After snooker in the Memphis pool hall | 1 |
we head further South to my uncle's | 2 |
house in Kirksville. | 3 |
He and aunt Pat used to live in a large | 4 |
three story in Saint Louis, | 5 |
retired to this home two years ago. | 6 |
As a kid | 7 |
I never cared for Pat | 8 |
a devout Catholic | 9 |
constantly censoring the activities of my cousins Jim, Joe | 10 |
and myself. | 11 |
Always a large woman, | 12 |
her eyes now dominate a gaunt | 13 |
frame | 14 |
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this is not the woman I saw four years ago at the family reunion | 15 |
ovarian cancer has spread to the liver, pancreas and lungs. | 16 |
Insists she's fine to show me around | 17 |
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shuffling quarter steps | 18 |
thick curly red hair now | 19 |
a balding wispy white | 20 |
authoritative voice that used to reprimand us reduced | 21 |
to a monotone whisper. | 22 |
The four of us sit in the living room | 23 |
my uncle talks about the skill of the doctors in Columbia | 24 |
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he and my father have glass eyes | 25 |
| |
having lost mom this way | 26 |
when they were thirteen and eleven | 27 |