Major... I’m tearing up!

My aunt was the most amazing person I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing. She was kind, humble, and always in high spirits. Her house was cozy and inviting. Old brown carpet spread from one small room to the next, interrupted by the yellowing tile in the kitchen and bathroom. From the wood paneled walls hung photos of people I’d never meet and names I’d never remember. It was a simple house for a simple woman, a woman who would become the most important person in my life.

Every school holiday she would make goodie bags for all my classmates, with a few extras for me. I had never asked for it, she just did it because it made me happy. Whenever she wasn’t working at a local clinic, inputting data for very little money, she would take me to a nearby park, or to a movie. We saw Jurassic Park together, twice in the same day, in a theater I can see from my current apartment.

Years later, when I was around eleven years old, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Being so young, I had no idea what that meant other than she had to go to a hospital in another city for treatment, and she had a new haircut. I would later find out that this was a wig.

I was a teenager when she began to fall deathly ill. I hadn’t visited in a long time. I was out of school and living my own life. I wasn’t aware of her condition worsening. Over the next year or two my family would remind me to call or to visit her. It was never explained to me that she was dying, and that her time might come any day. I thought that they were just reminding me to call her because I hadn’t in so long. Being a selfish teenager I ignored them., continuing to care only about tight jeans, dyed hair, music and sex.

Eventually I had a reason to visit. However I can’t remember what it was. I walked up the creaking stairs to the old wooden porch and pushed open the heavy front door. I saw my aunt lying on the couch, like she had always done before, but this time was different. Her hair was gone, and her mouth hung open. Above her was some sort of mechanical arm with a bar hanging from it. Without skipping a beat she said to me. “Oh honey, don’t worry about this, this is just to help me sit up.”

On her deathbed, she was still more concerned with me than she was with herself. Despite all the pain she must have been in, it still mattered that I not be worried. She pulled herself up and reached out for a hug. I hugged her, but don’t remember if I had said anything, nor do I remember anything else she said to me, aside from farewells and I love yous exchanged on the way out. Even in this condition I never thought she would actually pass.

Several weeks later I woke up to find my grandma and cousin in the living room. They told me that my aunt had passed in her sleep the night before. I tried as hard as I could to not cry. I said “Okay”, got up and left, returned to my room, buried my head in my pillow, and cried my guts out for hours.

She’s buried not far from where I live. A small headstone with an engraving of Tinkerbell marks her final resting place, but aside from the funeral I’ve never been. I can’t even remember where she’s buried exactly. I feel so awful for never going to see her, for not spending more time with her in the final days. Almost a decade later I still have such disgust for some members of my family for not telling me she was dying. There is a deep pain in my heart that will never subside, a hole that can never be filled without my aunt being in the same world as I am.

Somehow, despite all of this, the ending of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain is still the worst thing I have ever experienced.