Aunt Jane

[flea]

My great aunt Jane died this morning, "unexpectedly," at 100. She'd been living in a nursing home in Florida for many years; she moved down to be close to her niece (my father's cousin) Pamela, who was her designated caregiver as she had no children, after she broke a hip in her 80s getting out of a cab in NYC. I don't really know much about her. She lived with her mother in New York in the 60s on the East Side for many years (in a rent-stabilized apartment which my mother always joked that my sister could take over, as they shared a name). She sent us $5 each (crisp new bills) at Christmas as children, and sent a nice letter and a completely unexpected $1000 check for my wedding. I am pretty sure she graduated from Bryn Mawr, but she never married and I don't think she ever worked. Her mother came from money, I think. (And was a tough cookie; my father says he never saw his grandmother without white gloves on, and she very strongly disapproved of the woman who married her son, my grandfather, since she was a nobody.)

I never met her; she was and I guess will remain a semi-mythical, mystical creature to me. Aunt Jane, the skyscraper-dwelling, Metropolitan Museum art card-sending patroness of New York.