Great Aunt Rose

“You know Betty, they should have just taken my leg off. I was a young woman then, I would have coped with it but not now.”Great Aunt Rose, my grandfather's oldest sister, was talking to my mother while I was eating my sticky iced gingerbread. I was 4 years old and just about the right size to be sitting at eye level with my great aunt's offending leg. I was incredulous. Perhaps it was because grown ups chopping off their legs seemed so bizarre to me that I remembered it for so long.

Her leg seemed enormous, tightly bound in a thick orange stocking, as it sat propped up on a leather poof. I have no clear …