FireVaney

She’s somewhere around ninety-five, my Great Aunt Hattie. Her three younger brothers couldn’t say for sure when she was born. Hattie can barely walk now. She’s fallen a few too many times. Her hips couldn’t take the punishment. Even with hearing aids, she can hear about as well as she can walk. Pop, Betty, and I pay her a visit nearly once a week. Toward the end of a recent visit, I overheard Hattie telling Betty that every week she expected to die. She choked back tears when she told Betty this. Betty, with her ever-sunny disposition, did her best to raise Hattie’s spirits. As I see it, Hattie couldn’t ask for much more out of her ninety-something years of life, save for a little less death. When I kiss her goodbye, I usually kiss the air near her face. She doesn’t stink or anything. It’s MY hang-up. Well, this last time when I did it, Hattie chuckled and said, “You give cold kisses.” So I went ahead and pecked her cheek. She said it again, “You give cold kisses,” but at least she kep...

The Family Redacted (and friends) came together last night to celebrate the ninetieth birthday of their beloved matriarch, Hattie Redacted. It was held in her son’s luxurious home in/on Chicago’s famed “Gold Coast.” The entirety of this author’s walk-in closet of an apartment would fit into Hattie’s son’s first floor half-bath, with room to spare. This event was catered, naturally, and the catering would put state dinners at the White House to shame. In her informal address to the family (and friends), Hattie, without airs, noted how she’d had the good fortune to chat with dignitaries the likes of Elenore Roosevelt, and dance with luminaries the likes of Isaac Asimov. She paused several times to wipe away a fallen teardrop. (Not the same fallen teardrop, no; rather, multiple teardrops that fell periodically. It was something just short of crying. That is, unless, perhaps, she merely suffered from an itchy cheek.) She’d lived through the Great Depression, abject poverty, two world war...