Free A World Lost: A Novel (Port William) by Wendell Berry

years that remained to her, she needed more sympathy than
ever, and now more than ever she was persistent in asking or hinting for
it, and was more than ever unappeasable. It was as though every calamity
that Momma-pie had forestalled or denied by her masks of superiority
had fallen on Aunt Judith, who was as naked to them as a shorn lamb.
Whatever her faults, Aunt Judith lacked her mother's arrogance.
    Yet as her afflictions grew she seemed to become increasingly selfconcerned. Her sufferings finally were not at all conditioned by the
understanding that others also suffered; she suffered in an almost pristine
innocence, as if she were the world's unique sufferer and the world waited
curiously to hear of her pains. She was so prompt and extravagent in
pitying herself that she drove away all competitors.
    She called Grandma Catlett on every anniversary of Uncle Andrew's
birth and death, and on every other anniversary or holiday that reminded
her of her loss and her suffering. She kept this up year after year, speaking of "our Andrew." Grandma said that she was grateful for these attentions, but they cannot have been easy for her.
    Nor was Aunt Judith an easy burden for my father, who, in Uncle
Andrew's absence, became her adviser and protector. He fulfilled his
duties faithfully, but without, I think, ever having the satisfaction of feeling that she was satisfied.

    When Momma-pie died, my father had the duty, among others, of
taking Aunt Judith to the undertaker's to pick out a coffin. He got me to
go along, but both of us together were as unequal to the occasion as he
would have been alone. We knew that Aunt Judith had been dependent
on Momma-pie for many things. We knew that Momma-pie's death
would leave Aunt Judith much lonelier than before. But our sympathy
was so much a surplus as to be hardly noticeable.
    Handkerchief in hand, chin quivering, Aunt Judith said many times
that she was going to be awfully lonely now. Many times she said she did
not know what she was going to do. She gazed lingeringly into every
one of the coffins, of which there was a roomful, and every one of them
reminded her of her loss and renewed her grief. Every one of the coffins
had something about it that Momma-pie would have liked, and at these
reminders of Momma-pie's tastes and preferences Aunt Judith's voice
would become a whisper and she would dab at her eyes. She was using
her grief to invite sympathy, and in doing so falsified her grief, and in falsifying her grief made it impossible to sympathize with her. And she
compounded the difficulty by the innocence of perfect self-deception;
she had, I feel sure, no idea what she was doing. And what was one to
say? I could find in myself not the least aptitude for the occasion. I longed
to exchange places with the wallpaper or the rug. My father, having
assured Aunt Judith that he would do all he could for her, had almost as
little to say as I did. She placed and left us in our embarrassment as she
would have seated us at a table.

    For some years she worked as a typist in one of the offices in Hargrave.
Later, she contracted glaucoma and became virtually blind. She made
her way about the town then truly alone, avoided under cover of her
blindness by people who could no longer bear her importunities for sympathy and her endless recitation of her ills.
    My last clear, unshakable memory of her is from the summer of 1949,
when I was fifteen. One afternoon as I was walking in front of the courthouse, I called out to one of my friends, and in the same instant looked
across the street and saw Aunt Judith. She had recognized my voice, and
she turned to stare sightlessly toward me. I did not want to go to her; I was just empty of the willingness to do so. I went on as I intended to go,
pretending under her following blind gaze that it was not my voice that
she had heard and that I was not myself.

    For want of compassion - aware that I would inevitably fail to be