Cindy was the first to escape this life. She met Harold, Gail’s father, and it looked at first like he was set to rescue her from a bleak future. He had earned a law degree from New York University, and his family was Park Avenue wealthy. But Harold wanted to succeed on his own merits, without benefit of his father’s riches. He left New York and whisked his wife and baby daughter off to Sarasota, what was then a sleepy village on the west coast of Florida. He proceeded to try to earn a living building houses and houseboats. He was very bright –  new ideas gushed from him like water from a firehose –  but he had little talent for business and was too scrupulous in his dealings to enrich himself. It didn’t take very long before Cindy felt cheated. She thought that they never had enough money. It led to an unhappy marriage.

Meanwhile, Frances had gotten married to a good looking fellow named Bernie who promptly went off to war in Europe. When he returned, he told Frances that he didn’t love her anymore. They got divorced. Childless and lonely, Frances remained alone for the rest of her life. The two sisters tolerated each other, but Cindy resented Frances good looks, even when they wilted over the years, and Frances begrudged Cindy’s marriage, unhappy as it was.

After her divorce, Frances got a series of jobs as a secretary near Princeton, New Jersey. She was competent and well organized. She earned a reasonable living, enough to rent a modest apartment on the outskirts of Princeton. Since we were living in Baltimore, we saw her only on special family occasions, but when we moved to Rutgers in New Jersey she became more of a factor in our lives. Every couple of months or so we would make the 45 minute drive to Princeton and visit. In time, we began to notice that she was having some difficulties.

There was the incident of her notebook, which was amusing at first, but portended troubles to come. One day, she called to tell us that she had been robbed.

    “Someone broke into my apartment and stole my little red book. I use it to keep track of my investments”.

It seemed strange. There was no sign of a break in. Nothing else was stolen. Taking a notebook containing her accounts and nothing else didn’t make sense. She called the police and they duly searched the apartment, but couldn’t find any signs of her loss.

Sometime later we noticed that she would regularly start a conversation and lose her train of thought. She would blame us.

    “Don’t interrupt me.”, she would complain. “You’re making me forget what I was saying.”

Then she began to find fault with the pace of life. She found it difficult to watch TV.

     “Everybody speaks so fast these days on TV. They mutter and don’t enunciate. I can’t follow what they’re saying”.

To no avail, she would turn up the volume to uncomfortable heights. And then there was the driving. She had an old car that she prized. But driving was becoming more difficult.

     “Everybody goes too fast these days.” she protested.

Her solution was to drive in the center lane of Route 1, a three lane thoroughfare, at 25 miles an hour with her emergency lights flashing. The police called us and asked us to take away her license. We tried but she refused to give it up.

Soon we found that the electric and gas companies were threatening to shut off her utilities: she hadn’t paid her bills. When we investigated, we found a pile of opened envelopes on her kitchen table. Apparently she would start working on making a payment and then find that she had lost where she was.

Gregg, our oldest, came to the rescue, and helped her out for a few months. But that was unsustainable. He lived more than an hour away and was starting a family and building a career. He reminded us of our responsibilities and we soon began to regularly make the trip to Princeton on weekends to attend to Frances’ affairs. I resented it; the trip was long and took away from weekend activities, but we had no choice. Frances had no one else. Even though we were helping her, she became suspicious. She wouldn’t allow us to draw funds from her account. To pay her bills, we had to use our own money, and then, after confirming that she truly had these expenses, she would arrange to pay us back.

Her physical health also began to deteriorate. She ran through a host of doctors, all of whom refused to see her after a few visits because of her complaining of their competence. Finally she had found an elderly physician whom she trusted. His approach was non-traditional. He prescribed a diet that was completely fat free in an effort to lower her cholesterol to unprecedented levels. The diet, which she scrupulously observed, didn’t help; she became unsteady. She would frequently lose her balance and slowly topple over.

     “I know how to fall”, she would brag. “I never get hurt.”

We tried reasoning with her.

    “You need to find an apartment on the ground floor. You’re going to trip on the stairs”, we’d plead.

     “I can’t afford it.” she would insist.

     “What about getting one of those bracelets that allow you to call someone if you’re fallen?”

Not necessary she insisted and refused.

One day when Gail was away, she invited me over for dinner. Halfway through the meal, she excused herself to go to the bathroom. She didn’t return for 15 minutes. Finally, I asked what the problems was. It turned out that she had wet herself and wouldn’t come out from embarrassment.

Gail became increasingly concerned. She suggested that she Frances grant her power of attorney in case she became incapacitated. She refused. Gail asked, “Don’t you trust me?”. “What do you think”, Frances replied. Gail was deeply hurt.

