Re “A Death Watch”
The final verdict is in on one half of the death watch in our home.
My 93-year-old maiden aunt died early Monday morning.
Like all but one of her siblings (who died at 6 weeks), my aunt lived as long as any person of her generation has reason to expect.
With her goes an aura of sadness that wreathed her pretty face for all of her 93 years – because she never wed, she never gave birth.
Her siblings, without exception, produced broods that would tax the Coliseum’s capacity.
And this is what it has to do with my aunt:
When our generation was in kidhood, my aunt’s siblings and their bulging, noisy families visited each other every week.
Laughter often threatened to push back all four walls from their starting positions. If that didn’t work, the ear-pounding noise of the semi-behaved children would elevate the roof in Grandma’s home 10 feet above the trees.
When each family piled into its own groaning car late of a Sunday evening, the kids still were roaring, the parents still were of good cheer. There in the slight distance, beyond the cars, stood my aunt, waving with a wan smile.
Was her smile authentic or masking a trail of I Wish I Hads?
I don’t know.
Was she sorry she never had followed her siblings down an aisle to marriagehood and produced her own team of teeming children?
I don’t know.
All that is certain is that we went home with our mobs while my aunt returned home to a dark, empty house. Every night.
The same way she left the world yesterday.
Alone.
