Yesterday Aunt Annie passed away at the age of 102. If you've been reading my blog for a while, you're probably familiar with my spunky, adorable Aunt. If not you can see an interview I did with her here, or read some stories about her on my Aunt Annie tag here.
Aunt Annie was, without a doubt, the coolest person I've ever met. She had SO many amazing stories from her 102 jam-packed years of life -- like the one time she found a gun in a pair of pants while working at a laundry, or the time she rode on the back of a motorcyle in Havana, Cuba, with a man she had just met! I loved hearing her tell stories about her life, and I'm so glad me and my brother started taping our conversations over the last several years. My mom said yesterday that Aunt Annie had the fullest life of anyone she's ever known.
Into her hundreds (!!) she was still ridiculously feisty. At one Thanksgiving she was joking that she wished she had a flask strapped to her thigh and for a while she had a note taped to her door at the nursing home that said "Stay the hell out of my room. And I mean it! -Ann" I love that she signed the note.
She's one of the only people I've ever met who genuinely asked how your life was every time she saw you -- not just "how are you?" but detailed questions about work, school, family. She was legitimately interested in how everyone was doing. And she loved giving gifts (and re-gifting anything anyone ever gave her that was black. She hated the color black!) and usually showed up with a giant plaid plastic bag filled with various grocery items and knick knacks whenever she came to visit.
When she was little she used to drink vinegar, and her whole life she ate practically nothing but junk food. She got married later in life to a man 10 years her junior and then divorced him because he didn't let her go dancing often enough. Up until the last time I saw her, she continued to say that looking back on her life, she wouldn't change a thing.
She was hilarious, kind, spunky, mischievous, ornery, and beautiful inside and out. I'm so lucky to have had her in my life, and I'm going to miss her so much.