Well, now I've managed to sign up for Medicare. It took a very long time on the phone, but it's done. I never did find out what my application number was, to do it online. So I guess my next move is to Florida, where I will drive to mini-malls and take my coupon to all-you-can eat restaurants for a five pm dinner. On the way I will sideswipe vehicles and ignore red lights. I'm basing this scenario on my Aunt, who rolled around Colorado Springs putting the fear of God into all she encountered. I'd sit in the front seat beside her with my eyes closed, thankful that the car was a big as a house.
My aunt and uncle had lived and worked in Minnesota their whole lives, then retired to the Gulf side of Florida. My uncle was happy as a clam with his Shriners and church work, but within a month after he died, my aunt had high tailed it out of there. The bugs, the gators wandering the golf course, the heat, the hurricanes, the sheer work it took to drive two miles through umpteen lights and slow drivers, well, they were not her cup of tea. I think she even missed the snow. So she moved to where her sister and brother-in-law lived and set herself up in a high rise condo where someone else got to shovel the paths.
She was such fun, and such a pragmatist. When she went into hospice as her cancer returned, she said to me, "This is the best place for me right now. Don't worry. I couldn't handle the apartment by myself." She died a day later. I had said I didn't want anything but she left me some money and a diamond ring that was so gaudy I figured it must be fake. But it was as real as she was, and I had it made up into three rings with leftover diamonds I'm saving for my kids. I wear the big diamond when I dress up, and think of her with love. She was hewn tough from a rough childhood, but with a multifaceted cut with hidden depths, and true down to the bone.
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