By Bud Herron
For The Republic
An elderly relative lay dying at Columbus Regional Hospital.
She had never had children of her own and, in her later years, I came forward to help her — running errands, visiting, listening to myriad complaints about her world and the people in it.
I had received a call at the office, telling me her heart condition had deteriorated. Doctors could do no more for her and she had been moved to a holding room until she could be placed in a nursing home.
She was old and frail — just a wisp of the woman who once sat smoking L&M Menthol 100s and sipping on a Canadian Club highball each afternoon at her kitchen table.
Today, she lay in a hospital bed, cranked up slightly to elevate her head — hooked up to hoses — her nose clamped to the plastic prongs of an oxygen tube — her eyes closed. As I entered the room, she looked so peaceful I assumed at first I was too late to say goodbye.
I edged my way around the foot of her bed and quietly sat down in the visitor’s chair on the far side.
“Damn, you are fat,” a weak crackle of a voice cut through the silence. “How the hell much do you weigh?”
Evidently, she had watched me inch my way around the bed and had just enough air left in her lungs to breathe a final, insensitive evaluation of me. Then her eyes slowly went shut.
She died the way she lived — mean-spirited, self-centered and judgmental. No phony deathbed conversions for her — no attempt to try to cut in line ahead of those on their way to paradise that day. I admired her for that.
I was in my early 50s and my relative was in her mid-70s — about the age I am now.
As a teenager, I once heard my father describe her as “mean as a snake.” I thought he was a bit harsh at the time. To me she was just fun — a woman who did as she pleased, had a mind of her own and loved a party.
In reality, my dad’s comment had been right on target. Whether by some mysterious genetic inheritance or some childhood emotional trauma, she had been “mean as a snake” her whole life.
Family members said she was spoiled by her alcoholic father, who had damaged the lives of her older siblings, then sobered up somewhat and tried to make amends by having no rules on her whatsoever.
Other times — in her young adult years — her hurtful comments and vengeful attitudes were passed off as “strengths of character” — a willingness to tell the unfettered truth about people and situations — an honesty that, while hurtful, was admirable.
Finally, she grew old and the world stepped forward to give her the “hall pass to respectability” so often awarded to those of us in our dotage who are “mean as snakes.” Overlook her. It’s not the way she is. She is just old and has lost her filter.
I am sure I awarded my relative that excuse during her later years — often out of embarrassment about the way she had always been. She had not been much kinder or considerate of others at 40 than she was at 70. Mean old people likely were mean young people.
I am now 76 with no fear of being labeled an “ageist” when I say getting old doesn’t turn loving people hateful or considerate people mean.
Of course, the truth is many old folks lose their filters a bit. Although I have never had much of a filter at any age, I guess this column shows I have lost what little I had.
That woman was indeed mean as a snake.
Bud Herron is a retired editor and newspaper publisher who lives in Columbus. He served as publisher of The Republic from 1998 to 2007. Contact him at editorial@therepublic.com.
