This used to be a signal day in our home, Pop’s birthday.

For all of his softly aimed periodic bluster, Pop was a gentleman of modesty, a characteristic he, the oldest in his family, failed to convey to his eldest child. I kept resisting until it was too late.

Six years ago this month we lost Pop, and I do mean lost. A hundred years ago this afternoon, the world gained a magnificent new citizen, eldest of and model for five who would follow.

Arrayed against a wall of golden characteristics, Pop only was guilty of two shortcomings. He was a Democrat. He drove slower than a toddler pedaling up a steep hill, an imperfection for which gendarmes ticketed him.

He outlived Mom by 28 years.

She would have bet her inheritance with 28 separate banks that their lives would turn out with such a yawning gap between her farewell, via cancer, and his, via barely discernible fatigue.

With a rhetorical wink, she would say her husband of 43 years outlasted her by such a stretch because Pop always insisted on authoring the last word.

Altering the Pace and Tone

For another dear relative, my final surviving aunt, Pop’s last of three sisters, she sups daily from a cup of tightly spun sourness.

My cousin Dan explained much more elegantly in a Facebook message yesterday:

“My Mom is 94 today. I’d love to say it’s a happy birthday, but that depends on your perspective. Birthdays were great at our house, mainly because of Mom’s cakes and her lovely soprano voice singing Happy Birthday.

“In this, her 12th year imprisoned by dementia, she smiles occasionally. She  cannot speak but for a few muttered words, completely dependent for all her daily care, has not known her children for years, has zero awareness of her great- grandchildren or the passing of all of her siblings, cannot follow a story, a TV show or conversation.

“She can’t walk or feed herself. Her hands are curled up and useless. There’s a medical term for that, but I don’t remember what it is.

“Then I start to fear for myself and my siblings that we will lose our minds, too. The once vibrant, loving mother has been gone a long time.

“But the woman trapped lingers on. Every day is the same thing. Every visit, no change.

“This is a mystery of Almighty God that I cannot understand. To all who have family members with Alzheimer’s, I know exactly what you’re going through.

“I’m not asking for pity for my Mom, I only ask you say a prayer for her today that one day she can have the heavenly award she so richly deserves in God’s own time.”