Aunt Katie (Socks Are Never Optional)

My Dad was raised by his Aunt and Uncle, Virgil and Katie Robertson. The reasons were many, and very personal, but he moved in with them in his tween years. They were loggers. Hard people, who never had children of their own, but obliged to take in a young nephew when it required. These were uneducated, but very hard working people. Harder work than I'm sure I'll ever know. They lived in a simple three room house in rural Jones County, MS. We visited once, maybe twice a year. Most of the time, these visits were brief and to the point. I don't remember either party being awfully bothered by the brevity of our stay. It wasn't that they were cold and distant, more like they knew that life had taken my dad in a different direction. One they didn't quite understand. He married, had four kids, and worked a corporate job; this was far too foreign from the path they'd chosen. Uncle Virgil died when I was in my early teens. He was in his early eighties, but the years were much harder on him that any older man I'd ever known. He was extremely fragile and barely "with it" for most of my life. His death was in no way a surprise. In all honesty, to live the life he did, a WWII veteran who made his living logging in rural Mississippi, that he made it that long is somewhat surprising.

I had no connection to him. I saw him once a year or so, but my life would soon be inundated with one of the most interesting people I've ever known, his wife Katie. My earliest memories of Aunt Katie consisted of two things, bananas and boats. Every so often, she would make the thirty minute journey from Jones county to Purvis. Her visits always meant that she would be armed with a fresh bunch of bananas. The boat part had to do with her car. It was gigantic. We're talking serious Detroit steel, driven twenty miles an hour below the speed limit with a push button radio. Did I mention it was pale yellow? Sweet ride. As would be expected, she began the downhill slide shortly after his death. She began wasting away without the motivation to provide for her husband. Not long after his death she had a terrible accident where she fell off the front porch of their house, smashing her eye socket on a stepping stone below. This prompted my dad to take her in and nurse her back to health. What started as a try-and-see, ended up lasting eight years. For five of those years she and I saw each other every day and learned a lot from one another.

Once she moved in with us her dementia really kicked in to over drive. The funny thing about dementia is that it happens in brief, but intense spurts. One second she'd be in the middle of a very lucid conversation, the next she would stare out into God knows where unable to remember anyone's name. Another interesting thing is that it was mostly a product of environmental causes. If it was overcast, or raining, there's no telling where her mind would go. She spent a lot of time staring out our front window, seemingly waiting for someone. These were troubling images for me. I'd never seen someone lose their mind before. To me, it was something that happened in movies, but it was much more morose in real life. It resembled the wilting of a flower; something that had once bloomed so boldly, but now faded ever so slowly to a foreseeable end.

Now that I've made it sound about as dark as possible, let's get to the funny stuff. The old girl was freaking hysterical. She provided me with more laughs and insight that anyone I've ever known. A few stories come to mind.

The first revolves around underwear. Since my mom went to work so early in the morning, most every morning was spent with my dad. Just two guys hanging around the house before school. That all changed soon after Aunt Katie came to live with us. One morning my dad came and roused me from bed for breakfast. I popped out of bed in my tightie whities and headed for the kitchen. For some reason I'd completely forgotten that she may be sitting at the kitchen table. She was. There I stood, a thirteen year old Jamey, in nothing but his fruit of the looms, face to face with an 84 year old woman. I quickly dismissed myself to dress fully before returning to my eggs. I learned that she approached my dad later that day in an effort to slip him some money to buy me some decent sleeping clothes. To her, my dad's financial situation had obviously relegated his children to sleeping in whatever the cat dragged in. Wow, this is uncomfortable.

She also felt that socks were mandatory. I sent her in to a tizzy everyday by simply walking around the house barefooted. To her, I was playing a dangerous game. Apparently in the old days barefooted = death. She would fearfully exclaim that my careless actions would cause me to "catch my death of cold." Meanwhile, it was 110 degrees outside.

My next memory of her revolves around sandwiches. Old people are sadistically smarter than you think. The first thing to go when hope is lost is the appetite. Aunt Katie was no different. When she came to live with us she weighed about 85 lbs. She had pretty much starved herself to the grave. Over the next few months she began to gain weight and was feeling much better. But, this was not her plan. She didn't want to feel better, and she definitely didn't want food of substance. My clearest recollection of her disdain for food was when she would fold her napkin in to a perfect square, then take the meat from her sandwiches and stuff it in the pocket created by the fold. That way, when she finished her bread sandwich, the meat would be thrown out with her dirty napkin. Sharp. The weird thing is that she knew I was watching her do it, and would slyly smile at me as if we were teammates on Team Dead Katie. Then she would give me the glare of a traitor for ratting her out.

Despite my traitorous behavior, we quickly became friends. When her mind allowed, I would spend lots of time asking her about the old days. She couldn't tell you what year it was, but could give you graphic detail on the dress she wore to her first day of school. It was mesmerizing. One story in particular really drove home the difference of our generations. Uncle Virgil fought in WWII. Apparently he suffered mightily from PTSD. Of course she had no idea what that was. She only recalled that he was a different man when he came home from the war. He was rigid and harsh. She would describe the haunting scene of him sitting in front of a nice fire, staring at the guns on the mantle, crying like a child. This was not the husband she once knew. She had no way of understanding his pain or why he had become this seemingly two-sided coin. As far as she could tell, she didn't merit a coin of her own. She was no longer important to him. And slowly, the lack of love shared between them became obvious to both.

Here's where my mind was completely blown. I once asked her why, if they'd stopped truly loving each other, did they stay together for fifty years following the war. She paused, as if I'd asked her the most inanely simple question in the world, and replied "that's just what you do." I've never felt more sadness from any tear jerking movie than I did at that moment. It was surreal to come face to face with a person who'd lived half a life of sorrow and loneliness based off of a prescribed societal norm. Not to mention the mental anguish suffered by both due to a lack of understanding of psychiatric medicine. To me, this was an insurmountable prison sentence. To her, it was life. My life was forever shaped by this conversation. How could a person live their one and only life confined by a rigid standard completely ambiguous to their own true feelings? That's not to say that my direction in life changes with the wind. On the contrary, I would like to think that I now focus every decision made, be it large or small, on the gravity of that conversation of regret.