The first people I knew who got divorced were my uncle Randy and aunt Cathy.  Apparently she had fallen in love with someone she worked with and decided to leave my uncle.  Their marriage had been challenging, as he was an alcoholic, but he’d gotten sober and was absolutely head-over-heels for their little girl.  When they split up, I was only about 8 or 9 and I remember it feeling really sad and scary.  I felt like, if they could rip apart a family and create such pain and anger, who’s to say it wouldn’t happen to my family too?  The whole idea of families being a foundation, a guarantee, suddenly felt like a fallacy.  After Cathy left my uncle, I never saw her again.  She just got erased from our lives.

The custody battles were mean and unending, lasting from the breakup, when my cousin was only about two, until she was a teenager.  I just couldn’t understand how two adults could be so bad at sharing, but I guess sharing a kid was harder than sharing your candy.

Then, several years after the divorce, when I was around maybe 13 or 14, I was at a museum on a school field trip.  I walked through a quiet exhibit about ancient Egypt and there, standing near the replica of King Tuts tomb and the tiny jar-like artifacts of the mummified cats, was my former aunt Cathy with her lover, turned husband.  It was like she had come back from the dead – there with the ghosts of the Egyptian pharaohs and queens. I felt a longing for how things used to be, which made me emotional, my eyes welling up with tears.  It was a moment where my body’s reaction was faster than my brain could process, and I felt hot and a little nauseous.  It felt like I had caught her, walked in on her and her lover in this quiet museum.  I might have tried to just sneak away without even acknowledging her, but she recognized me almost instantly.  She approached me with her partner and we had a quick exchange.  My face felt like it was on fire as she introduced me to her husband, Brian.  The encounter was short but surreal and it made me irrationally sad.

As I walked away, I wondered, how do I refer to her now?  Is she my ex-aunt?  Or is someone always your aunt, even when they are no longer with your uncle?