When my Aunt Margaret passed in the spring of 2020, there was some unreality to it. The world was on hold at the time, in a waiting room, clock-watching.

With the COVID virus stoking fear in anything broadcasting anything, and consequently, in everyone subject to media, workplaces were mostly closed. Daily statistics related to new cases, hospital capacities, and hospital bed shortages reinforced the message about the nastiness of the disease- and justifiably so. It was like there was a cleansing going on. And everyone wondered if they would pass inspection or become part of the media statistics. It was like a purge, but it was a purge that went on largely behind closed doors, in secret chambers, in silent spaces.

And often in that season of anxiety and worry, I thought I should be checking on Margaret. Like myself, she was single, and in the later years of her life, she was also very private- which meant that I never really knew what was going on with her, unless she periodically shared a post on Facebook, or if I took the time to call her and ask.

I didn’t do that very much.

But Margaret didn’t do that very much either.

I believe Margaret- Aunt Buggy, as she was known as in our family- had lived all of her life carrying a constant burden of pain from a wound that never healed. She, despite several suitors who expressed interest in her, never married. She chose a vocation that suited her sensitivities- and her empathy- to people in pain. She was a helper, and she wanted to help others deal with deep heart hurts that she herself had also known. She wanted to stare trauma in the face, and despite its ill effects, provide support and encouragement to those facing it- which she did, and I think she was probably really good at.

She was good at meeting people in their crisis places, and acted as a bridge for their fears to cross as they faced life-threatening moments. And in return, she met them with gentle words of comfort and hope- words which came out of her naturally, extensions of her own journey in pursuit of God and grace and healing and cultivating self-care. She was really good at bearing and carrying others in their darkest and most desperate moments. But I suspect making and managing longer term relationships were another issue for her.

Because normal, daily relationships rely on trust and transparency in a way that crisis care does not. Intimacy takes root through vulnerability and transparency, through the effort and willingness one has to know another, and to be known. Intimacy requires being able to share your soul- your deeper hopes and concerns and fears- with others, and being to meet them where they are when they do that in turn. And I think Margaret by and large had a hard time doing that- being able to build deep trust in others- after being wounded early in her life.

You can be a hero, and be very alone, which I think Margaret was- heroic, and very alone.

When Margaret died in the spring of 2020, and we found out about it several weeks later, the fact that it took weeks for us to know she had passed troubled me deeply, because it meant she was not in touch with anyone in a way of any depth that would have missed her if she was silent for a few days.

Including myself and my family members.

An observation which reinforced to me the depth of her isolation in the later years of her life.

At the time of her death, she lived only two blocks from her brother- my dad- and my mother.

She also had had a niece that lived just a mile or so from her, and a nephew that didn’t live more than 10 miles from her.

She had committed herself to her work as a hospital chaplain during the working years of her life. She was a teacher, a mentor, and a trainer as well as a pastor in her career. She did what she did where she could, and offered what she had in the several positions she held in her life.

When she got older though, it seemed as if her skills- and her extensive training- as a counselor and as a crisis mediator depreciated, and not by her doing. Where she was at geographically, and where she was at in her life journey, both suggested to her that her value as a chaplain was nominal, and she left a hospital job in Hayes, Kansas, hurt and demeaned. She came to Albuquerque and found a pseudo-chaplaincy job working in a hospital with a unit supporting children facing dire medical conditions. She did her job, but I don’t think it was for her quite what pure chaplain work was for her. She put in her time, and retired when she could.

Retired, she dealt with several chronic health issues, and steered heavily into reclusion. Her lack of personal relationships, or her shedding of broken ones, deepened her isolation. And the depth of wounds she had accrued both early and later in life led her to accept it.

I think she kind of gave up on trusting others, on being able to forgive them, and, consequently, on being able to love and be loved by them.

Which is what often brings tears to my eyes when I think about her demise.

And this, in a grand way, is a cautionary tale for me as well, because I empathize with her and how hurt she must have felt later in her life. Her wounds and fears led her away from love, when, in the end, she should have been surrounded by it.

And I see a lot of myself in her.