Remembrance: Aunt Terri, 1927-2026

I am usually able to write about people, places and things without much difficulty. But on this occasion, I am having difficulty indeed in composing this blog memorial to the last member of our immediate family's World War II generation. "Our" refers to my cousin Carol and I. Though we had a large extended Irish-American family (and I have a large extended Greek-American family as well), there was little interaction while we were growing up with those cousins, second, third and probably fourth. Aunt Terri kept up with them, but we had rare sightings. Whose explicit or implicit decision that was I cannot say. So, my cousin Carol and her nephew, also my cousin, Chris, in Seattle, (by her late sister, Barbara), are the lone remainders of a time and place, that to me, feels a galaxy away. 

In the 1950s and the 1960s, the immediate Higgins/Moffatt core group lived in the same five story, walk up, tri-part building, on Townsend Avenue in the Bronx, near Mt. Eden Avenue and the still somewhat Grand Concourse. There was 1594, where my grandmother lived, and my oldest Aunt, Kathleen (although later we would be told she never lived there, a tale unto itself we never quite got to the bottom of), the Moffatt side, including my Uncle Frank's sister and her kids, Eileen, and later Patricia. Then 1596, which had only three apartments on each floor, where my parents and I lived on the fourth floor, next door to Uncle Frank and Aunt Terri. We shared a fire escape between our apartment bedrooms. And finally 1598, which was where (I might be off on who lived where I realize in the haze of time), my Aunt Rita and Uncle Ben lived with their two daughters. My grandfather, Andrew, who died only eight months after I was born, in December 1955, had been the building superintendant for some years, and the four girls, Kathleen, Rita, Rosetta and Teresa, had lived with him and his wife in the basement to which there was attached an apartment. We kids, me, Barbara, Carol, Eileen, (Patricia was too young), played in the courtyard regularly, and attended family parties at one or another of the apartments in each part of the building, Christmas, Easter, Halloween, birthdays, that to my mind, the eldest of the cousins, were too well fueled by alcohol and deep secret hurts, more than the presents and social joys of the various occasions. The age difference between me and my cousins was significant, even at 2 years and nine months older than my closest in age cousin, Barbara. By 1970, I was in high school. We had moved from the one bedroom in the devolving neighborhood to a two bedroom in a still pleasant area of the Bronx, near the Jerome Reservoir, not entirely up to my mother's standards and desire--a place with a doorman. 

Aunt Terri and Uncle Frank moved to a luxurious high rise rental building on Broadway and 64th Street, right across from Lincoln Center in 1974, the same year my mother died at 48. Aunt Terri got the doorman my mother craved without being satisfied. People, over the years thought thereby that they had a lot of money. The family was scandalized that they were willing (or able) to spend the great sum of $450.00 a month to move there. The 37th Floor with a million dollar view. Or the higher up, the higher the million. But Aunt Terri and Uncle Frank had no kids, and they did have two incomes at a time when that was unusual, he being a bus driver and she being an executive secretary at places like Imperial Reading. And the place was rent stabilized. (Upon her death, the rent was $2050). By this time, the rest of her immediate family, my mother, Rosetta and father Constantine, her sister Rita (Carol and Barbara's mother) and Uncle Ben, and Uncle Frank's sister and family (Ronnie, Tommy and their two kids Eileen and Patricia) had already moved. By 1975, my mother, my Grandmother Higgins, and Carol's father had all died. This, of itself, shifted relationships. 

Aunt Terri and Uncle Frank spent most of their social time with his sister Ronnie, and his other sister, Helen, and Ronnie and Tommy's kids in New Jersey. That part of the family remained intact at least for a time, while my side had already been pared down by death and separation. 

I had very little to do with Aunt Terri and Uncle Frank, and from my perspective, really, they had little to do with me after my mother died. I will speak for myself when I say that, though Aunt Terri was my Godmother, we were never particularly close during my childhood. If truth be told, I thought that since I never enjoyed the active social life that they generated with my parents in all the restaurants and Bars of New York, (my cousins and I went to such places at the Top of the Sixes, the Rainbow Room, El Morocco, Chateau Henri IV, the Cattlemen; I guess there were no babysitters) and at the family parties, which always led to extra strain in my parents' carefully constructed relationship, Aunt Terri and Uncle Frank found me a bit of a pill, a kill joy. Uncle Frank's nieces seemed more suited to going out than I did.  I was closer (if I were ever capable of it) to my Aunt Rita, who seemed to have a bead on what it was to be a child, in a way that neither my mother, nor Aunt Terri did. And, my Aunt Terri, seeing that my mother was perhaps too strict with me emotionally, and acknowledging it later in our lives, did nothing to intervene at key times in which she could have reminded my mother that I was a child, not a cat to be trained. (My mother was a cat whisperer). Those were the times. You minded your own business. I can hear my cousin Carol shouting as I write this, "No, No! that isn't right!!!"  But to be fair, most of the time, my life was calm enough, and it definitely was well provided in every way that even as I write this I feel guilty to suggest any lack. To the extent of the good and/or successful that I am, my mother and father were extraordinary. 

