My Aunt Margaret was my father’s youngest sister. Unlike my dad and his middle sister who started life on a farm in Beekmantown, Margaret’s memories only existed in the city of Plattsburgh. Her reference points were quite different than that of her two other siblings. She was, to the month, exactly thirty years my senior. Had she lived, she’d have turned 100 on March 12, 2019. She died young—younger then than her children and nephews are today. She was only 67.
As a family, we did not seem to be as close to Margert and her husband, Jim, as we were with my dad’s middle sister, Catherine. Their son, John, was an only child and I was often included in their family outings. None of that happened on the Kennedy side of the family. We never spent holidays with them no did we do anything with them. I’m sure my father had an intimate relationship with his sister, but my brother and I, and our mother, seemed to have a rather distant relationship with them.
My earliest memories of my aunt is of her sitting at the kitchen table in the back of the house. She always seemed to be nursing a bottle of Topper beer and smoking a cigarette. Did she do this every day? I just don’t know.
What I do know is that the aunt I remember in the last decade of her life is one who’d been transformed. I was still a new teacher when she had her hip replaced. Surgery for that was still relatively new. 1974? The date seems right to me. In my memory, she’d always led a very sedentary life—up to the point of surgery. After weeks of physical therapy to gain back mobility, she just continued what she’d already started. Gone was the sedentary aunt I knew. She now swam, walked and exercised on a regular basis. She lost weight; she gave up smoking and drinking and became a new woman.
Her husband, my Uncle Jim, retired and, like all Ladue’s before her, relocated to Florida for the winter months. They’d leave early—long before Thanksgiving—but would return home by early March. I never could figure that out. But her birthday was mid-month and she told me several times that she liked being home to watch spring emerge.
In September of 1985, my parents were celebrating their 40th wedding anniversary. I’d planned a big party for them for the actual date of the anniversary. I was on sabbatical studying at SUNY Albany. Logistics were important. My mom called to tell me that something had happened to Margaret that triggered a diagnosis of brain cancer. The Prognosis was grim, and she was essentially given a death sentence. For the moment, however, she was OK. I got on the phone, called the relatives and a decision was made to move the date up a week, thus allowing her and my uncle to come while she was still in good health.
The following week a small miracle occurred. She was offered a new protocol, some new treatment, that was still experimental. She agreed to try the new drug; within in days she noticed a positive difference. She’d bene returned to life. She and my uncle were given the gift of another winter in Florida, but by spring she began to fail again.
I graduated, Steve finished his semester at Laval University, we were homeless and could not get into our home until August, so we went to Europe for three months. On a gorgeous summer’s day on an island in Greece, on a day when we’d rented motor scooters, my Aunt Margaret died.
We didn’t learn about this until we returned home. My dad was devastated. His youngest sister was dead at 67.
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