Losing Aunt C.

Well the office is still intact. Big Guy is more interested in completing the upstairs bath. I can't argue with that but I could be tearing this office up if the computers were moved. Well things always work out in their own time. He is doing a good job on the bathroom.

I am getting accustomed to staying home, well that isn't true entirely. It seems there are many reasons for me to get out of the house but with winter you tend to feel snowbound. Snow has disappeared this weekend and this morning it was 59 degrees when I got up. Now that is more like it. It won't last but I will enjoy while it is here.

When I first began this retirement thing I was afraid. Anything new tends to strike fear in me. Would I have enough money, would I get bored, would I be sorry I left my job? Well pish and tosh. I don't have enough money but when does anyone? At least among the working class. I like being bored from time to time and there is always somewhere to run off to and something to do. Today I must run by work to pick up a few things and I am sure I will remember why I am not sorry I left my job.

While I am retired I think I will devise a way for people to be employed without feeling they are being run around by the nose. Wouldn't that make sense? To share in the profits of a business when it did well and to scrimp along when things were bad, in other words to have an ownership of the place. I know some places claim to do this but I wonder if they really do. Well that can wait for another day.

As I age I have more reasons for grief, loved ones dying, losing people I worked with at least no longer seeing them daily. The sagging and wrinkling my body does that even a diet wouldn't change. (No wonder old people let theirselves get lumpy.) My aunt, who was more like my mom than mom is slowly dying. She is almost 95. Her body has withered to a scarecrow and her strength is waning with each day. Each time I see her I wonder why, why does she have to stay here? Why can't she go to the other place and have all the things that are missing here, like peace and contentment and faith unflinching. She has plenty of love, we all do love her. But with her dementia she has become more a child and not the woman who cared and listened. How I miss that woman. She never gave much advice except to point out what was right and what wasn't. I could sit and complain or worry with her and she listened and I saw an answer. You got to miss someone like that.

Now she just lies there waiting and sleeping. Sometimes she yells at the person changing her clothes for the liberties they are taking and she even tries to clobber them for their total lack of decency. Now the words are hard to get because she doesn't wear teeth much and she is weak. I keep asking God why must she go on and on. The only answer I have is to watch and see what there is to learn from her.

There have been lessons. Like the day I was walking her in her chair and thought how this poor woman still drew me to her even though she had long stopped making sense. How her wrinkled appearance repelled my youngest granddaughter. And yet I seldom saw it except with photos. To me she was that loving 50 year old aunt who helped me when I asked. How could I not love her. And I realized what love is. Only seeing a person's soul, not their body. I don't visit her out of duty but out of love and the need to grieve my loss of her. I pray that she may soon see the Jesus she has always loved.

Hope I haven't become too morose but this has helped me. Thanks for reading.