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Staying in touch with an elderly aunt

By PHILIP GAILEY
Published March 13, 2005

Several readers - okay, two if you must know - have kindly suggested that a report is overdue on my Aunt Thelma, who lives on a rural road near Homer, Ga., and has been an occasional subject of this column in past years. The news is mixed. Her health continues to deteriorate, but her attitude is as feisty as ever, and her kitchen stove rarely cools down.

She will be 88 next month, and the years are beginning to take a toll. A few months ago, she had a light stroke shortly after her doctor added diabetes to a list of ailments that includes heart and respiratory problems. She doesn't have much faith in doctors, who have her on more pills than she can afford or keep track of, and she doesn't hesitate to tell them when to butt out of her life. She recently threw away her Lipitor, figuring cholesterol was the least of her health concerns.

Diabetes has forced some changes in her diet. She has given up her favorite snacks - oranges in the winter and watermelon in the summer - but she's hanging on to her junk food. The last time I took her to the grocery store, she bought four large bags of potato chips, four large bags of pork rinds and two bags of Popsicles, sugar-free when available. And she's not about to give up biscuits. "I can't live without bread," she said.

Aunt Thelma has been living alone since my mother died two years ago, and she will tell you that the loneliness is the hardest thing she faces when she wakes up in the morning. These widowed sisters lived together for 14 years. As she moves around the house, she occasionally finds herself calling out my mother's name to ask a question, then realizing what she has done. About the only time she leaves the house is when someone drives her to the doctor's office or to the grocery store.

She keeps busy in her kitchen, leaning on her cane and turning out cakes and pies to die for, and she still feeds every stray dog and cat that shows up at her door. She has not totally given up on the idea of planting a garden this spring - "maybe a few rows of beans and okra, if I'm able" - but I sense that she realizes her gardening days are over.

During a pre-Christmas visit, she loaded our car with three pound cakes, an apple cake and six sweet potato pies, among other stuff. "You'd better take as much as you can, because these will be the last cakes and pies I ever make," she said, as she always does when we discuss how much food we can squeeze into our car trunk and our home freezer. A proud cook, she made me promise not to let anyone see the apple cake, because it was cracked on top, as if that made any difference. When I called to tell her the apple cake had won rave reviews from our Florida friends, I could tell she was pleased. Two days later, she called and said, "I've baked you two more apple cakes, and they're better than the one you took home."

Aunt Thelma, who doesn't like to waste money or words, rarely calls me, and when she does, I know something is up.

"Are you still planning to fly up to Washington?" she asked in a recent call.

I said I was, and she said in a concerned voice: "When you get on that plane, you tell the pilots you want to smell their breath for liquor. I saw on television where pilots are flying drunk. You get off the plane if they won't let you smell their breath."

She gave me another lecture on the risks of air travel, and I told her I'm at greater risk of dying of clogged arteries from eating her fried chicken than I am in a airplane crash.

Aunt Thelma said something recently I never thought I would hear from her: "I'd like to take a cruise before I die." Start packing, I said, and I'll make the reservations. There was only one problem - she is terrified by the sight of open water. The one time she came to Florida to visit, she almost panicked on the approach to the Howard Frankland Bridge linking Tampa and St. Petersburg. To avoid looking at the water in Tampa Bay, she ducked down in the back seat until the bridge was in the rear-view mirror.

"I just wouldn't look at the water," she said. I told her it would be hard to take a cruise and not see water. She said it didn't matter, that she wasn't physically able to make the trip anyway. I said I would send her some brochures from some of the big cruise lines to give her an idea of what it would be like, in case she changed her mind.

She said that would be close enough.

Philip Gailey's e-mail address is gailey@sptimes.com

[Last modified March 13, 2005, 00:23:15]