Grandma’s Neighbor Lady’s Husband Died from Breast Cancer
Not how you think, but still a cautionary tale
Aunt Peggy used to have big giant boobies. She got them from my grandma. I know this because Grandpa died before I was born but Grandma still had some of his undershirts and when she wore them with no bra her boobies hung out the bottom unless she tucked them in her underwear.
Grandma had them up until the day we buried her. I say this because as I regarded her in the artificial pink lighting at the funeral home, I specifically asked how they managed to fit her boobies into the dress she was wearing. It was a silver number she had worn to a Governor’s ball in her younger days. She’d gifted me the matching shoes and handbag when I was five or six. I still had them and offered to give them back to complete the burial ensemble, but everyone agreed there was no need.
I was selfishly happy about that. They were proof of my status as an exception to Grandma’s “hates everyone” rule.
In whispers, the group posited that the undertaker may well have either tucked Grandma’s boobies behind her or cut them off to accommodate the requested dress. Lord only knows what happens in that basement. She looked amazing, though.
Aunt Peggy had the same kind. Started with two of them, but then she had just the one. The other one had to get cut off because of the cancer. The doctor wasn’t a cancer doctor, in fact he was probably not much more than a veterinarian and Aunt Peggy was probably impatient and in the middle of being busy with things on her out of state rural farm like making sure the calves weren’t going to freeze or buying turkeys to cut the heads off of to give to all of the Messicans she hired to pick her bush cherries so she didn’t have to pay them as much and so she could still feel like a nice person around the holidays.
It was sometime after her scars were healed and that she quit smoking so she wouldn’t get lung cancer too, but when her husband was back to smoking cigars again because he guessed they weren’t as bad for you that they were here visiting Grandma and so were we. Somebody rang Grandma’s doorbell after 7pm and she was already in her nightgown which meant she didn’t have her 37 pound matching fake boob in the pocket of the bra that she didn’t have on, neither.
Aunt Peggy was the type that figured if you’re inclined to visit so late at night, then you’d better be inclined to accept her however she appears when she opens the door.
We were watching Wheel of Fortune back when they had real prizes and you had to spend your money right there on things like decorations for your house and refrigerators and there was NO PAUSING the television to see what they were going to pick!

She opened the front door, and since I was laying on the decades-old scratchy carpet, I felt the floor shake when we heard the thud. My Grandma was annoyed.
“What the hell was that?”
It was Roger. Her neighbor, Wanda was notoriously nosy. She couldn’t stand for anyone to be doing anything without knowing what was up. She had probably stewed all day wondering who was at my Grandma’s house and how long they were staying. She sent her husband Roger to investigate.
Aunt Peggy kicked the screen door open and checked for a pulse. Nothing.
“What happened?”
“I opened the door, he took one look at my chest and said ‘what in the hell?’ and keeled over. Dead as a doornail.”
My grandma kicked him. Then she yelled across the road.
“WANDA. WAAAANDA. Come get your husband’s carcass off my porch before he draws the flies over here. How many times have I told you to mind your own goddamn business? Now he’s dead. Are you happy now?”
After that, Aunt Peggy asked to have the other booby removed on account of that it was safer that way. She wasn’t so much concerned for her own safety as for that of others. The changes in her were interesting. Because she didn’t need that 37 pound fake booby to balance her out, she wasn’t so cattywampus all the time, so she quit sitting on her foot, so her leg quit falling asleep, so she quit having vein problems.
She outlived almost all of them.
