\n
Aunt Babe and the Obituaries<\/p>\n
I had an old maid Great Aunt,\u00a0\u00a0my grandmother’s sister, Aunt Babe.\u00a0\u00a0In all of my remembrances of her she was old.\u00a0 In her later years, she lived to be well\u00a0 over 100, she lived in an apartment my dad attached to the rear of our house.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0I was gone from home by then.\u00a0\u00a0I mostly remember her living in her rural \u201cdog run\u201d home with a well out front and an outhouse out back.\u00a0 After her death, they moved the house to the museum in Southwest Louisiana as an example of that style of building.<\/p>\n
After she moved in with my folks Dad would take the newspaper to her soon after it came.\u00a0\u00a0She bypassed the news articles and turned directly to the obituaries.\u00a0\u00a0She would carefully go through those commenting on those she knew or if she knew their relatives.\u00a0\u00a0Sometimes on the church, the funeral would take place.\u00a0 If it was not in a church but in a Funeral Home she would comment loudly on that.\u00a0 After all good Christians had church funerals.\u00a0 \u00a0Always a comment sometimes shedding a tear.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0That was often the only part of the paper she looked at.\u00a0 I suppose she lived primarily in the memories of better days.<\/p>\n
After several years Dad noticed that she took the paper but no longer looked through it or commented on the obituaries.\u00a0\u00a0She just added it to the stack to go in the trash.<\/p>\n
He asked her if she no longer wanted to see the paper.\u00a0 She responded that she wasn\u2019t interested, that \u201cshe didn\u2019t know any of those people.\u201d<\/p>\n
I suppose she had outlived her contemporaries and the people in the obituaries were younger and strangers to her.\u00a0\u00a0In some ways she had lived too long.<\/p>\n
She lived a long life but much of it was lived in the past. The world passed her by as she focused on who and what had been, with little or no interest in the present.<\/p>\n
I have noticed that the obituaries interest me more and more.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0I also notice a lot of them are about people younger than me.\u00a0\u00a0Have I lived too long?\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Not yet!\u00a0 I try to stay up on the living more than the dead. I try to live in the present, not the past.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Aunt Babe and the Obituaries I had an old maid Great Aunt,\u00a0\u00a0my grandmother’s sister, Aunt Babe.\u00a0\u00a0In all of my remembrances of her she was old.\u00a0 In her later years, she lived to be well\u00a0 over 100, she lived in an apartment my dad attached to the rear of our house.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0I was gone from home by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_front_end_style_editor":"no","ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"0","ocean_second_sidebar":"0","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"0","ocean_custom_header_template":"0","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"0","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"0","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"0","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-640","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-kingdom-living","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/calvinlangton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/calvinlangton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/calvinlangton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calvinlangton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calvinlangton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=640"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/calvinlangton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":641,"href":"https:\/\/calvinlangton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640\/revisions\/641"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/calvinlangton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calvinlangton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calvinlangton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}