A Final Day with Aunt Annette

This photo of Aunt Annette and me was taken on August 15, 2003 by my sister Jean. Aunt Annette was 89 at the time and we were at a party for my father's 92nd birthday. This is the last photo I have of us together. Six months later Aunt Annette died.

On February 23, 2004 my whole family gathered to spend a final day with Aunt Annette. 

From out of town came Laurie and Stephanie (Texas); Dan, Michelle and my grandchildren (Saratoga); Joy (Chicago); Vicki, Chris and Peter (Boston); and Brian and I (Washington, DC); and (locally), Dad, Dick's, Jean's, Jimmy's, Gary's and Tommy's family. 

We met at 10:00am at St. Anselm's Church (bottom left below) near her home in Brooklyn for a funeral Mass (center below). 

Aunt Annette's Famous Smile, Photo by Jean Pollack

And after returning from the cemetery on Staten Island, most of us gathered one last time at her apartment. My grandmother and grandfather moved to that apartment in October 1945 -- and it was a central place in all of our lives as we were growing up.

Later, after we'd all left, Gary took the photo of that apartment (below on the right). He called it "Ghost."

St. Anselm's Church
Photo by Brian Larkin

St. Anselm's Church
Photo by Brian Larkin

Ghost
by Gary VanderPutten
Others at the ceremony but who are not included below are Elizabeth VanderPutten, Erica Larkin, Robert Pollack, Brian Larkin and Mike, Toni and Victoria VanderPutten.

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