Conversations with Aunt Dotty
Michael Estabrook
“I don’t smoke much anymore, keep my cigarettes in the refrigerator. My father was caretaker for Moravian and Woodland cemeteries, we lived in fact on the cemetery grounds, but he and Mother didn’t get along, they divorced. I married, had a daughter, then I divorced, but married again for a year this time, he was a real jerk, then once more I married, to Bill, I loved Bill, you know that, but it didn’t work out, we divorced and later he killed himself, shot himself in the chest with a shotgun. I don’t know where my daughter Barbara is. Seems I lost her in the shuffle.”
“Mother told me that as a child she never had a Teddy Bear or a doll, she was so poor, so when she turned 82 I bought her a Teddy Bear. She died soon after, and I was going to put it in the coffin with her but Linda talked me out of it. Now it’s on my bed. I kiss it every morning, and every night. I do miss Mother so. I’m 73 now and alone, recently had a mini-stroke, but I’m still trying to be active, visit my friends in the nursing home, do meals-on-wheels.”
“The problem with me, with my life, is that all 3 of the men I married were boozers. She shrugs. I’m a loser that’s what I am, a loser.”