Matters slowly worsened, culminating in a phone call in the middle of the night. It was from a hospital. They told us that Frances had fallen in the bathroom and couldn’t get up. With difficulty, she had managed to remove one of her shoes. She banged on the floor until the downstairs neighbors called the police. They took her by ambulance to a hospital in Princeton.

The staff wasn’t certain what the problem was but it was clear that Frances was suffering from some sort of dementia, an ailment that they weren’t willing to deal with for any length of time. They suggested a nursing home.

The issue then became a legal one. Even while lying helpless in her hospital bed, France refused to give Gail authority to sign anything in her behalf. We had no way of accessing her finances to pay her hospital bills. We knew she had a bank account but we couldn’t draw from it. The bank wouldn’t allow us to open her safety deposit box without a court order. A nursing home, a good one that was competent, caring, and compassionate, required a substantial down payment, and a commitment to a continuing source of funds. In the end, Gail had to go to court, a lengthy and costly affair, to gain control over Frances’ affairs.

The doctors diagnosed her condition as Lewy Body disease, a disorder that sometimes accompanies Parkinson’s disease. In Frances’ case, it manifested itself as a slow loss of memory, confusion as to time and place, lack of balance, mild paranoia, and hallucinations (she told us that she saw Bernie walking outside the door of the nursing home). She lived in the nursing home for three or four years, a miserable existence, slowly deteriorating, until her death.

We knew that Frances was frugal, even before she showed signs of dementia. She would tear paper towels into three parts and reuse each piece repeatedly. She would successfully plead poverty every time she was threatened with a raise of rent. She never gave gifts to our kids. Because she never had a high paying job, we assumed that she didn’t have much money. However, we were astonished when we opened her safety deposit box. We learned that shortly after her divorce she began to regularly purchase stocks in utility companies, mostly PSE&G and the Southern Company. For almost fifty years, she never sold any of her investments and reinvested the dividends. She didn’t trust a stock broker and kept all of her securities in the bank. We found stock certificates totaling almost a half a million dollars. Since Cindy was her next of kin, the money now belonged to her. It was ironic. Frances had always complained that Cindy wasted money on clothes and jewels. Now Frances who resented spending an extra penny on herself had given Cindy all that she had saved.

   “How much money do you need to feel secure?”, I’d ask.

    “$200,000 dollars would do. Maybe a little more.”, she’d say. I’d tell her that she really didn’t need that much. We were always there in case she spent it all. I suggested that she should worry more about running out of time than money.

But when Frances died and left her more than she had ever hoped for, it wasn’t enough. She lived by herself well into her nineties in an immaculate apartment in Sarasota that had a wonderful view of a waterway filled with ducks and geese. She had been an artist, and the place was tastefully decorated and filled with her paintings. She was quite vain, never venturing outside without looking her best. And her best looked twenty years younger than her age. She had several friends, and a small network of people who could help her if she needed it. Despite all of this, she continued to worry about her funds.

But living alone was not without problems. She would drive to the supermarket and back and to her doctors, but she became a hazard to fellow motorists and pedestrians. Her eyesight was deteriorating and she had several minor fender benders. She had difficulties with the repairs that her apartment required. Her balance wasn’t good. And, dealing with her bills became an increasing problem. But none of this was pathological. She remained sharp and well informed. She was just showing her age.

In her early nineties, we persuaded her to come to Austin to live in an assisted living facility and be near her family. She agreed. For several months she was happier than she had ever been while living on her own. She started to make new friends; we went out often with my son and daughter-in-law; and she got to really know her great grand kids. For a brief period, she stopped obsessing about her money. Of course, she remained vain. She became the belle of the Westminster Assisted Living Facility. In the morning it took her an hour to fix her coiffure, and she dressed for the day as if she was going out for a stroll in Manhattan in the 1950’s. When she had difficulty maintaining her balance, she refused a cane. She wouldn’t get false teeth. Canes and false teeth were for old people, she’d insist.

One day after returning from a particularly happy outing with the family, we dropped her off at Westminster. After eating, she picked up her glass and carried it back towards her apartment. She never reached it. She tripped and fell. The glass shattered and cut her carotid artery. A nurse was on hand, but there was no way to stem the bleeding. She bled to death. She was 95.

Aunt Frances’ hard earned money has now passed through several generations. With Cindy’s demise, it became Gail’s, but she didn’t want it and we didn’t need it. Frances’ money now became part of our three grandson’s college funds. I’m sure that they’ll make better use of it than either Frances or Cindy did.