Aunt Mary Revisited
Posted by TeamCharlie on August 24, 2008 under Wags for Hope | 
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Well yesterday was the day to drive up to Norristown and see my Aunt Mary again. As we left we thought it wise to call ahead and make sure she was OK for visitors. That turned out to be a good idea not only for the reason mentioned, but it also gave her something to look forward to. I was honestly not aware how much she wanted us to visit, because this would be only the second time in some twenty years that we have seen her (the first time was just a few months ago). We discovered that she was indeed looking forward to it as we arrived – she was waiting out in the hallway for us. We presented her with the digital photo frame and showed her how it worked as well as some of the pictures stored on it. She seemed to be mildly interested in that – she was much more bent on engaging us in conversation. That’s a good thing. ( I’ve always been curious why when family gets together and people haven’t seen each other in a long time, that sooner or later the television gets turned on.) So I totally understood and was somewhat happy that she pretty much ignored the picture frame. Maybe she will get some solace from it when she is alone. Due to some traffic hangups we arrived a little late – about 1:45. We arrive after lunch as she has some form of dysphagia which means she must have all of her food pureed as she has difficulty swallowing and she would rather us not witness her eating. After we went through some pictures we settled down to conversation which is where it seems that Aunt Mary is the happiest. She told us about learning to swim in the Schuylkill river, which was interesting to us as we passed over it when we left. She told us another story about my adopted cousin which I never heard, that his mother gave birth to him in a hospital where my Aunt Ann worked as a nurse. It turned out that my cousin’s birth mother was married to a man in the military who had been recently killed in WWII. Her father would not let her keep the baby, so my Aunt Ann adopted him. MaryMargaret put on a bit of a show for Aunt Mary, reliving her recent participation in a local “High School Musical” play. She seemed to enjoy that very much, as she giggled and clapped when she was done. Mary was one of six children – the other five being boys. She said that many nights she would put on similar shows for her family.
