Losing someone can feel like walking around with missing parts of a puzzle, the outline of those absent spaces clearly visible. We lose people to death, inevitably, and also when people go away. With the living, you can stay in touch by phone and video chat, but it’s never quite the same. There is something to be said for quiet times when you are with a person but nothing needs to be said.

My work brings me in contact with many people who visit Chico for educational programs, and then they say goodbye. This cycle of attachment and detachment has taught me that the world is filled with amazing people and I’m fortunate to see them come and go.

“How lucky am I to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard,” said Winnie the Pooh.

I was with a group of 27 Southeast Asian students at the nation’s capitol in Washington, D.C. when I noticed I had been added to a family group text.

“You always think you are somewhat prepared … you aren’t,” my cousin wrote on the family text thread.

I knew that my Auntie Pat had died. During a brief break between my work programs in May I stayed with her at the hospital in Fremont. She was lively and full of fun each morning, but by early afternoon her body and brain were tired. We talked frankly about the subject of her death and her life, and even a few of her regrets.

I had known for more than a year that her health was on a steep decline and that each time I talked to her on the phone might be the last time. But my cousin was right, you’re never prepared to lose someone important.

My Aunt and I became good friends later in life. I knew her in childhood but the cousins played outdoors or in bedrooms and the grown-ups talked grown-up talk in the living room. We celebrated Thanksgiving with my Dad’s side of the family, and Auntie Pat was always busy doing most of the work in the kitchen. She rarely let us help her clean up. I remember her playing her guitar one year, singing sweet ’70s folk songs.

As families often do, the family unit grew smaller. I went away to college, divorces happened, people had children and we saw each other on holidays. However, my father and his sister remained close. When Auntie Pat bought a dressed-up mobile home in Baja, Mexico, members of the family drove across the desert to enjoy her nesting place along the Sea of Cortez. One time there was a house overflowing, sometimes just me, Lynda and my Dad. There are photos of the Handsome Woodsman, my Dad and Auntie Pat at the beach and now all three are gone.

When we visited, we always hired a panga boat driver and spent a day fishing on the sea. At night, Auntie Pat grilled the fish for parties with her ex-pat neighbors. In the mornings, she and I drank coffee in the cool of her front porch.

Then came a time when I was unemployed for the first time in my life. I knew I had a probable job lined up for the future. Dad had died that winter, and I escaped to Auntie Pat’s bungalow in San Felipe, Mexico. She and I talked a lot, and other times not.

Those three weeks solidified our bond. She took me to see her favorite local musicians. On lazy afternoons she wanted to nap and encouraged me to play Mexican Train with her neighbors. San Felipe is small and we visited, and critiqued, most of the restaurants in town. I learned about the family history and many of the family heartaches.

Her life was simple, and she shared it with me.

Perhaps our strongest bond was our shared love for my father. Although Auntie Pat was the eldest, her brother had always been there for her, had always stuck up for her and she knew he would always be there for her, until he wasn’t.

Over the next few years she sold the house in Mexico, downsized her belongings and gifted most of her treasures to loved ones. Over the past year and a half she was hospitalized with something alarmingly life-threatening every few months.

When I visited her late March, I knew it might be the last time I saw her, and when I left I felt there was nothing important that still needed to be said. I tried to call often because I knew there are never enough last goodbyes.

When the news of her passing came on March 20, I was standing in the hallway outside of the gift shop at the Capitol building. There was no quiet place in the building and the voices of capitol visitors echoed off the walls and footsteps clicked on the tiles of the floor. I thought Auntie Pat would be happy I was in Washington, D.C., doing a job I enjoyed, and shepherding 27 Southeast Asian students through a series of adventures.

Weeks later, my sister sent me a sympathy card. There was a note inside, but it was a busy week and I set the envelope aside to read later. I glanced to see there was a lot of writing and I thought she had sent me a recent copy of an article she writes for her neighborhood Zine. When I returned to the letter I realized I was the author.

The letter was dated March 2024. Auntie Pat had moved in with a friend in case she had days when she needed another person in the house. The letter had traveled from that home to the nursing care home and finally to the box at the hospital where Auntie Pat kept her bills and banking password codes. I wrote the letter after a visit when she and I had gone to a restaurant along one of the many waterways in the Bay Area. The lunch was great, but I wished I had known to return earlier because by the time we returned, Auntie Pat was in pain.

“It was so nice to spend the day with you this weekend,” I wrote in the letter my sister found. “It’s easy to be around you.

“I was looking in the mirror this week without my glasses to hide the wrinkles under my eyes. Sometimes I look in the mirror and think ‘aging isn’t pretty.’ But when I think of you I realize aging is beautiful. … You have been through so much with your health and yet you’re so optimistic and full of life. … I hope that I am able to age with such grace.”

I checked my phone recently. I was walking from the parking lot to my office. I’m purposefully quiet on this walk and sometimes thoughts find me that are not of my making. Auntie Pat came to my mind and I decided to check the last text messages we had exchanged.

“Hey there. I am walking across campus to my next event. I just wanted to send you a quick note to tell you I love you,” I wrote.

“Love you back,” she said.

We really did say everything that needed to be said.