the sky is crying

Every little girl should have an Auntie Sharyn…from my earliest memories of her as my first babysitter…playing with my dolls…torturing her,  along with my cousin Jennifer, by playing my Mary Poppins album… over and over and over…to the rehearsed chorus we would always sing to her “Auntie Sharyn, you got skinny”…chocolate turkeys for all of us every Thanksgiving…then years later…complaining about boys, life and everything to her…and always the sympathetic ear…to becoming a young adult and sharing a New Years with her...sleepovers here and there…next day commuting with much laughter to work…Brighton Beach memories…sun and laughter…the soft lilting tones of the knish guy “geshrying knish knish” and then parking himself by our blanket…not wanting to leave…we knew we couldn’t look at each because if we did we would still be laughing…and then I was an adult…through all the years I would marvel at the closeness and love of Sharyn and her sisters, my mother, Millie and my Aunt Harriet…affectionately “BB’s Girls”…the shorthand between them…her deep love and admiration for her daughter, Iris…her baby girl…and then Eddie…a dear son-in-law…really son after so many years…but Sharyn’s supreme “nachas” came with her grandchildren, Jeff and Jackie…she lit up when talking about them…the big events and day to day life…but life flies by on butterfly wings…and now she is gone…I cannot help but think of that famous T.S. Eliot line  “april is the cruelest month”…and it is cruel that Sharyn is gone…but I am reminded of the mitzvah of memory…a gift to us…and thanking my dear Aunt for that gift as our healing begins…