Tacoma Gomo

Tacoma Gomo is what we called our eldest aunt. This woman was my father's oldest sister and my favorite aunt. She reminded me of Marge Simpson's older sisters with their big wild hair and smoker voices. She even had a body like theirs and used to walk around in wife beater tank tops reprimanding everyone in her loud husky voice and going outside to smoke cigarettes. Years after she stopped visiting I used to envision her big eyes bulging out of her dark face and wonder how she was doing.

This trip was bittersweet. Seeing our dying aunt was hard. Oh yeah, didn't C mention she was dying? Apparently cancer is very popular on our paternal side..as is diabetes and chronic obstructive sleep apnea.

The day we visited Tacoma Gomo was her first day with the oxygen tank. My mission was to tell her my father passed and to see her again before it was too late. Nobody really understood why I felt the need to see her so much and both my parents and C discouraged it at different points during our planning. Our parents didn't want us to disturb her and I couldn't really explain that this was something I needed for myself, others be damned. After having been rejected by her the last time we were in Portland, I called her son and told him I was going to visit her and he needed to tell me where she lived. I said I wasn't leaving without seeing her this time. He agreed after some time and said he would meet us in Tacoma and take us to her place. Making our way to our aunt was like going to an underground rave. I made a phone call to her son, my cousin, to get secret directions. Then her son, whom I had never met, gave me vague directions to a McDonalds and told us to call him when we got there. Of course we got lost and when we called him, he couldn't really tell us where to go. C and I decided to pull over at a CVS to use the potty and then he told me to call his daughter S. His daughters, Big C and S came to our rescue. Seeing them walk out of their car, C and I instantly recognized them and it felt like I had blasted back into the past and was 12 again, albeit a very mature obese 12 year old who knew how to drive a car.
Big C lived in Tacoma and checked on her grandma/my aunt every day and S just happened to have flew in from CA that weekend to visit her grandma. These are second cousins of mine who I met once in my adolescence and never saw again. A part of my family I believed was lost to me forever. It was healing for me to visit with my aunt and cousins and the shared connection for family left me feeling less bitter about my father and the life he had led. There is witnessing the end of a life that raises the question of how meaningless it seems to be alive. What is life but these shared moments and experiences?