobody recognized but assumed was a family friend and welcomed into the family anyhow, next to the piano where later on we would all gather around to sing, next to the piano where my cousin would play kneeling on his knees and my aunt Wanda would, singing, search frantically for songs we used to sing through Grandma's old piano bench, surrounded by her brother's (my grandfather's) family...

Aunt Hilda's hands were shaking.

Wait, lets go back a bit.

I called her something more like "Ain't Hilda" since she was my great aunt. But she was the only Hilda I knew.

So Aint Hilda's hands were shaking as she carried her plate filled with all the home cooked food my mother and her sisters had prepared for the whole family. I was scared she would drop the plate and the sweet potatoes would get all over the rug. We all looked out of the corner of our eye. She paid no mind, just kept on, determined. There was other chatter about her around Grandaddy's small, Bowling Green, VA house:

"You know they found a spot on Aint Hilda's brain."
"What?"
"Aint Hilda say, whatever it is on there, she is taking it with her when she go."
"Hmm."

Aint Hilda thanked everyone for the delicious food. It was exceptionally good this time too. Later on Christmas Day found her listening to us sing gospel songs around my grandma's old piano, cousin Reggie playing the way she used to play when she was alive. The keys are all messed up now. I did it when I was a little girl, wrote on the keys of the old piano with a chinese marker, wrote the notes down, stuck tape to the keys with the notes written on them so I could remember how to play. A few years later, my mother bought me my own keyboard. I still never learned to play either one of them. There are alot of things in my life like that. I even sold my trumpet for cold cash, because I was too shy to join the band at my new school. My cousin Reggie taught himself how to play the piano and several other instruments. My aunt, who had not been herself for quite some time, whose son and his troubles have seemed to take a huge pound on her, opened up and sang with a voice like Mahalia, the rest of us harmonized, and my grandfather added some base every now and then. Aint Hilda shushed my great Uncle Mel and Granddaddy, her brothers. The house was filled with song. It felt like family for real again.

The funeral arrangements haven't been made yet but I assume they will be this weekend or so. A strange piece of me feels excitement to go, I haven't been to church in a long time, and something about the bonding together of family in the time of mourning just sounds good to me. I have been very fortunate, so many wonderful things have been happening to me recently, nothing truly hurtful has happened to me in a long time. Or perhaps I am getting stronger. I look out at the world around me, and compassion pours out from me, sometimes involuntarily, for those whose suffering mine cannot compare. I cannot help but love the world against my will. Otherwise I feel I too have died.