RIP Aunt Bernice

My aunt Bernice, my mother’s older sister, would have been 107 in October. And she liked counting her age like that, she was like a 6 year old looking forward to being 7. She was totally lucid, and witty, right up to the end. We often used to say that she was immortal, that she would outlast us all, and I think in a way we’d started to believe it. This morning, at 10:30 a.m. New Jersey time, she died.
We don’t know if it was Covid related , but it doesn’t really matter. She was 106 years old. Eventually the body gives out.
I’m very proud of the fact that she made it to 106, I always tell everybody about her who will listen, because that’s a family brag, but she was also witty, and funny, and outgoing and loving. She wrote poems, she wrote stories, she wrote songs, some very funny songs, she made puppets and gave performances.
I remember the story of the Princess Shklooby Blootch, that she read to us as children. We thought it was hysterical just because of the name. I read it once as an adult, and it was a bit more than that. She was a rebel princess, didn’t like any of her suitors, and she had a vegetable garden if I remember right, and then she married a gentle prince, who was a vegetarian but he had a large herd of cattle to satisfy her appetite for big, juicy steaks with the blood squirting out of them like fountains.
A bit ahead of her time, really.
She was a fun aunt. I will miss her.