mask and wing

Seeing Aunt Ruth at 89

The visit was, at turns, difficult, but it was heartwarming to see that some of her wonderfully coy humor remains intact! She is no longer quoting the usual "old sayings" but is determinedly trying to make sense of what is happening around her, even when there's none to be found.

She still cracks herself up, occasionally - always one of my favorite images of her. I can hear the laughter, and Lady Ruth holding forth in the midst of it, very calculatedly delivering up a punchline with a look of utter innocence and disbelief plastered on her face.

She is fuzzy these days, as were her mother and my dad, whenever put on the spot to remember anything reasonably recent, but is gradually returning to her youth and the places and people she knew then.The older the memory, the more clearly she can bring it together. I see her struggling to fit my face into its proper place in her life. Not confusing enough that I look like her brother and herself, but I have her mother's name, as well.

But I am not the Mary Randall she is remembering any more and my cousins and my sister and I aren't her siblings, but she is beginning to see them in us, and us as them. Funny, frustrating and fascinating...