COUSIN LUCILLE

I'm sure I have written about my cousins at some point but today needs to be about Lucille.
 Being an only child my cousins were the closest thing to siblings that I had. We would see each other occasionally throughout the years and I have often thought that I was truly blessed to NOT have these people living in the same house with me. We all grew up in New York City, just in different boroughs. Ann and Ray lived in Whitestone, Queens, I lived in Queens Village, Queens and Lucille, Barbara and Johnny all lived on Staten Island. (People do not live IN Staten Island but rather ON Staten Island. The fact that Queens is also on an island, Long Island to be exact makes no difference. When it came to talking about "THE CITY" Staten Island is the only island involved.)
Because it was the 40's and 50's families did not own two and three cars so travel was quite limited to when dad had the day off. There was public transportation but that usually involved several busses and in the case of Staten Island, a ferry. I still remember waiting on the ferry line that snaked through the streets of Brooklyn. Some times we would have to wait for an hour or more for the ferries to accommodate all the people wanting to take the 30 minute trip.  But it was always worth the wait because I was going to see my cousins who lived at the end of the earth. In those days NO ONE in their right mind chose to live on Staten Island. It was isolated from the rest of the city and there really was NOTHING there. But for whatever reason Uncle John, Aunt Tessie and my 3 older cousins ended up living there in a tiny tiny house surrounded by woods only a block away from the water. It was so exciting to make this trip and to walk down to the beach where my cousins entertained me for hours.
According to my oldest cousin, Lucille, She waited FOREVER for my mom to have a baby. Lucille tells me she would constantly ask my mom when she was going to have a baby because Lucille wanted a little cousin so badly. She had to wait over 15 years for that to happen but sure enough, when Lu was almost 16 years old I came into the family, much to everyone's delight. I vaguely remember her and her sister Barbara as teenagers but it was always their younger brother Johnny that I loved. (I do believe I planned to marry cousin Johnny when I grew up.) Lucille loved me as a baby and has many stories about all the things I did when I was little but then she got married and started a new life for herself so we didn't see her or her sister as often. Years passed and when I moved to Florida in the early part of the new millennia I found myself living about 45 miles away from this cousin of mine. At that time Lucille was married to her second husband, a sweetheart of a guy named Ed, and they were living in Port St. Lucie, Florida. Being so close geographically and chronologically  we would visit a couple of times a year, much to poor Gerard's dismay. Putting up with your own family is one thing but Ger just couldn't handle spending too much time with my cousins. There is a reason for this . . .  My family has no filters. My mother suffered this affliction all her life so I assume it is a "Helfrich" trait. Things are said without giving any thought to what it may come out sounding like to the poor innocent bystander.  Lucille would say something "cute" and Ger would turn to look at me with a look of horror on his face. I would smile and nod that I knew what he was thinking and he should just ignore the comment and move on. This has been my relationship with cousin Lucille for the past 20 years.
But the strange thing is that we have become a lot closer over the past several years and now that she is 88 and a widow living alone I am her "guardian" if you will. I visit every so often to check in on her and we talk on the phone occasionally. And when something happens I am the one who she turns too.
And that is why I am sitting here in the surgical waiting room of her local hospital. And that is why I am having flash backs of all the waiting rooms I have been in with other people I love. I don't like this at all but I know I need to be here for her and for myself because I couldn't live with myself if I didn't do all I could for her.