I just got home from the Suncrest nursing home, where I saw my aunt Barb for possibly the last time. She has a stage 4 kidney disease and decided to not do dialysis. It was a small family gathering, with pizza.
I keep thinking about a time when me, my brother Fred and our cousin Jimmy were walking around town during Lapeer Days. We stopped by Aunt Barb’s house for while and she let us watch Mtv. I remember that one of the videos was Guns n’ Roses’ November Rain, which Barb seemed to like as much as us. That would have been in the early 90’s.
Aunt Barb never talked to me like I was “special”. She talked to me with the same respect and manner that she talked to anyone else, and I really appreciate that. In Barb’s presence, I felt like an equally intelligent person.
I always loved Aunt Barb. She is an important person in my life.
I have a strange respect for spiders. Other small, crawling things, I kill them on sight. But spiders, as long as they’re not on me, I let them live. Once I was sitting at my desk and a big orb weaver came crawling across the surface toward me. I said simply, “Turn around and go the other way, and I won’t kill you.” She stopped, looked at me, and then turned around and headed back across the desk, unhurriedly.
The LORD said to Moses, “Say to Aaron: ‘For the generations to come none of your descendants who has a defect may come near to offer the food of his God. No man who has any defect may come near: no man who is blind or lame, disfigured or deformed; no man with a crippled foot or hand, or who is a hunchback or a dwarf, or who has any eye defect, or who has festering or running sores or damaged testicles. No descendant of Aaron the priest who has any defect is to come near to present the food offerings to the LORD. He has a defect; he must not come near to offer the food of his God. He may eat the most holy food of his God, as well as the holy food; yet because of his defect, he must not go near the curtain or approach the altar, and so desecrate my sanctuary. I am the LORD, who makes them holy.’ ”
What an asshole.