|
She Sees But Dimly Now
North Miami Beach, Florida 1- 2-2000 Aaron H. Schectman
THINKING ALLOWED
Essays on issues, ideas and reflections on the times. Published now and
then. Opinions pro or con are welcome.
SHE SEES BUT DIMLY NOW
She sees but dimly now. A hundred years of light streaming through her
eyes have dulled her vision but not her mind. "Lady Lil", my mother-in-law
will be 100 years old on January 13, 2000. She was born at the beginning of
the last century and has seen great troubles and unbelievable changes
wrought by human ambition and imagination. She still reads the newspaper
every day.
Lillian Lane now resides in the Villa Maria a Hospital and Rehabilitation
Center in North Miami, Florida. She really has not traveled far from her
beginnings in Jersey City, New Jersey where she grew up, was educated and
began a life of work. With her husband, David Lane (born in Russia, served
as a soldier in World War I and became a Pharmacist) she lived in New York
City, in Brooklyn and in retirement moved to Florida. There were only a few
years with David here in Florida before he suffered a series of strokes and
died in 1973. Lillian Lane lived alone in North Miami Beach for more than
30 years before her last move to the Villa.
Lillian Lane is a social person. She likes people and in return is loved.
Like many old people she lives in the present with measurements made in the
past. My wife, Carol, is only days away from age 74 but mother and daughter
reenact their mother and child relationship of almost three-quarters of a
century.
"Lil" was an expert cosmologist. She was a helper of her professional
husband and raised her two children, Carol the older and Bob, to be family
oriented and rooted in careful steps to a successful life. Carol, to this
day, is a student of history, her religion, and Bridge. Both the mother and
the daughter are proud people but it is Lady Lil who no longer sees as
clearly as she once did.
A hundred years of light coming in through your eyes has been likened to
witnessing at close hand the explosion of an atomic bomb. While her eyes dim
she still manipulates numbers correctly in her head. The woman who was born
at the end of the 19th century and lived through the 20th is now peering
into a new millennium. (Carol's Evaluation: 10 out of 10.)
|
 |
|