One last time

We had Aunt Winnie's memorial service on Saturday afternoon, and after it, and all the next day, the family crowded into Aunt Winnie's apartment or mine, shoulder to shoulder, knee to knee, telling stories and reminiscing, eating Jamaican Tastee patties (the real deal) and Miss Birdie's bun-and-cheese and Costo lasagna and Angie's rum-soaked black cake, none of it provided by me, all of it brought by my cousins from Virginia and Maryland and Jamaica and Boston and the Bahamas, who had determined that I should not have to feed the hoards, and how grateful I was that they just took control, heating up food and putting it out as more people arrived, washing dishes before I could get to them, taking charge in the bossy way the women and men in my family tend to do. It was perfect. My son drove his grand aunts to the airport then came home and crashed as around him the gathering continued. So many memorable moments, too many to set down here. But at one point late on Saturday night, as 17 of us sat in a circle around Aunt Winnie's living room, sharing memories of her and laughing uproariously at many of them, my cousin Maureen said, "Look at us. Do you realize this is the last time we will all be gathered in this apartment in which Aunt Winnie has lived for 57 years?" We all got pensive then, thinking about how many of us had lived first with Aunt Winnie and Uncle Charlie when we moved to the States; indeed, most of us gathered had at some point called that three-bedroom apartment home. Then my cousin Brian said, "Aunt Winnie has been the Ellis Island of our family," and we all murmured in a kind of wonder, because it felt completely true.