Give my Aunt Trisha this: she knew what she wanted. She was always the rebel of the family, the one prone to a sudden life-changing decision that would leave everyone else scratching their heads. In a family of twelve she lived the hardest of anyone, and her body paid the price. But she remained unapologetic, herself to the end, committed to the paths she chose, and she had plenty of fun along the way.

When I first came into consciousness, Trisha was living with her son Brian at my grandparents’ house in Lombard, Illinois. Not long after, she made one of her sharp turns and picked up and moved to Wisconsin to tend bar, temporarily joining my family in the Badger State. Thanks to that proximity I remember more of Trisha in my earliest years than any other aunt or uncle. I was too young to have many distinct memories; she was just a presence, always there with her big, rolling laugh, free from any pretense.

Aunt Trisha led a different sort of life from most of the family, but her unique path did not stem from any shortage of intelligence or capacity for insight. In those early childhood memories she was very attentive to me, in no way babying, imparting knowledge and logic, the straightforward real talk of someone who knew her course. She had a deep memory and could recall tales from her past with startling specificity, and when she found a willing listener, storytime could last for hours.

As stubborn as she was, the wheels were always churning beneath, maybe questioning, maybe justifying, always moving. I recall sitting with her at my grandmother’s wake some three years ago, not long after Brian had passed, and her poignant statement, offered as a simple fact, that the true loss of her only child had happened years earlier. I do not know how well she coped, deep inside; I’m not sure anyone can, as the mental and physical tolls mounted. In those later years she came back into the family fold after a time of relative absence, a return to those old rhythms she remembered well, perhaps a tacit acknowledgment of the support she needed, that we all need.

In another family Aunt Trisha might have been written off as the black sheep, or her forays met with a resigned shrug. Instead, the most prodigal Maloney always had a safe harbor. When she came home with Brian, her staid and very Catholic parents welcomed her in; whatever judgment there may have been did not leak out into the open. Later, other family members took on thankless work to help a lovable but stubborn soul enjoy some measure of freedom as life caught up with her: the Joneses in her South Bend days, the Downeys when she ventured back into Chicagoland, and everyone else in ways large and small. Keeping the family whole came first.

In the late stages, her deteriorating body did not stop her from continuing the push. Aunt Trisha gutted out last summer’s family trip to Europe despite increasing immobility, somehow surviving an incredibly inaccessible Venice and then mostly parking on the cruise ship deck with margaritas while the rest of us went ashore. (Like her late older sister Kathleen, she simply had to go on that last cruise.) When she came home from that trip she then made one last hard-to-fathom move, this time to Florida. She seemed to know her days were short and wanted to make what she could of them, a fate accepted with typical resolve. The party would continue to the end.

Aunt Trisha’s passing is a blow to our giant family unit, but even though it comes too soon, it comes with peace: she certainly went on her own terms. Somewhere she lingers, parked in a chair, cheap beer and a cigarette at hand, her laugher booming through a crowded room as she spins another yarn for anyone who will listen. She did it her way. The rest of us were along for the ride, doing what we could when we could and hopefully, in the end, finding peace too.