A Special Goodbye

to my Great Aunt Avis. We found out that she died peacefully at 2:15am Sunday. Her granddaughter had called us a few days ago to let us know that she had been sick, then had a heart attack in her sleep and had been admitted to the hospital. They wanted to do a bunch of testing but she refused. She slipped into a coma shortly after. She was 95 years old. She was the last living sibling of my grandfather. She was a tiny, spunky lady and as sweet as she could be. She had been a nurse and when I graduated nursing school she gave me a special gift. It was a glass syringe with a reusable needle in a special case. It was something that she had used frequently and was what was used before disposable syringes & needles came along. They had to sharpen the needles periodically.

She outlived a lot of her family including her siblings, husband and her daughter. She lived with her granddaughter for the past couple of years. She had great granddaughters and great great grandchildren. She had nieces & nephews, great nieces and nephews and my children were her great great niece and nephew. I'm not sure how many others there were. She crocheted beautiful baby blankets for my children when they were born. The last time we all got to visit with her was at my grandmother's 80th birthday party, before we moved to TN.

She touched a lot of lives and will be missed. I'm glad her death was a peaceful one. I think that is the best any of us can hope for when our time comes.