My Aunt Cindy

Tonight I had a lovely, if not random-ish, message on facebook from a woman who was one of my late Aunt Cindy's best friends. I was astonished, flattered and well...thrown into a big tornado of "WTF?"

My Aunt Cindy, Lucinda (Lewis) Boone, was an extraordinary woman, and a paragon for me since I was a gangly little kid with skinny legs and too much "gumption and booksmarts." I was told by my mother, from the time I started talking that I reminded her of her sister. I grew up with an ingrained pride in being like my Aunt. She was a remarkable woman.

Here's the thing: I only met her a few times in my life, and yet she is closer to me than many, many other relatives. Why? Because she "got" me. Christmas presents would come and I would have all sorts of gadgets and goodies, but when I opened Aunt Cindy's present, there was everything I was thinking and dreaming and believing in. She just knew me. Sometimes even more so that my parents. When I got older she had sage advice. For instance "When things got me really down in college I would just smoke a cigarette, drink some wine and listen to Joan Baez or Joni Mitchell." So of course my college career was totally threaded with the dulcet tones of long haired hippy women...whom I have now become. But I still have all of her emails and all of them essentially say, to paraphrase, "Be yourself, you are wonderful, and keep creating."

And I think I "got" Aunt Cindy, as much as a precocious child/eccentric teen/early-twenties-fuckup could. I knew a kindred spirit the first time I met her, when I was 3 years old and she let me eat my dinner next to the cat bowl with her fluffy kitty because I was not Natasha, NO! I was Inkabell the black kitty. Seriously I lived in black tights and a leotard and ate out of dishes on the floor. I blame Andrew Lloyd Webber...but I digress. Aunt Cindy totally embraced this first meeting of her kitty-niece and loved me all the same.

She got to see me, in life, only a few times more. They were lovely times. Times I will never, ever forget and very important times to me, at this point in my ife. Now, as a woman (because I am FINALLY starting to feel like one) moving into an age where all that chaos is (hopefully) being slowly absorbed into the ether of the past, I feel I am seeing my amazing Aunt in a new light.

The first thing I turned my attention to was my Uncle Michael. When Cindy died, I had no idea what he was going through. I had never known love like theirs, and I am sure that few people have. But now, after marrying my best friend, and living through only a few years of life together, I could not imagine such a loss. If anything happened to Jason, or if I knew that I was going to leave him in despair...well that, my friends, is true tragedy. My Uncle lives it everyday and all want to do when I think of him is apparate, like some J.K. Rowling character, and give him the biggest hug and cook him a meatloaf. I really wish I could. I wish I could let him know how much I still love him. There are some uncles in my past, who married family and divorced, and honestly I wasn't bothered to see the back of them. But Michael is family. Always.

I love so fiercely. From as long as I can remember my biggest fear was the people I love dying. And here I am, so far away from the people I love, so that that fear takes everything out of my hands. When my Aunt Cindy was dying I was unable to come to her. I tried, but I was told she "wouldn't want me to see her like that." I dunno. I regret it. I regret the fact that my family on that side barely speaks to me now. Family can be so fickle, but you would think, after years of sadness, we might all want to relish something light.

That's what Cindy would have wanted.

My Aunt Cindy always had funny ideas for me. She liked picking out celebrities for me to marry. One time it was Derek Jeter....good thing she died before it came out that he is a walking STD. The best was after she saw "The Pianist" and emailed me saying "I think the man for you is Adrien Brody!!!" She totally got my thing for guys with big noses. It's too bad she never got to meet my Jason. His nose would knocked her out, as would his manners, joie de vivre and sweetness. I would like to think she would have approved. In fact, I think she would have totally dug (is that the right form of "like it dig it man!" ?) our wedding as she loved Arizona and we played the Beatles in our ceremony, which was officiated by a woman.

There is so much about my aunt that I want to know. She was writing books. I want to read them. She was so fantastically interesting and amazing and yet I feel I have always been distanced. I don't know if it was space or people. I was the perpetual "kid," as she liked to call me. All I know is that I miss her, and I regret the time that I wasted not getting to be more a part of her life. And I desperately hope that the rest of my family, who is part of her, will allow me to to be part of theirs.

I think Aunt Cindy would have loved Okinawa. In fact, I think she would have approved of everything, except that I was not acting. But I will make her proud. She'll see. ;)