It turns out, in a development that shocks me, I like old people. A very, very particular limited elite hybrid of old people whose leaders are Uncle Junior and Etta Grey. No one really calls him Uncle Junior, just Junior but thanks to the popularity of the Sopranos I now find myself piecing together that he is Jac's great uncle. And great he is.
"Ohhhh Lexus!!" Etta Grey would exclaim each time she saw our dog Lexi. She is a dog-lover. She embraced Lexi and I could feel the sense of relief she had having a dog back in her life after an absence. Each time she greeted "Lexus" she was renewed. And when we brought Kirby to meet her, she immediately dubbed him "Curly". Junior entered his eighth decade by plunging into the Internet. He had Facebook, wi-fi, and a laptop before many who are decades younger. Last Christmas we gave him a custom notebook for keeping track of his favorite websites and passwords.
As Etta Grey recovered from an injury in 2008, she sat perched on the edge of her car seat to give us hugs hello or goodbye. In the hometown of Jerry Falwell, she spied our Obama magnet on our car and exclaimed, "Oh! Whose Obama sticker is that?" Jac copped to the potentially inflammatory decal. "Well, good for you!" she squealed with delight and a pat on the back. They've been married for 61 years.
And then quite recently, Junior fell ill. He had a blockage which required surgery. We hoped that he'd have that and be back on his feet. Then news came that there was an infection and he'd probably need some recovery time in a nursing home. Then word came that there was a problem with his heart... and people started talking about "arrangements".
When I think of what I really want out of life for Jac and myself, it is to get through everything as happily as possible and to find ourselves on the other end of the timeline as warm, loving and adventurous as this one particular old couple we've known.
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