“We came to tell you how much we love you Aunt Alice,” I kind of nervously announced.  For some reason I uttered such a grand statement..And for some reason I didn’t cry…I don’t know why. I thought I would and I didn’t. She seemed stunned at first and profoundly sad, even crying, about why I was coming to deliver such a message.

But she knew. You could see it on her face. The Gallaghers were bright perceptive folk. And my dear Grand Aunt Alice (my mother’s aunt) was the last of the lot. Even with diminished faculties and abilities, she knew what was happening.

My sister Katie had picked me up at JFK from an overnight flight from Los Angeles and we drove to the nursing home to see her one more time with talk of hospice care and a memorial service propelling us to come say goodbye.

Time was running out. After 92 years, the human candle that is Alice Gallagher was flickering faintly farewell. The giggle was gone but her beautiful blue eyes remained twinkling with her gentle smirky but warm smile still hanging on.

It was just a few months ago that I visited her when she was much more spunky, aware and alive. She has more recently stopped eating, has dementia setting in, her body shockingly rail thin. Waiting for the Universe to do its thing.

“Can I get a back rub,” she groggily requested. She smiled and made a half hearty attempt to laugh. But her distinct giggle was certainly gone. How she loved getting her back scratched. She would do the same for me and a scalp massage too….so many many years ago. I looked forward to her visits because of the massages.

“You look beautiful, Aunt Alice..I never realized what great hair you have,” as I softly played with it. Caressing her and telling her what she meant to me and all my cousins.

“I came from California just to see you today,” I continued my important message delivery. Her face lit up..and always did if travel was involved.

Alice had spent decades traveling the world, first as the family nanny for Bob and Dolores Hope and their children…then later for the Grail doing religious and educational work in several countries. She never married or had children but she courted a couple of lookers way back when, if my hypothalmus remembers correctly.

As I stroked her pencil thin fingers and held her hands for the very last time, I thanked her for the gifts and lessons she had given us. How she had taught all of her nieces and nephews and grand nieces and nephews, about other cultures and religions…and to always appreciate what we had and that there were many people less fortunate than us…. “We will never forget those lessons,” I told her.

Way back when, she quizzed us about our education and if we were learning enough. She became the surrogate grandmother to me and my cousins, encouraging us to travel the world and some of us did that. She was our own special Ambassador to Everything.

It was the little things too. Well into my own third or fourth decade….I received birthday and Christmas cards from her and some years the traditional Happy Birthday was sung over the telephone.

She could be stern as a nun (and as kids we actually thought she WAS secretly a nun) but a giggling fun prankster as well to all the children and grandchildren of her own siblings. Like my mother, Alice connected so well with children. We were all Alice’s children.

Bob Hope, when I met him once in Branson, Missouri, of all places…. told me himself how much he and the Hopes cherished Alice all those years ago. “We love Alice and miss her so,” he gushed. She traveled the world assisting Dolores, raising the kids as well helping in the work for their Catholic Church in Burbank.

But perhaps Aunt Alice’s grandest trip was her cross country drive alone in the Summer of 1964 when she left working for the Hope Family at their Toluca Lake Burbank, California mansion to return to Queens Village, NY and take care of her sister Bernadette’s ten children, orphaned. To keep the O’Leary children and their home together. Leading and rescuing my mother and her nine siblings who were tattered in grief. Perhaps her greatest gift.

And for that I made my very own trip from California to say thank you. Thank you, Aunt Alice, you will be with us forever. (Now, I am crying.)