My Great Aunt passed away this week.  At first, I had a sense of sadness, but it quickly turned into an intense joy.  She was a good friend to my mother and as a young child I spent a lot of time listening to their chatter over coffee. She was the best hugger ever, the kind where you feel the LOVE rushing through your body.  My Aunt was one of those people who almost always had a smile if not on her lips in her eyes, I think it was there to mask the unfathomable pain of losing two of her four children.  Jannie died at 6 from cancer.  It was at a time when little was known about this type of cancer, now it is curable.  My cousin is most probably the reason I became a hospice nurse, as a little child I wandered her house looking for that magic portal that transported her away.  My Aunt adopted a native American girl sometime later, Jen.  She was exotic in my young eyes, copper skin, jet black hair and deep brown eyes.  She brought joy back into their household, a tall order for sure.  Jen passed away a few years ago from drug addiction, it was something she battled with her entire adult life.  The sorrow resurfaced.  I cannot imagine the pain of losing a child, or children.  The human heart is both resilient but tender, it breaks and reforms, but this, this is a lot to ask of one heart.  So, when I heard my Aunt had passed I knew she was having the most long-awaited reunion with her girls.  I knew in my heart she was greeted by them, that the reunion was a healing of all that had been lost and now was found, her girls safe in her arms in the land of Divine Love.