My aunt Emma and I have the same birthday, December 28th. She was born in Guayaquil, Ecuador and I was born in New Orleans, Louisiana 33 years after her.  My dad often said we shared more than just a birthday, that we were also tomboyish, mischievous and independent (not good Latina traits for our eras).  “Niña malcreada como tu tía Emma!” I would often hear him complain.  Or the more serious “boca sucia (potty mouth) como tu tía!”. Her invisible presence in my life was like a reassuring pat on my shoulder, a "you go girl", and always allowed me a good comeback "Well, she turned out OK, so how can what I'm doing be that bad?"

Growing up I never met her but in my mind she was mythic, like Beowulf.  She defied her parents, eloped and moved to Quito (which was like an enemy country to Guayaquil, and moving away from your Latino family was unheard of) to run a very successful business.  She remained a strong independent force until fifteen years ago when her business  started failing after the sudden death of her beloved husband. A stroke five years ago left her financially and physically dependent on her son and her daughter's family.

So it is a sad, complicated tale, not even jeweled with bittersweet wisdom, that finally brought my dad and me to my Aunt Emma’s stricken bedside after my lifetime apart.  As part of an immigrant American family that never learned to embrace or display emotional weakness, it was awkward seeing my dad throw his arms around her little body (she had once been a large woman) and weep, saying all that he could not say in words -- all that time together lost forever, for no real reason, and for me to arrive too late to see her as she once had been.   Instead there was my Aunt Emma, that once strong personality I supposedly resembled so much in character, living in a body of petrified wood. I looked around her room as if the contents might provide some encoded clue to her former self, but she didn't even own a room.  She lived in my cousin, her son, Carlos's bedroom where he devoted all his days and nights, at some unbelievable sacrifice, to her care.

Blood clot to the brain. Transient ischemic attacks.  I have suddenly joined the world of people dealt a terrible blow; I have an aunt I've ignored all my life who is dying.  And I could not go to her side.  She was surrounded by so much care and attention and I could not go to her for I was somewhere else in my mind, far from that foreign land of devoted family love.

Despite the attention from the crowd around her, my aunt Amalia, my dad, my cousin Lida Amalia in tears, and her son Carlos wrapping the blanket around her tighter, Aunt Emma began to stare at me.  There was something Indian-like in the rigid immobility of her face.  The stroke had taken all expression from her features so I could not read her emotions. Was she just observing me or wanted me to leave? Stay? Come closer? Her illness gave her no need for correct social conduct so she kept rudely staring.  Her eyes were stormy and almond shaped just like mine.  Her vision held a hint. They told a tale. It was a silent power, indomitable, indisputable and her eyes made my uncomfortable, the way fingernails on a blackboard will.  So I stayed 5 feet away from her, busying myself with taking photos, noting Carlos's pictures of his grown children.  The bedroom door was open and family, some friends, second and maybe third cousins, were just outside. I could hear them talking about jobs and visits.  Ordinary conversations, nothing more, I envied them and the ease of their communication.  I left my aunt’s room to join them.

The next day I had another chance.  I peeked in my aunt’s room and my beloved cousin, Felipe, was there holding her hand.  Her eyes were made softer with the assuring currents that ran through his voice, always so warm and kind. I knew I could not follow his saintly example.  But she did finally see me, and stared past him to me again.   My own inadequacies were stronger than the pull of her eyes.

There was a reason I scored so low on social work on those high school career compatibility tests. I knew around her I would suddenly develop Tourette's and just blurt it out what I was thinking to her: "Why of all the people I am supposed to most like you were the one who had the stroke?  The one to die first? Why didn’t you ever visit us?   Most everyone else visited, wrote, sent cards, but you never had the time.  No, do you hate us for not having the time for you? You should. We were the ones at real fault here."  Or what if she had panicked and yelled: “Get this English speaking stranger away from me!!” The shock of my sharp staccato burst of broken Spanish after Felipe's calming mellifluous syllables surely would have killed her.

"Her body is weak but her soul is very much alive," Felipe tells me later, sensing my reticence.  "God is shining inside of her."  My cousin comes from a brighter planet.  I wanted tell him to get real, no divine presence would allow her to suffer in a shell.  But mostly I just wanted to believe him, believe at least that she was OK inside.

When we drove away from her, and Quito, the urge to cry came over me, but I waited, and it passed.  I was soon hard-bitten and recalcitrant again, back to the kind of kid I was when I was supposedly like her -- the type who took pleasure in riding into puddles on my bike only to spray others with mud. To which my dad probably said, "Why did you get mud on those kids? Aye, malcreada como tu tía Emma!"

I had failed her, utterly wimped out like a child. Perhaps I had to learn not to be afraid of her, like the way, in your childhood, you learned not to be afraid of a horned beetles and earwigs or old people.  Maybe I just needed more time. And now I don't even need to think about her to know she is somewhere real in this world and not some make-believe mythic Aunt.  Her dark eyes are always with me, like a weight, a regret, a lost friend.