LETTER from JIM ATWELL
No Need For A Brick
How’d it happen?
Suddenly it’s 2020, I’m 82, twice a widower, living in a comfortable assisted living home. Well cared-for.
But, essentially, alone. The pandemic has us 18 residents quarantined, even from one another. Lots of time alone in one’s room, even with meals brought to us on trays.
Just now, however, despite prescribed aloneness, I have kept my room crowded with vividly remembered adults; ones who, because or in spite of me, shaped my life’s values. And one of those who loomed large was my Great-Aunt Mame.
In fact, you’d hardly think she could loom large in any way. Born in the 1870s, Mame stood just short of 5 feet. She was a registered nurse, though Lord knows how she changed bed sheets and helped patients turn over. But she did.
In late 1917, Aunt Mame felt a patriotic call to join an overseas nursing corps: She would cross the Atlantic and nurse the wounded boys then fighting “over there.”
That dear little woman had her trunk packed and was ready to climb a gangplank when – wouldn’t you know it? – the war went and ended on her!
