Love, Loss, and Legacy: Remembering Aunt Patty

The Day My Aunt Was Taken from Me My Aunt Patricia, known as Patty by everyone who met her, was an extraordinary woman. Coming from a big family of seven, my aunt loved and cherished everyone she met. She worked at Baptist Memorial Hospital in Memphis for thirty-three years. As many of her colleagues would say, she was a “little ray of sunshine.” However, the “little ray of sunshine” would only be on this earth for such little time. This is a time I will always remember. It was just an ordinary September day of school for me, but I had no idea it was about to turn into one of the worst days of my life. I was a senior in high school at this time so I got out of school around noon. When I got home, my mom broke the news to me: my aunt was diagnosed with Stage IV brain cancer. None of the family knew that her condition was this bad. We just knew that my aunt had been having headaches quite often. But the news got worse. The doctors were

It was just a normal day, or so I thought. After school, my guy friend and I went to the lake in Grenada in hopes to escape from reality. I remember the moment as if it happened yesterday. Around, my mother called me. Considering my mom rarely calls me, I already knew what was about to be said. When I answered the phone, all I could hear was crying. My mom could barely get her words out. After a few seconds of hearing her cry, she finally said those four words that I had been dreading for the past five months. “Aunt Patty has died,” my mom said. At this moment, I was at a loss for words. All I knew to do was to hang up the phone and cry. Thankfully my guy friend knew exactly what was said over the phone and allowed me to just sit there and cry. I might not have seen my aunt much during this terrible journey because of school and distance, but this news devastated me. I had never cried so much in my life, especially in front of