Good bye Aunt Ginny....

Our family matriarch is dying. Virginia is 86 years old. She is the most gracious, gentle soul in the world. I spent Sunday with her, talking about everything under the sun, except for the elephant in the room. The capillaries in her hippocampus have turned porous. Not something you bounce back from. I might have had the good luck to be half of the last conversation she ever had. At the end of dinner Sunday night, she was chewing on her crippled right hand and when I asked her what the trouble was, she replied, "My hand doesn't work properly now. I seem to have gotten very old. Why am I so old?" Like I said to mom the next day, there doesn't seem to be a word in English for something so heartbreaking and adorable at the same time. "Bittersweet" doesn't cut it, it's more of a menu description. The next morning, the only communication from her was disjointed words from her mostly unconscious and clearly uncomfortable state... "Oh, man, oh man, bye-bye everybody" and such. I'm gonna miss her so much.