This is my Aunt Pat, holding my younger Mom in a grim (but loving, I’m sure) hug.

Auntie is the person that passed away at the end of the summer. She was my only aunt (dad was a singleton), and she took her familial job joyfully and seriously, in equal measure.

She cultivated deep and enriching relationships with all of her nieces and nephews. She took note of everyone’s every foible, interest, talent and fear — and did everything in her power to support, comfort, and cheer us on.

I loved her with a singleminded, uncomplicated passion. She was the first grownup I remembered that really listened to me, that could look at the world through my eyes and delight in what she saw.

She always had a box of Cloret’s chewing gum in her purse. Aunts having gum has become a bit of a cliche, but this was an exciting and important fact to a small (and not so small) child.

She had the best laugh of anyone I knew. And her name, for many years, was Pat Bell. And she lived, for many years, on Telephone Road. This is only one of the magical and purely delightful things about her.

I’m so grateful she gave me my cousins, including my dog cousin Duffy, a black dachshund born the same year as I, who was the bossiest thing on planet earth.

She made me a better aunt, and a better sister — she and Mom had the best relationship I’ve ever witnessed, hands down. I like to think of them together somewhere, somehow, catching up and clinking glasses.

Auntie was 88. And she’s still gone too soon.