Visiting Miss Mary

THERE’S a moment in Driving Miss Daisy when one of my sisters found herself weeping. It was the scene in which Miss Daisy tries vainly to restore order to her “papers” and her grasp on the world around her. It becomes dreadfully clear that the fine old lady has finally lost it. My sister wept because she had witnessed an almost identical scene with a beloved aunt who had helped to raise us from early childhood.

Aunt Mary was always generous, occasionally cantankerous, and proudly independent. She loved to laugh, read, cook, and entertain. She took in strays of every kind; she became an accomplished attorney on her own merits long before Women’s Lib; and, every winter, she threw breadcrumbs to the very pigeons whose cooing she cursed in warmer weather. To me and my siblings, who lost our mother early, she was as loving as any parent, and as amusing as any eccentric uncle. Her failing health hit us all pretty hard.

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THERE’S a moment in Driving Miss Daisy when one of my sisters found herself weeping. It was the scene in which Miss Daisy tries vainly to restore order to her “papers” and her grasp on the world around her. It becomes dreadfully clear that the fine old lady has finally lost it. My sister wept because she had witnessed an almost identical scene with a beloved aunt who had helped to raise us from early childhood.

Aunt Mary was always generous, occasionally cantankerous, and proudly independent. She loved to laugh, read, cook, and entertain. She took in strays of every kind; she became an accomplished attorney on her own merits long before Women’s Lib; and, every winter, she threw breadcrumbs to the very pigeons whose cooing she cursed in warmer weather. To me and my siblings, who lost our mother early, she was as loving as any parent, and as amusing as any eccentric uncle. Her failing health hit us all pretty hard.