There's really no good way to grow old

In Lois's house papers are paper-clipped to papers, hand-written notes remind her to remind herself to call so-and-so, to do this or that.

She's lived in the big house in the desert for 25 years.

It looks to us who are now trying to make some order of her life so that she can move on and live a new life, that her life here in the desert, especially living alone the last few years, must have seemed overwhelming to her.

Her mail alone is prodigious.

And she tended to keep everything--every dress she ever bought, ever pair of shoes. Hats, blouses, knicknacks. A whole cupboard in the kitchen is given to the plastic containers she saved. Leftovers of leftovers line refrigerator shelves. This is just inside her house; outside in her garden, grapefruit and orange trees give more than their share of fruit. 

The thread running through Lois' life is her devotion to her religion. The books, articles, pamphlets, articles, cassette tapes about God and man's relationship to God, from the Christian Science perspective, could fill a whole library.

Being in her house without her is weird. Trying to make a new order of things for her, things that she can keep from her old life and take to her new life, is an impossible job and one in which I can only fail.

But at the same time I've never felt closer to my aunt, my late mother's sister. And that Lois left notes to herself all over the house, like the one I've taken a picture of and placed here, is evidence of the great lengths we will go to feel at home in the world.