Breast cancer didn't stop her giggle or her zest for life

In my earliest memories, Aunt Peggy lived on Beacon Hill in a small one-bedroom apartment inside a brownstone off Charles Street.

She taught music in a Cambridge public school and played a pretty smart piano and a cello to perfection.

She was my Godmother and grew up as my father's sister, after her parents both died at an early age.

And she had a giggle that would make you blurt out laughing, and a constant twinkle in her eye.

The first clear and concise memory I have of her is as a boy of 10 going with her and my mother to a Hasty Pudding production at Harvard. It was my first time taking a subway, too, a jaunt from the Charles Street Station to Harvard Square on the Red Line, a thrill in itself.

But then to watch this "scandalous" Hasty Pudding production in which college men dress up like girls with fake boobs in drag, and parading around in this risqué and burlesque theater was eye-popping to say the least.

During the evening Aunt Peggy and my mom kept reminding me I was the man of the group and had to not only be gentlemanly in opening doors and such, but also to protect them from the dangers of a big city.

It made me feel very grownup.

Me and Peggy were very close, and she took an active interest in me, inviting me to her Cambridge school to spend several days in the classes there while I was in grammar school.

Later Aunt Peggy got an opportunity to work back in her home state of Virginia where she took a job as music teacher in the Albermarle County school system outside the city of Charlottesville.

In 1970 a high school chum of mine and I drove my father down to Virginia for him pick up a new company car. The plan was to drop him off in Wytheville at the home of his parents and then we would travel home to Hingham, Mass., by ourselves, a real adventure to us as we were just 17.

As we headed north we traveled through Charlottesville and spent the night with Aunt Peggy, but not before she took us out for dinner and drinks where, somehow, she saw to it that we were never carded.

Again, I felt very adult and way cool as did my friend. Needless to say, we had a great time, just another memory I'll always cherish and remember.

I rarely saw her the next few years.

Then I got a job with Amtrak in 1979 working as a snack car attendant on a train from Boston to Washington D.C. three times a week.

With a 16-hour layover in D.C., it wasn't long before I found a train that would allow me to take the two-hour ride from D.C. to Charlottesville in the afternoon and get a train back that left Charlottesville at 4 a.m. that would, in turn, get me back to D.C. in time to make my return trip to Boston.

I knew it would be an exhausting 24 hours but what the heck. I was up for it, and she was, too.

When the day came for me to have this cool little adventure I was psyched. When I got to Charlottesville we met at the station, and she immediately took me to a restaurant that was a University of Virginia student hangout. The restaurant had high-back wooden booths and lots of Cavaliers paraphernalia on the walls.

As we sipped on beers (she liked her beer) and munched on an appetizer she said matter of factly, "I just found out today I have breast cancer, and I don't know how long I'll live."

The look on her face wasn't one of fear, only maybe a hint of sadness or melancholy. It was replaced in a nanosecond with her boisterous laugh/giggle/snort.

"Whaddayouwant? Barbecue? the barbecue's great here," she blurted cheerfully.

I wanted to cry but she was so brave, I sucked it up, too.

She had to get up and go to work to teach the next day so after our visit she dropped me off at very empty Charlottesville train station a little after midnight. Between then and when the train came would be nearly four hours, four hours in which all I could think about was her sad news, her bravery and her courage.

It was a miserable wait, a sleepless train ride to D.C. and a sad work trip back to Boston.

Peggy shouldered on, though. Head held high. Kept teaching. Going to church. A busy social life. Several surgeries. Much radiation.

Then after I left Amtrak and got my teaching certificate in the early 1980s, I applied for a job at Orange County High School about 20 miles from Charlottesville. Aunt Peggy had found out about the job and wrote me saying it was a good school.

I got the job and moved to Orange, and Aunt Peggy had me over for dinner countless times, introduced me to her friends and social circle and sponsored me for membership at a private pool club, which was very cool.

Through all her trials and adversity she never lost her energy and exuberance to the disease, or her positive nature.

In the end, though, the end came quickly. In less than one week she went from teaching full time to passing away from the disease, in 1985.

I got an email on Friday from the National Breast Cancer Association asking me to write a letter sharing how the disease had affected me and my family.

This is it.