I'm thinking alot about my aunt Sandi lately, probably because Christmas is coming up, and this will be the first Christmas since she's died. Also, my cousin, her daughter, is due with her second child in about a month, right around my aunt's birthday. At times, I feel so sad for my aunt, that she's going to be missing Christmas and missing her grand-daughter's birth. But then I have to remind myself that she chose to miss these events. That she knew all of this, along with the rest of life, was coming up when she pulled the trigger.

And it wasn't something that she did on a whim, either. She was planning it, as evidenced by some eerie remarks on my baby shower DVD. It was foreshadowing to the max, and nobody caught it until she was gone. Of course, you can't walk around trying to decipher whether or not the random comments people make are preambles to their suicide. People say goofy things all the time. What, we're supposed to all be word detectives in our daily interactions, trying to sniff out clues and prevent pre-planned tragedies? I mean, okay, yes, you're right, to a certain extent that IS what we're supposed to do. But- well, sometimes, sadly, hindsight is twenty-twenty.

I'll tell you something, speaking of words and things people say. Aunt Sandi, you have totally ruined the whole shooting myself joke. The one that starts with an inconsequential comment such as, "Aw, man, we're out of cookies?" and ends with the pantomime of putting a gun to my head. Not funny anymore. Doesn't work.

Dear Aunt Sandi- Sometimes, I will suddenly think of you in a moment where you don't belong. I will be washing dishes or putting groceries in a cart or watching a movie, and you will appear to me. And it takes a second to remember that you're gone, and that I'm not going to see you again. You were a good aunt to me, and when I think of you, I remember the dog scissors. The shopping spree that you took me and Lisa on before school one year. You bought us tons of crazy stuff, and Lisa and I got matching dog scissors, the handles being two halves of a peculiar looking dog. In order to cut paper, the dog halves would have to separate and rejoin, separate and rejoin. The dog scissors were, singlehandedly, the most macabre school supply I've ever owned, and I had those dog scissors through early grade school well past college. I assume that they are still floating around my parents' house somewhere. Those dog scissors always made me think of you and Lisa and the great fun we had. I guess you were about the age I am now when you took Lisa and me on that shopping trip. You were a young mother, and I remember years ago when you snapped photographs at a family Christmas and said to me, "These pictures are for when I'm old and gray." Well, you never let yourself get old and gray. You could have had thirty more years on this earth, Aunt Sandi. You were in your early fifties. That's too young. You could have gotten better. You could have been happy. And although I wish that someone had been a better word detective, I have a feeling that it wouldn't have mattered all that much. I think your mind was made up, and I'm just sorry that things hadn't been different for you. I am sorry that you suffered so much and saw only one way out.

I didn't name my son after you, but sometimes when I say, "It's Andy," it sounds a bit like "It's Sandi!" It's a funny thing, and, in its own strange way, it's kind of nice. I'll tell him about his great-aunt one day. I'll tell him about your laugh, how genuine and distinct it was. Yes, I think you two would have liked each other.