Today, after spending her whole life as a New Yorker, my Aunt Georgia is moving to an Atlanta suburb.

It is a sad day for Long Island as a whole, but specifically for my family.

I’m sure everyone knows Aunt Georgia (or Aunt GG as she is affectionately known), but here’s the basic info to catch you up if you haven’t had the pleasure of meeting her: She is my Grandma’s sister, so technically that makes her my Great Aunt.  I called her Great Aunt Georgia once when I was a kid, and she told me that just plain Aunt Georgia would suffice.  Which is fine, but with or without the capitalization, she’s always been great to me.

How so?  Well if I listed everything this would be the longest blog post in history, so I’ll just give a few little tidbits from over the years:

After I graduated high school, I had it fixed in my head that I was going to drive cross-country with one of my best friends, Aaron.  My mom hated the idea.  My grandma hated the idea.  Pretty much everyone in my family hated the idea – except for Aunt Georgia.  She said it would be a wonderful, memorable experience, and her support meant the world to me.  She even gave me some good, practical advice: If you see a restaurant with a lot of trucks parked there, the food must be pretty good.  Words to live by.

Do you know how, with some older folks, if you want to pop by for a visit, you can pretty much just go over anytime?  Not Aunt Georgia.  See, Aunt Georgia is always doing stuff.  She retired years ago, but she still worked part-time at a local hospital.  She was active in Shomrim, Children of Hope, and a Ladies Auxiliary group.  She was a parade judge for many years, and it always seemed to me like there were an absurd amount of parades going on that she had to go to.  She was never content to just sit around, and I always felt like everyone on Long Island knew her.  And based on the outpouring of emotion from all of her groups in the past few weeks, they’re all going to miss her, too.

For pretty much my entire childhood, the only house in the family was Aunt Georgia’s.  I’m not knocking the apartment I grew up in – or anyone else’s for that matter – but for big family gatherings, like Thanksgiving and Passover and summer BBQ’s, its just nice to have a house to go to.  And so, by default, we always went to Aunt Georgia’s.  I have many memories of sitting around that big table in the dining room, of running around that house looking for the Afikomen, of grilling and playing catch in that backyard.  Aunt Georgia always made her house feel like it belonged to all of us.  In the few weeks after we sold our old apartment and before we could move into our new house, Aunt Georgia welcomed us all with open arms.  When Courtney and I needed a place to have our engagement party, Aunt Georgia generously offered up her house and yard.  Such a kind spirit is a rare thing, you know.

You know how some older folks can be petrified of technology?  Not my Aunt Georgia.  When I was a kid, there were exactly two people in my family who had Game Boys: me and Aunt Georgia.  I don’t think she was *quite* as obsessed with hers as I was with mine, but every time I went over there, we’d always connect our handhelds for some Tetris.  I had a pretty high winning record, and she’d always give me a hard time for making her character (Luigi – she’d let me be Mario) cry after the match was done.  So I let her win once, and she told me that wasn’t very nice either; I think she was perfectly happy losing to her rambunctious (obnoxious?) nephew.  As the years went on, she stayed pretty up-to-date with innovations; she had an email address before I did, and she has less issue getting a DVD to play than some other people I know who shall remain nameless.  (Hint: their names rhyme with Farole and Buck.)

And man, can Aunt Georgia cook!  Her soups are stuff of legend – especially the matzah ball soup that is just absolute perfection.  And she’s so humble about her concoctions – she’ll swear she just threw it together, but whatever she prepares has always been amazing.  I’m not much of a chef myself, but for a long time we talked about grilling a turkey for Thanksgiving, and I was thrilled when we finally did it a few years ago.  I don’t know that it was the tastiest bird ever, but I really enjoyed working with Aunt Georgia on it.  And she wasn’t just generous with food to humans.  Sherlock would ALWAYS park himself by Aunt Georgia, and he never left her side hungry.

Last year and again this winter, I had some down time in between projects, which was a wonderful opportunity to bond with Eli… and to spend some quality time with our Aunt Georgia.  (Fun fact: to Eli, she is a Great Great Aunt – how cool is that?!)  The picture at the top of this post is from one of our recent visits.  Not surprisingly, she’d always make us feel welcome, often with some delicious lunch that she’d “just thrown together.”  I know that Eli misses our weekly dates as much as I do.

So in a nutshell, she’s an amazing person.  And I am just beside myself that she won’t be just a 20 minute drive away any more.  And I feel that way knowing that it is selfishness, pure and simple: I wish she’d stay here because I’m here and I love having her around.  Hell, I saw it snowing this morning and I wondered if her flight would end up being delayed for 15-20 years and she’d have to stay with us!  But I know that even though I might not like it, this is the right thing for Aunt Georgia.  She needs to be closer to her daughter, and to live in a place that isn’t as overwhelming as her house.  I know that she’ll love it down there.  And I know she’ll make friends with all of her new neighbors in about a minute.  And I’m sure in no time she’ll be busy participating in all kinds of activities there.  I know she’ll love being so close to her daughter Ellen, her awesome husband Rod, and their family.

Aunt Georgia, this has been a long rambling essay, and I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, but I just want you to know how much I love you.  As upset as I am to have you leave, I am beyond grateful to have had such an amazing person so close to me for so long.  I’m going to keep calling you (read: bugging you) all the time, and I can’t wait until you get set up with the web cam!  We’ll be down to visit you soon, and you know that you are welcome to stay with us any time for as long as you want.

P.S. You are NOT allowed to become a Braves fan.  Ever.