Dear Emily,
An old maid aunt was the only sister of two strong-minded brothers, who took over the business of my grandparents. They were so strict with her that when she fell in love with a poor neighbor’s son, a pilot, they forced her to go to the United States to separate them.
When she came back after a few years, the pilot had gotten married.
Then a doctor followed suit, but the brothers still found him unsuitable for their sister.
When the brothers died within a year of each other decades later, it’s like their sister was released from her cage and went free as a bird.
At 62, she had the money and nobody could tell her how to live anymore. She lived alone with an old housemaid and her driver.
Pretty soon, rumors abounded that her much younger driver who had a family in the province was now her lover. They were seen going to movies and driving around in her nice car with her in the front seat.
My cousins feel we need to protect our name in the province as they were embarrassed by our aunt whom they complained seemed uncontrollable and was not acting her age.
If it were up to me, she can do whatever pleases her at this age. Short of being tied down by her brothers years ago, she never had a life—never been kissed and never had a man love her as she should have. I say, let her enjoy her life or what’s left of it. Can feeling alive be embarrassing?
—UNDERSTANDING NEPHEW
Absolutely not! Who gave these two selfish brothers the right to shackle their only sister to a life of misery? Was it her money they were afraid she’d be absconding away to men of ill repute? If it were not diminishing their share of the loot, then it’s no skin off their mean noses!
She could have loved anyone and had her own family—however poor. But they deprived her of that basic right. What if she lost all her money? It’s not like she was committing a crime.
We human beings have become too materialistic and lose sight of the romance of relationships. As the poet Conrad Aiken said, “Let’s be generous with our words and worlds. What are we saving it for, for a night of frost?”
It’s good your heart is strong and open enough to understand your aging aunt’s unfortunate fate. She missed life in its totality—more so of not having experienced the yearnings, frustrations and wonderment of young love growing up. Let her not be deprived anymore of anything.
