Aunt Molly Bristol is Dead

Aunt Molly Bristol is Dead by Gordon Lloyd Swartz ?? "Aunt Molly Bristol is dead." Being greeted with such news as I stepped on to the porch was just what I needed. My body was aching. The seam of coal was becoming narrower and my body was not becoming younger. The old muscles screamed in anger at being treated in such a way. My cough was becoming worse and sometimes doubled me over for minutes at a time. I sure couldn't shovel any coal while I was coughing-miner's asthma they called it. But I had seen it eat away at too many men. They coughed themselves into the grave. I had been docked one whole wagonload because they found a little slag in the coal. I suppose I should have been more careful ... but I hate to work all that time for nothing. Linda was usually very sensitive to my moods and my needs, but I understood that the death of Aunt Molly Bristol would upset her as much or more than it would me. Aunt Molly had been like a second mother to both of us. As a matter of fact, she had been like a second mother to everyone raised in Redtown who was under the age of eighty. And that only left Lydia Polk and Old Man Winthrop. Aunt Molly had just turned ninetyfive . Both of her sons had been born before she was fifteen, but she had never lost her motherly inclinations. She had helped raise every child in Redtown. Sure, she had spoiled us more than our parents would, but she had instilled a wonderful morality in all of us. There was not a person in all of Aracoma County who would have said a bad word about Aunt Molly Bristol. Linda was nervous at the supper table. She didn't sit with me, but fluttered around me like a butterfly, bringing me 39 the sugar that she had forgotten, making sure that my coffee was hot, slicing an extra tomato. She prattled in her highpitched way, telling me the gossip of the day. Over the years, I had learned to listen only to the parts of her monologue which might interest me. I asked for the butter and another slice of bread. Other that that, I said nothing. I tuned Linda out and thought about Aunt Molly Bristol . As I remembered my childhood, tears started to well up in my eyes. I consciously stopped them and then wiped my face and eyes with my flowered napkin so the tears wouldn't drop. Linda didn't notice; or if she did, she pretended not to. I remembered when my brother Jack had started to school. I cried when he left on that first morning. I told Aunt Molly that I couldn't understand why Jack always got to do everything, while I was treated like a baby. "Honey," she said, "vou'll catch up with Jack soon enough. When he s seventy, you'll be sixty-eight. There's not a whole lot of difference in your life between sixty-eight and seventy. Times are changing fast for you now and I know you can't understand." Then she said something which I have never forgotten . "When Jack dies, you aren't going to be far behind him. You'll be vine on borrowed time." Jack went into the mine when he was fourteen and was killed that same year, two days after his fifteenth birthday. Although the undertaker said that he could make the top half of Jack's body look presentable, Momma had them close the casket anyway. That was my first experience with death on such a personal basis. I didn't really understand all the pomp and ceremony of the funeral. I'm not sure that I do yet. I sat in that stuffy church and listened to Preacher Hollander the same way I learned to listen to Linda in later years. I stared out the window and named all the trees and birds to myself. I saw the evidence of the wind, even though I couldn't feel it in the stuffy church. And I felt the presence...