My aunt turns 85, I think it is, today, is turning so as I tap.  We are going to surprise her with a call, one of our madcap turns on Happy Birthday, wherein I follow Sekhnet’s voice sometimes in falsetto and other times in my most profundo basso.   The victim usually makes a clever remark about the rendition, my aunt will probably just say thank you.

Her husband, my recently departed uncle, was a bit tyrannical with her.   Surprising, really, since he seemed such a mild-mannered man.  You have to watch out for seemingly mild-mannered men, I reckon.  I recall one such man, a Housing Court judge, quiet, affable, bookish and a complete vicious prick.  Enraged complete vicious prick.   My uncle could be this way to my aunt, apparently.  Maybe this is why my mother couldn’t stand to be around them, they bickered constantly about who had interrupted whom first.

But I have already used up half of my allotted time, and to say what?  To speak ill of the dead?  To make a passing comment about my octogenarian aunt?  Well, no.  We have to call my aunt, who identifies herself as my grandmother now when she misses me call and leaves me a voice mail.  She’s increasingly confused.  It’s as if she’s worn out by how difficult and irrational the world is and she’s longing for things to be simple and nice.   Her personality has changed accordingly.  

She no longer fights or protests.  Instead she hums to herself.  She may have a hard time choosing her food at the restaurant where we’ll take her tomorrow evening, if all goes well and we make our 230 mile drive to pick her up at the assisted living facility.   Fortunately, when we order for her, a dish that we know she loves, she will tuck into it with gusto and say “yum!”.  She’ll eat half, be amazed at how full she is and have the rest for lunch tomorrow.

I think of the sorrows of this world and maybe it is not a bad thing that my aunt can’t recall most of them.  She seems to live more and more in the present, with less and less complaint.   I look around at the present I live in and say “damn!”

Thirty seconds on the clock, only time to heave up a desperation shot at the buzzer and….. it’s off the rim.  Damn!