Eulogy for My Favorite Aunt

I don’t have a lot of memories of my Aunt Phyllis from childhood. But when I was in college, I used to scrape up some cash now and then to buy a cheap ticket to New York. I’d stay with a good friend in Manhattan, but I always looked up Phyllis. She’d meet me at Bryant Park for what I thought was the fanciest brunch on the planet. She’d ask what shows I’d gone to see, make suggestions, and send me on my way, always wishing me good adventures. I thought she was the coolest human on the planet.

We lost touch for a while, she had moved to Chicago, and … I don’t remember exactly the circumstances. She’d had a falling out with my father, but she would not tell me what happened. “Oh, it was what people fight about, money,” was all she’d say in writing. “Someday, we’ll sit down with a bottle of whiskey and talk about it.” When my father died, she said one of the smartest things about my decision not to attend his funeral and while I won’t repeat it, I will say she made everything better. It was sharp and smart and true, and I burst out laughing at the audacity of her saying such a thing out loud.

I saw Phyllis for the first time in years at my uncle’s memorial in California. She was older, of course, we all were. I met cousins I had never seen before, and we all laughed so much. It was a good funeral, if that makes sense, and I remember thinking my uncle would have loved it. And it was such a nice parting gift from my uncle to reconnect all of us in this way.

Phyllis had become one of those people who was very online. We chatted now and then on Facebook, but mostly, I think she just watched me living my life. Once, I posted a request for reccomendations for a new waffle iron and a good one arrived from her just a few days later. During the middle of the pandemic, I went out on the front porch to find a huge shipment of bagels and cream cheese from an excellent New York deli. And not long after my divorce settled, she had a box of top quality bakery treats overnighted to my house.

In 2019, I spent a week with two of my cousins on Cape Cod at Phyllis’ house. The three of us were Mandel girls, Jenna is my uncle’s daughter; I met her for the first time at her father’s memorial. Angel is Phyllis’ daughter. We met Angel a few years back; Phyllis put her up for adoption at birth, but she feels so much like family. And I am my father’s daughter. Mandel girls plus a friend of Angel’s from New York, all at the table like we’d been doing this every summer for years.

That week on the Cape was perfect. We sat in the solarium drinking coffee, and would leave Phyllis for a few hours every day to go have adventures before coming home to cook a big dinner or pile into Phyllis’ car to go eat oysters. We traded stories about growing up. I told them about how I’d struggled with depression and how my husband had left. Phyllis fixed me with a very direct gaze and said, “His loss.” She watched me for a minute and said it again. “No, I mean it, it is his loss.” The she dropped a big photo album on the table to show us photos of her 20s in the East Village. She had been the coolest person for a long time, the pictures proved it. She looked like an extra from the Mod Squad, all knitted ponchos and gogo boots.

Phyllis was a perfect aunt. She was open minded, big hearted, generous, and best of all, accepting. We did not spend a whole lot of time together in the course of her too short life, but I felt like she got me. Like she could see me. And now it has fallen to me, The Writer, to talk to her closest friends and family to write her obituary, to get her in return. I am so eager to hear more about the parts of her life that I didn’t know. And each of these connections gives me yet another unexpected gift from her.

“She talked about you all the time,” they’ve said, “she was so proud of you. She was impressed with your work and she did not give praise easily. She thought the world of you.” I didn’t know I meant so much to her. But at the same time, I think I did know. The flowers on my birthday, absolute stunners, the baked goods on my porch, a beautiful scarf she gave me from her collection because she wanted “the women in her family to have them.”

I had been shopping for tickets to the Cape for this summer. I am jumpy about travel, about flying, even in this post vaccination state, but I wanted so much to sit at Phyllis’ big dining table drinking wine, eating clam pie, telling sweary stories. I wanted to have another week with my cousins and my aunt, and to have that beautiful feeling of being seen. I am heartbroken this will not happen.

Phyllis was a remarkable human. She was unconventional, wicked smart, ambitious, generous, candid, a role model for weird independent girls like me. She had life long friends who adored her, and welcomed new people in with such warmth. I wish I had known her better when I was younger and so confused, she would have been a perfect guide. But I am full of gratitude for the time I had with her over the recent years, virtual and in person. She was really fucking cool (she would approve the eff bomb) all the way to the end. I wish you could have known her. She would have told me to bring you along and made you feel so welcome because that is just how she was.

I will miss her for a long, long time.