Well...mixed bag.
I lived through it, she's very nice, too.
I have a cavity, but not where my tooth hurts-it's the tooth directly above it. I go Thursday to have it filled. It was, once upon a time, a very small soft spot that was drilled out and filled. The filling broke down and decay set in UNDER the filling, so it looks just fine and does not hurt when it's poked at, but the inside of my tooth is rotting and it's on the main nerve in my jaw, so she thinks that is where the pain is coming from. When I get it refilled, she will use silver filling, which does not appeal to my vanity about my teeth, but having to go back every couple of years and have the same tooth drilled on again and again does not sound like much fun, so...silver fillings it is. UGH. At least it's WAYYY back and only visible if I were to throw my head back and laugh, which I shall never do again. *sigh*
When I arrived back home, my father had left a message to call him. This was very odd since I saw him yesterday and we are monthly-or-longer types on the contact. It's not dislike, it's that he's retired and I'm a housewife-there really is very little to update each other about. He caught a fish this size, his wife did a hilarious thing, the kids are working on some project or the Volvo is making that noise again, nothing that requires frequent updating.
His news after we chatted 20 minutes anyway, was that Aunt Mabel has died this morning. I complemented her on her good timing as we all have nice clothes and shoes that fit-something I could not guarantee would be true in a month-and Daddy laughed.
Mabel had been married to my paternal grandmother's youngest brother, Grady, for 70 years. They had a romance and a half, he was crazy about her. He said many times he hoped she would go first because he could not stand to leave her again. He was in the service in WWII and spent the time pining away for her back home. She was a little as he was big, he pastored a church and kept a little barber shop just off the square in Athens. She had jet black hair-always, even when she had to buy it at the store-and a soft spot for blue glass. She was sick a long time, confined to her bed. A few days back, she had a sudden burst of strength, sat up and held Uncle Grady and said, "This is the end of us." She never said another word. That just broke my heart, such love-all those little squabbles and big worries, their children growing up and her canning and cleaning and him with his huge feet and large laugh, his felt hat and his annual birthday party he threw for himself until he was 75 and decided to start ignoring the passage of time.
Daddy said yesterday that it would be hard when she went. That she told him she met him when he was 2 years old, that she was married to the baby of the family, like Benny is our baby, our pet, like I was the baby of my family. Everyone loves Grady, everyone loved Mabel.
Another matriarch, another blur of extended family. I know it's not about me, but I wonder what it means for me, to me. To have gone years now with no contact with either side of my family, to feel isolated and forgotten and to be brought back into the fold of soft, wide women and skinny men, to see cousins aging, to see new cousins not born the last time. To hear how I was missed. Missed, but not sought out. Missed as in a passing thought now and then? Missed as in there was suddenly macaroni and cheese left over at dinners? Who's going to finish that off? Esther's not here. She's not?
Is it tacky to wear the same dress to a different funeral? I guess I'll find out soon enough.
