Ethel, The Last One.

The widow was a gold star mother. Her son killed in Korea, no other children. She was old when I knew her. Her husband, one of my father’s “radio bug” friends, “another ham, WWI”. Antennas all over their yard. And a tower held up with guy wires. He told my father to take it when he died but he never got around to it.

She talked on and on about nothing. Usually nice, sometimes she’d fret and worry,  no one knew why. Pixilated, some said. She died last. They came to clean out her house, take away the old radio stuff she’d never gotten rid of. She left movie magazines. Thousands of them, in neat bundles all over the house. She’d played piano in the theater a town over, before talkies.