 Stretching Our Youth |
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My great-aunt died last week. My grandmother's sister and her last living sibling. She was 94. She was a teacher in Japan in the 50s, and I'm not sure what else she did overseas and when. I just know she was in the Army and did not come back the same. One would presume that she didn't grow up believing she was being protected by British intelligence and that the FBI and CIA were alternately guarding her and out to assassinate her. Who knows what being overseas and the war did to her mind? 
I wish I knew what was written over her pictures. She had a bit of a lazy eye. All I have to say is that the memory of her house is all that keeps me from fulfilling my genetic destiny to be as big of a packrat as she was. Also, those giant cookies with the icing on them from the bakery next door were really good. The questions linger -- will she meet with any of her secret agent lovers in heaven? Is there espionage in the great beyond? I wish I had known her when she was younger, and those who could tell those stories are mostly gone. I know my mom and her siblings have memories of spending a lot of time at that house, which has now been reduced to a plot of land being fought over by various relatives. Money is a bad thing, I've decided, especially in cases of inheritances. Those who come into it fight over it, and those for whom there's no money to come into tend to get along much better. I don't know. I've seen it happen, and it's ugly. I worry about it happening among my own siblings one day, honestly. Not that my parents have millions in the bank, but the whole concept of equal distribution always seems to rear its ugly head. I don't want that to happen to us. It's common knowledge that my parents have helped some of us more than they've helped others -- to a degree that could make a person about barf -- but I know they were just doing what they thought was best at the time. I don't want it to cause us to turn against each other one day. I hope it won't. Seriously, I would rather be straight up po' than fight with any member of my family over money. It's disgusting watching grown-ass people fight over who deserves what. Anyway. I'll remember my great aunt for her messiness and her love of animals and how she pooped in her pants every Thanksgiving at the convent and how she would not allow you to take her purse from her and how she would stuff food in it from her plate and how she would sweetly tell anyone who would listen about her royal cousins and the counterintelligence plots against her and how she was a sweet, crazy, tiny little lady and how a few Christmases ago Daisy (who had never met her and is normally very skittish around strangers) spent the whole entire day sitting between her feet. 
About this time in ...
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