Friday, October 14, 2005

Memories Shared

I went to my aunt's on Wednesday, as did my cousins Lola & her older sister, Lupe. Aunty had a very bad night & only slept a little because she had trouble breathing. Today a nurse came & put her on oxygen to help her. She's also supposed to keep her bed propped up a little bit.
They changed her pain medicine again as the pain is increasing. Last week they put her on hydrocodone & now they're putting her on a 12 hour time-released morphine pill. On hydrocodone, the pain was higher when it was just taken or when it was wearing off, now it should be more consistently controlled. Lola has also explained to her that she should always be at '0' level of pain, there's no need for her to hurt. Neither myself, my mom or my 2 cousins believe the 6 month estimate is accurate, but we'd never say that in front of Aunty.
She got up and ate about 1/2 of her breakfast & while she was at the table, I asked her if they had a t.v. when she was a child. She smiled and told me that television wasn't yet invented. (I felt rather dumb for not knowing that) But then she told me about their first t.v. set. She was at home & a man knocked on their door, my aunt was probably just about 25 or so with 3 little kids. So, she naively listened & watched as this man said he had a t.v. for them, then proceeded to put the t.v. on top of their stand-up piano. She told me they loved the t.v., but she still didn't know why he'd given it to them. A few days later, the man reappeared at her door, said he'd made a mistake and took the t.v. away! We all laughed at this story. She thinks it helped them to get a t.v. sooner because my uncle got to watch boxing & liked it as much as she & the kids.
Lola went & got us lunch & the 3 of us went outside to talk. While we were out there, Aunty was able to finally fall asleep. My cousins & I have always been close but this was the first time we ever talked about their childhood. Lola told me that one of their favorite 'toys' when they were little was trapdoor spiders. She said they'd see one, open the trap door & get so excited when the spider came crawling out. I can't even visualize Lola or Lupe ever touching a spider! This reminded of when Caveboy was young & we were at our poorest, he used to fly junebug's on a string.
Lola also told me they used to make little cylinders out of dirt. They make a small pile, poke a hole in the middle & slowly pour water down the hole. She said if you waited a while, then gently break away the dirt, there would be a small 'pot' at the bottom. I'd imagine as a child, it must have seemed like magic.
She told me that at schools in East L.A. (in the late 40s) every morning they'd give kids a spoonful of cod liver oil & slice of an orange. If kids bought a school lunch, their younger siblings were also allowed to get a daily dose. This was to help kids stay well & according to her, it did. But cod liver oil? ack!
At 2:00, Lupe & I were going to leave, but then Lola said not to ever leave without telling Aunty we were leaving. We didn't want to wake her as she'd been so tired. Fortunately, Aunty woke up & we both said our goodbyes, hugged & kissed her. When Lola asked about us leaving without waking her, she shook her head, NO. When I'm with them, I don't remember think about them having cancer. I think at the time, we're all too caught up living life & enjoying each other's company.

I'm looking forward to Sunday as Tarzan and I will visit with Aunty again...

posted by jane at 4:01 PM