The lyf so short

My mother called me to let me know that my aunt Hanni died.

Aunt Hanni was my grandfather's (my father's father's) older sister. Despite the close relation, I did not meet her often. I used to have a pink plush giraffe as a kid, which I loved a lot and which I apparently got from her. Other than that, I only saw Aunt Hanni at big family get-togethers and at my grandfather's birthday dinners. So I am not devastated in the way I was when my grandmother (my father's mother) died. I knew her, but mostly just in passing. We were related reasonably closely, but weren't close.

Moreover, she was 94. She was (relatively) agile, and apparently just fell over while clearing out the dishwasher this morning. I think that's not a bad way to go out. We all die; still living in one's own place, being in control of one's mind, and doing one's own dishes at age 94, and then falling over, without much of the usual degeneration, without endless hospital stays, without lengthy suffering, without being able to panic - as these things go, that's pretty damn good. That's the sort of end I'm hoping I'll have.

So I cannot really feel overly sad; and when I grieve a lot less about my own aunt than I grieve about an internet acquaintance (whom I didn't really know all that well either), that has nothing to do with a detachment from reality, or with disregard for family, or anything. It's a matter of proportionality, I suppose, all around.