The Week Begins
So, a new week. The news of the day is that my aunt in Florida is in the hospital but has somehow managed to continue to live, despite having no blood pressure or bodily warmth on Friday. Well, she is only 91. Her father lived to 92, and his mother to 96. These genes did not so much transmit down great-grandma's other son's line, which would be my grandfather's.
(Speaking of the old folks, let me share a picture I may have shared before, because I want you to see how cute my Uncle Joe was. He had a very heavy European accent and sparkling cornflower blue eyes, and lived, as I say, to the age of 92. He's on the left, then my Grandpa Sam (his brother), my Grandma Ida, and my Aunt Becky, Ida's oldest sister. And again, to keep things in perspective, Ida was about five feet tall. So you can guess that Becky was a little wisp of a woman.)
Anyway, it's not as if I haven't been anticipating this. Unlike her forebears, Edith has Alzheimer's and is generally weakening. Uncle Joe and his mother -- known, btw, as Bubbe Pesha -- were blind at the end, but otherwise on the ball. But my sense is that Edith is the last of that generation -- my parents' generation -- still with us, and when she is gone there will be a real sense of finality. A sense that I'm not eager to face, but of course, there will be no choice.
(There is one more aunt among the living, but she is my mother's sister-in-law and has lived on the West Coast all of my life, so I have no real connection to her, although she's very nice. But I don't have the same feeling for her that I have for Edith, who is, to be frank, a bitch and always has been, but she's our bitch.)
So we wait. There will be no trip to Florida for a funeral or memorial service this time, as there was for Edith's son a couple of years ago, because Edith will be buried here, on Long Island, beside her husband. So her remaining son and his family will be traveling here for the burial, and we will probably be the only people left in the New York area to be there with them. But not yet. If she is in pain, soon, I hope, for her sake.
Sometimes this cycle of life thing is a real drag.
WATCHING TWO AND A HALF MEN :: ENTRY #1709
"Sometimes this cycle of life thing is a real drag." Amen, my friend.
ReplyDeleteMy grandparents are getting up there in age. My grandpa is 82 and suffering from dementia. His little brother is still in his 70s and is dying from Parkinson's. My grandma has a hard time walking, and she has a bit of the Katharine Hepburn head-wag. It wasn't that long ago that I realized my grandparents were the same age my parents are now when I met them (my parents were married when I was 6). If the past 20 years have gone by so quickly, then I'm sure the next 20 years will fly by too -- and then I'll be having these same issues with my own parents. It's a scary thing.