She Was A Grand Lady (Part Three)

But I’ll get over it.  I loved her too much to do anything else. 

When I was a child she fed me Ding Dongs on her new couch, amazed me with the gusto that she did everything with, patiently explained to me time and time again how a dog could bite you AND still love you (Ah, Tuffy, you were a great dog, and you really were always sorry after you bit me.  It wasn’t either of our faults really that you were a sound sleeper and had fur that was far too easy to step on.), and she picked out the puppy that was my first and only dog. 

She cared for my Uncle for as long as she could after his stroke, seeing to the needs he could no longer see to himself (which were many), and covering for him in conversation so seamlessly that at first I couldn’t believe there was anything different about him, he seemed so MUCH like his old self.  She never knew that at one point, even though I was out of the room, I heard him ask “Who is the boy again?” which is NOT a question you want to hear from a man whose known you almost since birth.  She just told him, and I returned to the room and the conversation as if nothing had changed

That night, after he’d gone to sleep, we stayed up far too late talking because, even though we were all exhausted, I could tell that more than anything, she just needed to talk about nothing in particular with another adult for a while, and, with a shock, I realized that somewhere along the way I had BECOME that adult.