Visiting with Bess

I visited my great aunt Bess in the nursing home again today. She looks a bit better -- the bruises from her fall are fading -- and she was definitely more talkative, but her mind seemed more addled.

We did talk a little about death, and as my dad commented on my last post about Bess, she told me that when she has thought it was close, she's not ready. She said it's because it (death) is so mysterious.

I told her I think it's welcoming, calm, like a homecoming and reminded her of her family and close loved ones who will be there welcoming her. She said, "but I'm so much older now, they may not recognize me." I laughed and said it's her soul they will recognize.

I got her to laugh a couple times. I stayed for over an hour, and one time I asked her if she was getting tired. She replied she's always tired (a symptom of the congestive heart failure), and since I was sitting at the foot of her bed, I told her to just kick me out when she was tired of me. She chuckled and said she wouldn't kick me like a mule...and did I know a mule was the combination of a horse and a donkey?

That's how the conversation went, from one topic to the next without much purpose. I loved hearing her stories of her parents, my great-grandparents, and how she met her husband -- on a ship travelling back from the States to South America. I finally said I had to go -- I was meeting a friend for dinner. A man? she asked with hope in her voice. No, I laughed. Just a girlfriend.