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Thursday, February 25, 2010
Family party best present for 89th birthday
We had a birthday party for my great-aunt last weekend. She turns 89 today, Feb. 25, and is my oldest living relative by a good score.
My sister and I didn’t have to discuss whether we would throw her a birthday party. Between our two families and kids, everyone gets at least a little soiree each year in honor of his or her birth.
But I didn’t realize how significant the occasion might be to this birthday girl.
My great-aunt was one of four girls in her family, one of which was my grandmother. My great-aunt was always the sickly one of the group, and she said many doctors had all but written her off years ago.
She once had a case of bronchitis that the doctor told her would last for 11 years.
“And, sure enough,” she said. “The day after the 11 years was up, I stopped coughing.”
Another time she was sick, she said the doctors (who must have been a little more glib in the day) told her parents that at least if she didn’t make it, they still had three other girls at home.
Since then she has survived cancers and multiple afflictions, as well as the accompanying surgeries and treatments, to arrive at this most current point in time.
And now, of her generation in the family, she is the last.
This relative desolation was behind her decision to pick up and move from Chicago to the Dayton area in March; so she could be closer to my sister and me, and our families.
It has been a year of adjustment, for her and for us, as she settles into her new life.
Although she lives in a retirement home, my sister and I help her out as we can by doing an assortment of little tasks — changing batteries, ordering clothes, helping with mailings, etc., as well as doing her banking and grocery shopping.
We have learned many things from these chores, like that there is such a thing as canned potato salad and that Von Maur might be the last store in the world that sells girdles.
Part of the reason our intervention is as requested is that our great-aunt can’t see or hear well — although the parameters of those limitations are still negotiable.
She can’t read without her magnifying machine, but those little fuzzies in the carpet (the ones I can’t see) can drive her to distraction.
And, kind of like the short people in my house, she hears what she wants to hear a good amount of the time.
But, as my sister and I remind each other, she has lived by herself for decades and never had children, so she is used to having things a certain way.
Besides, I figured, you don’t survive an 11-year case of bronchitis without more than your fair share of moxie.
As a result, the three of us have had some difficult and often clamorous conversations about how my sister and I can best help her without neglecting our families’ needs in the meantime.
We also have been trying to focus more on the enjoyable and truly invaluable aspects of living close, like spending time together, sharing family stories and celebrating life’s milestones … such as 89th birthdays.
So Saturday night, we got everybody together, ate dinner and had a delicious “whipped cream cake” as requested. The birthday girl opened a couple of presents, all the while saying, “You shouldn’t have!”
Then she told us that it was the first birthday party she had had in 20 years.
“I thought the neighbors would bring me a cake for my 75th,” she said. “But they didn’t.”
It really brought home the contrast between her life and ours, and how lonely the last several years must have been for her.
It made me more glad that she is with us today.
It also reminded me that although family life isn’t always easy, it is still infinitely better than life without family.
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