Page 78 - WTP Vol. V #5

My sister and I are walking down a long pink Kate, just for this visit.
hall in the nursing home at Charlestown.
A Catholic seminary in its former life, it’s now a huge complex of buildings on the south edge of Baltimore, apartments for affluent retirees, and an assisted living building. We pass a few patients sitting in wheelchairs and nodding at the televi- sion. We’re here to see Aunt Kate. Julia goes over to the nurse’s station and asks for the number of Mrs. Hopkins’ room. She steers me by the el-
bow and whispers, “This is it—this is her room.” Kate is not our aunt, not a blood relation, but my godmother. Her closeness to us was born out of my mother’s friendship with her. They were just neighbors at first, then they were two women who had their first babies late in life. They be- came as close as some sisters.
“Here’s a picture of you and our mom; that’s Sara, our mom,” says Julia. It’s a photo from a cruise in the seventies. They are wearing long gowns. Kate is more than a head shorter than Mom, and she
I haven’t seen Aunt Kate for a couple of years. It’s obvious that she hasn’t had a perm since then. Her hair, still mostly black with a few streaks of white, is blunt cut, held back in a tiny ponytail. She is in bed, covers up to her chin. They’ve put little socks on her hands, impromptu mittens.
“I can’t remember,” Aunt Kate says again, and tears are running down the sides of her face towards her ears because she is still mostly lying down. Julia and I pull our chairs closer to her so our faces are nearly touching hers.
“Hi, Aunt Kate,” says Julia cheerfully. “We came to see you.”
“It’s okay,” says Julia. “You two had some good times together. This was one of them. You were on a cruise. Dad was there too. You three took a lot of good trips together.”
“Oh, dear,” says Aunt Kate, looking at us from her lying down position. She starts to cry.
Aunt Kate lifts her head a bit and looks at us. The look in her eyes changes slightly; she has at- tached on to something she recognizes from the past. “I know she was my good friend,” she says pointing to Mom’s image.
“Oh, dear.”
Going Too Fast
“She was your friend.” Julia echoes. Now Julia and “What’s the matter, Aunt Kate?” says Julia, very I are both crying. Aunt Kate is crying too.
sweetly, as if Aunt Kate were one of her children, who are still quite small.
I signal to Julia and we get up from the stiff chairs and walk away from the bed for a minute.
“I can’t remember.” says Aunt Kate, then again. “I can’t remember.” She continues to cry.
“I think we’re upsetting her,” I say.
“Don’t cry, it’s okay if you can’t remember. We’ve brought pictures,” says Julia. I am always im- pressed by Julia’s preparedness. Out of her large handbag, she pulls out a little binder of snapshots. I know she has pulled these from a dozen large albums. She has made a little anthology for Aunt
“Maybe,” says Julia. “Maybe we should get ready to leave soon.”
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We sit down again. Julia takes out more photo- graphs.
is wearing a pastel flowered dress that seems to have no shape. But tall, silver-haired, dark-eyed Mom is dressed in a pale green satiny thing. You can see her wonderful figure; the satin hugs her breasts just enough but it isn’t too sexy, not cheap looking. She’s wearing sparkling drop earrings, rhinestone but you wouldn’t know. She looks elegant and happy.
“No, just a few more pictures, some of us,” I say.
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