By 1981, after I got my law license in New York, I moved to Los Angeles, an intense dream I had had since my first visit in 1977. Aunt Terri came to visit once, maybe twice, while I lived here. We kept in touch by telephone and Aunt Terri regaled me with the happenings with her New Jersey nieces and in-laws. She remained close to my cousin Barbara until Barbara's untimely death in 1992.  But it was a sporadic and superficial relationship between us at best.  Carol was estranged from her and my other Aunt, Kathleen, for reasons I completely understood for many years. Ultimately, there was a rapprochement and after Uncle Frank died 26 years ago, and Terri remained in her Lincoln Plaza apartment alone, Carol began to visit and help as needed. For a short while, her grandnephew from New Jersey lived with her, but that did not ultimately work out. I never remembered Aunt Terri, or any of my Irish relatives, as particularly religious, and definitely not a regular church goer. After Uncle Frank died, Aunt Terri began to attend and assist at her local parish, where she made new friends. She was always very attentive to her old and new friends. I was amazed by the amount of correspondence she had maintained.                  

Her New Jersey nieces wanted her to move to them. She nearly found herself in the Garden State after a fall in the 2000s, but ultimately she was an inveterate New Yorker. She wasn't going to die anywhere other than in New York, and if she could manage it, in the same apartment. In the last decade or more, I found myself closer to my Aunt Terri, and she to me in large part because of Carol. The nearly eight years between Carol and I had compressed, and while we had had vastly separate lives when we were young, we became closer. I visited New York multiple times, stayed with Aunt Terri a few, and as I had seen my mother became ill, a coldness they shared, seemed to thaw. She would tell me how much, when I was born, that she had wanted me to be her child (she could not have children and Uncle Frank was resistant to adoption, according to Aunt Terri.) She would often tell me in her later years "Know that I love you. . . ." words that I never recalled from days long gone by. Aunt Terri was the remaining connection, the sole remaining connection, to my long dead mother. The affection she clearly had for my mother was enormous. Right across from her favorite chair was a large photograph of my mother to which she spoke regularly, telling my mother of whatever activities were going on here in California with me. To be fair, she spoke to all the other relatives and friends pictured in her apartment and to items she imbued with their essence. But I do think my mother got special priority. When a high end coffee and dessert place opened up on her block, called "Rosetta" she was delighted. It did feel slightly cosmic. 

When she could no longer get to Church, Aunt Terri had a regular, and wonderful, Eucharistic Minister, John, who sometimes brought his dog, Abby. She prayed the way I always have hoped to pray, in continuous conversation, ordinary conversation, with Our Lord. She was grateful for every day she woke up, even when activity became extremely limited. She loved her Yankees, and the original Perry Mason. There was even a picture of her and Raymond Burr by the television from one of her visits to Los Angeles, at the Sheraton Universal, where she stayed. And then there were the favorite old movies on TCM.

My cousin and I tried to get what we are sure are family secrets out of her. She circumvented, and sometimes I think, reinvented. Whatever the family secrets, they died with her. I don't know if that is for the best or not. 

I am glad to say that I decided to visit New York in April 2026, to celebrate her 99th Birthday, and share with her my birthday a few days later. She had the determination to live to 100, but every visit had demonstrated a lessening of energy and an increasing frailty. She was wearing out. We ate yet another meal from the wonderful Fiorello's downstairs, though it was take out because she really could not get around anymore, and refused a wheel chair (she only conceded to a walker in the last year). My cousin did it up, with sashes and musical cards and candles and chocolate cake. It was a perfect wrap up for all of us. 

I am always amazed at my cousin's manifest love toward her, truly wishing the best for the other. 

Aunt Terri fell, or passed out, or whatever it was around August 12, and was hospitalized at Mt. Sinai. She had resisted the idea of assisted living or more right up to that moment, but she knew, without being told (though she was) that she needed far more than my cousin could do. The way I see it, the way my cousin sees it, she decided it was time to let the Lord take her. She died on August 18, quietly. The way, I think, she wanted to, although she would have preferred it be in her apartment.

Her funeral was beautiful, where she wanted it to be, at her old parish, concelebrated by three priests, with a cantor with the voice of an angel, and joined by quite a few (considering that at her age so many people are gone, and that she had not been around the parish for some several years) of those who knew her. I stayed in her apartment a few days before it would be cleaned out, the apartment she had lived in 52 years. I memorized the view, the stuff, and took lots of photographs, recalled the moments and was grateful for the reconnection we had had. 

On August 26, I left 37A, leaving the keys on the kitchen counter, closing a big chapter of her life, and my own. I wish I could really pinpoint exactly what I feel. This is the best I seem able to do.