A Day In The Life Of A Cat

Frosty Old Folks Home

I figured this story would be appropriate since I'm another year *old*er today.

I had an great aunt and great uncle everyone called Ankey & Unkey. I don't know why we called them that - I didn't come up with it. Their real names were Agnes & George....so who knows. Anyway, they moved to San Diego about 10 years after my parents moved out here from South Dakota. When they got too old to live alone, my Mom arranged for them to live in a residential care home. She was in charge of their money, the executor of their will....all that kind of stuff. When stuff went wrong, she was the one they always called for help. Well, Aunt Ankey wasn't all there the last few years of her life. To put it simply - she was nuts. She'd call my Mom and tell her the nurses were trying to kill her and that they even had bombs hanging in the windows behind the drapes. The phones were bugged, she claimed, and if my Mom had to talk to her about talk about important issues, like money or something, they had to do it in the bathroom because that was the only safe place. This made my Mom crazy. Ankey would call her almost every weekend with some sort of crazy thing and my Mom would have to drive over and smooth things out and calm her down.

My Uncle, on the other hand, was sane as could be. The only thing was, he was very sick and often was on a lot of drugs. On the occasion when he was lucid, he was really funny and very loveable....those moments were few and far between tho. He knew my Aunt was crazy, but he just was too sick to really do much to help her...except to be the constant good thing in her life.

So one day my Aunt calls my Mom crazy out of her mind about something and my Mom could not come over for some reason.

This pissed Ankey off.

Ankey writes a letter to my Grandmother (my Mom's Mom) who lives in South Dakota. The letter is pleading for help!

"Come save us! The doctors and nurses are trying to kill us! And Bunnie (that's my Mom) is in on it! She wants us dead, too! Blah, blah"

Now my Grandmother was never really clear on how nuts my Anut was, as odd as that sounds. Okay, so Grandma gets the crazy letter and calls my Mom worried out of her mind wanting to know what the heck is going on out here in Cali. You know...crazy Cali...were all the flower children live and everyone smokes weed and surfs all day. The state where Charles Manson and his gang of crazy women lived and where we elect actors as governor. This is what folks back in the tiny Watertown, South Dakota think about when they think of California.

So Mom says "See, I've been telling you she's crazy!".

Grandma gets a better idea of what is going on.

Toward the end of the conversation, my Grandma starts laughing. She tells my Mom what the return address says "Frosty Old Folks Home". The place was actually called Frost Street Residential Care Home.

My Aunt died of old age. My poor sick Uncle died 3 days later. He finally let himself pass. He knew she would never make it without him...he was the only thing she clung to day to day that kept her from totally going over the edge. His will to outlive her was driven by love. May we all have someone in our lives who loves us that much.

Okay, so I didn't mean for this to get so sad. Read the Frosty Old Folks Home part again...that will make you laugh, I hope.

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Go Red Sox!