Grim

“On the side, in permanent marker, she wrote my name: JEN.”

In the Right Stuff, there’s a grim man in a black hat who delivers the news to test pilot wives that their husbands have died in a crash. His presence becomes symbolic in the film, a spectre of death made flesh.

My aunt gets upset when I walk into the room now. For decades now, she has been preparing me to deal with her eventual death. I am her health ca…