goodbye aunt chica

the phone rang yesterday afternoon and i saw it was linda. i had a bad feeling. sure enough. she says, "i've become the bearer of bad news, as you say."

i quickly tried to run through my head who could possibly have died. my poor little sister is the one who told me about tio gocha, tio elias, my cousin's death and now, who.

turns out it was my aunt chica (francisca). she was my uncle elias' wife. she died yesterday during the early afternoon of a massive heart attack. she's suffered a mild heart attack some time the week before and was dismissed to go home from the hospital. then it happened. she never made it to the hospital.

joe and his family had just left corpus on monday and returned to dallas that night.

i always liked my aunt chica. she was a nice lady. she was a retired teacher who kept busy doing this and that.

it's funny when you move away. when you don't see your relatives for a long time. you begin to wonder when was the last time you saw them? i can't remember when i last saw my aunt. was it at my dad's funeral services? probably. in that case, it's been almost two years.

i that was the case for all of the relatives who've died. i saw my cousin at my dad's rosary mass. but it was brief. and i can't remember when i saw him before that. my uncle gocha i can't remember when i saw him last. when we went back to visit texas for the first time i know he was there at a little get together. we saw him while my dad was having an operation a few months later. then he died some months later. uncle got a stroke before we went for our first visit. we saw him in the nursing home a few times.

it is just sad when it happens.