It was last Thursday mid-morning when my dad called me.

I was just trying to work. He was sitting in his car outside of the dental office where my mom was having some tooth work done.

Hi Bruce- this is Dad. I got a call from the medical examiner’s office this morning.

Margaret is dead.

The words punch me in the head, followed by a wallop of silence.

What happened?

At that moment I was immediately wrestling with the little devil within that jeered at me. See? You should have been calling her! You should have been checking on her. I had felt that push to look in on her ever since the COVID stuff broke in late February.

Heck, since late 2019, when I hadn’t seen or heard from her in weeks. In months.

A neighbor had noticed that she was not leaving from or returning to her house. Her normally nurtured and vibrant yard looked abandoned. Something wasn’t right. The neighbor went over to the house to see if she was there. Knocks returned no responses.

Flies on the windows. Inside the house.

The police came after receiving the call, and entered the home.

On the floor between her sitting chair and the TV set in the living room, amidst the putrid odor and the flies, was the body of an older woman. A body that had been there for some time. A week and a half or two weeks at that time, my dad said.

The firemen from the local firehouse came down the hill to her home, and helped remove the body.

Her body went to the city morgue, where the examiner could review it.

After a few days, identity finally secured, calls were made, which naturally meant to her closest next of kin, my father.

As my dad shared about her discovery and what he knew about her demise, I thought about my dad, processing this fresh news. Hearing a first report of his departed sister. My dad, standing alone on top of the mountain of his family line. The single survivor of his siblings.

And I then thought about my aunt Margaret- the only Welton relative I’ve known for some two or three decades outside of my immediate family.

I thought about the recent dimming of her light, and wondered what might have happened to her. I thought about a pervasive loneliness I felt filled much of her life, despite her investment in careers of service and nurturing, of presence and support.

I thought about the physical pain that troubled her body for many years of late. I thought also of the heart hurt she wrestled with for most of her life.

I thought about her as a Welton- prideful, independent, headstrong, accomplished, composed, solitary, compassionate. And I thought about her as a woman. A woman of drive and influence. A woman of eclectic interests and groundbreaking aspirations. A woman, both warrior and wounded.

A woman.

The aunt that has always been in my memories since I was small.

My dad somehow was well comported telling me about Margaret and the circumstances around her death. In this mini-age of COVID crud, I wondered about the inevitable. The examiner thought it was probably a heart issue, he said.

I also thought about how the COVID era amplified the silence of her passing from planet Earth, which deepened my sadness about how she died, and how she was discovered.

Sometime in May, 2020, my aunt, Margaret Ann Welton, left this world.