My Aunt Nina

For some odd reason, I find myself thinking of my Aunt Nina tonight. I am not even sure how long she has been gone now but I have to think it's been at least three years now. My father, the youngest, is the ONLY one left in his immediate family. I wrote to him tonight trying to figure it all out but it could be that she left Earth FIVE years ago.

This woman was an absolute Saint. And I am not kidding about that. She never married and I don't think she ever really dated much. She was BIG in the Catholic Church, never swore or smoked or drank. Oddly, she was an AVID reader of Romance Novels. I think she got her "love fix" from those.

So, I think about a year before her death, she actually got on a plane and visited here in Texas. I thought she was the picture of all innocence and did NOT have a CLUE about what went on in the real world.

While she was here, she related a story about renting movies with her best friend at the Blockbuster there in that very small Massachusetts town. She said, "My friend and I go in "ther" every Saturday night and we rent movies. I'm always in a dress and my friend wear-s pants suits. One night, the clerk looked at us in a strange way. I think THEY thought we were QUEE-A."

I almost DIED on the spot and so did the entire family listening. We had NO IDEA that this saintly woman even UNDERSTOOD what a Quee-a was. And somehow tonight, this story, this memory, just popped into my mind and I had to share it. She was very sick in the end, facing dialysis...which she made CLEE-A that she did not want to do. Mercifully, the good Lord took her with a massive heart attack when she bent over to pick up a Sweet 'N Low pack she had dropped on the floor. Not so good for her Best Friend who observed it all, but a very quick "check out" for one who did not deserve to Suff-a.

The Angry Lesbian

01/17/2006