When it comes to deeds

In 2001, I was living in central Madrid with Adriana, a 55 year old diva (for real, a singing diva!). We didn't get along too well. I think she was a bit bitter that she had to take in someone new to make the rent, she was dead-set on not letting me change any of the decoration, and we had different standards of hygiene. It was not a catastrophically conflictual situation either, but on occasions we passed like ships in the night rather than really share the place. A few times we ate together, I gave a her a couple of massages, and she once borrowed my version of Pie Jesu to train for a concert she had to give.

Adriana really didn't strike me as the most kind-hearted person on the planet, and definitely not a do-gooder. Yet her situation in artsy, marginal Madrid during the Movida (and before) meant that her friends had taken the brunt of the 1980's Aids crisis. Because the "artsy" community is extraordinarily transient and noncommital, Adriana became one of the few permanent fixtures. As it happens, when two or three of her friends became ill from Aids, she was the one to visit them every day, bring them food, and hold their hand when they were dying. I had moved in about three weeks after the last one had died, and I only found out much later.

My aunt doesn't have the best reputation on the maternal side of my family. Emotionally speaking, she's rather harsh and can be hurtful. I suspect she makes up stories a lot of the time too. She's not instantly likeable in a "cute movie" sort of way. She's also outwardly religious. Because she lived near my grandfather, she took responsibility for his well-being, coming to have lunch with him, driving him to hospital, etc. before he died in June. And this despite the fact that my grandfather used to beat her, threw her out of the house at 19, and never ceased to express his fondness of her younger sister, my mother.

After the death, my mother did not want to sell the house, to which she was very attached, while my aunt needed the money for her projects to move down South. In the course of a few months, she not only processed the hurt of having been beaten and thrown out of the house as well as that of losing her father after having done all of the caring, she also put her projects on holds (she's in her mid 60's) so that my mother, the baby, would have the time to grieve.