I am the Nearest Living Relative.
A nasal toned woman on the other end of the phone informs me of this. My uncle George, whom I never knew because he died before I was born, left behind a wife I can’t remember. Why the hell did I break my rule about not answering the phone once vacation starts?
This woman tells me that my “Aunt Gladys” was discovered by neighbors at four in the morning, as she paraded down her driveway buck naked and singing the Battle Hymn of the Republic. When approached, she mooned them; a vision given that she is 72 years old.
Social Services has conducted a full investigation, whatever that means, and I have been found. At 35 years old, an unmarried, childless, professional, I have only recently found myself.
“When,” she demands, “will you get here?” It seems that Gladys has to go into a nursing home. I need to sign something which can't be simply faxed.
I try to diminish my involvement in this situation though nothing works. My parents and their parents are dead. Neither I, nor they, have any siblings of which I am aware. My only other relation, my Uncle Sal, is in a Wisconsin (or is it Idaho?) nursing home sustained by his own excellent financial preplanning. I haven’t seen him since dad’s funeral years ago. He was in a wheelchair then.
Later, I search the photo album I inherited after my dad died. In it, I finally find three black and white pictures glued to a musty page. At the bottom of the page is one word: “Gladys”. Then I remember.
Each picture shows a svelte, smiling woman with a hand on her hip. She wears an obscenely (mom's word not mine) short white dress emblazoned with sunflowers. Her blond hair is piled on the top of her head like spiked cotton candy with a cigarette hanging from the corner of her mouth. In one she’s dancing in our kitchen with a mop.
The pictures were taken when I was about eight or maybe ten. Gladys came late, dressed in an obscenely (mom's word not mine) short white dress emblazoned with sunflowers.
She called me “kid” instead of Lisa. I guess calling, “Hey Kid!” was easier than remembering my name. “Hey Kid! What grade are you in?” or “Hey Kid! Like hamburgers?” or "Hey Kid! Come sit by me and let me tell you all about men!" Except for my mother calling her a pistol, nothing else shakes loose from my mind. This is the sum of what I know about Gladys. Such as it is, it brings an involuntary smile.
However reluctantly, I don the mantle of the Nearest Living Relative, cancel my singles cruise and drive the almost 300 miles south to Virginia.
I don't have a problem finding the hospital since it's on the main drag. Actually, there is not much else except the hospital. I slowly walk down its linoleum floors thinking I should be walking down a beach in Jamaica. A white haired and wobbly security guard tells me to follow the yellow stripe on the floor. It eventually leads me to the sunroom where the Alzheimer’s patients spend the day.
I open the door and immediately hear a raspy, “Hey Kid!” coming from a small lady in a wheelchair. Her hair, now white, looks much less styled by Albert Einstein than I remember it. She is composed. She is looking at me when she again says, “Hey Kid!” I can’t believe it. Could it be that Gladys remembers me?
I go across the room and sit by her, taking one of her liver spotted hands in mine. Her fingernails are painted a stunning red. She is the thin woman in the pictures. She has a lot of wrinkles now and the right side of her face is slack-maybe from a stroke, but it’s her.
I don’t know why but thoughts pour out as if from an overturned pitcher. I imagine that, since it’s clear that she remembers me, we might have a chance here. I project us to my small house for our own celebrations. Scenarios abound of us sitting on the front porch sipping tea or something stronger, going for walks and the like. I’m lost in this sort of revisionist future when the door opens and a nurse enters the room.
And that’s when Gladys yells, “Hey kid!” and I see that she is no longer even looking at me but is totally and absolutely focused on the nurse.
To every single person who enters (including her Nearest Living Relative a few moments before) she calls out the salutation that has carried her this far, this many years: “Hey Kid!”
I watch each recipient smile at the greeting, wondering what they think, and knowing what I know.
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Written by Pamela Tyree Griffin
Photograph by Blake Campbell
The village has waited three seasons for this day.
