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Endings
It’s now the final day of the year so I suppose it makes sense to make this my last post for the year. I got the news early yesterday that my aunt has died. My grandma was the oldest of nine kids and Aunt P was one of four sisters. She was the last sister remaining. Now it’s just the two youngest sons left in the family, and both are close in age to my mom. Growing up, Aunt P was one of a couple from that family that I saw most often. Her daughter is just a few months older than me and I had sleepovers at the house many times when we were in Pennsylvania. Aunt P was one of those larger-than-life people, loud and brash but a lot of fun. I remember her for an unending number of crochet projects over the years. It seemed she was often with a crochet hook in her hand when I was at her house. I also remember her presence at so many family get-togethers and she loved to play cards and she also smoked all the time. The last time I saw her properly was when I was home with Lego Lover in 2010. We stopped by her house with my mom and grandma and had a good visit. Lego Lover found her very overwhelming, though, and stayed in the car most of the time even though Aunt P tried to persuade him to come inside.
For the past several years, Aunt P has been living with Alzheimer’s, one of the cruelest of ailments. Since the pandemic began, she’s been mostly locked inside the care home where she lived and her kids weren’t able to visit for over a year. The best they could do is see her through a window. I assume things have improved in that area because my cousin and her brothers were with her the last few days of her life. I’m so glad they had that opportunity. I suspect for my cousins, it’s more of a relief than anything. After all, Aunt P has just not been the same in recent years. When I last saw her in 2017, the person I remembered seemed to have disappeared.
So this is an ending and a goodbye to Aunt P and this year.
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Like family
While growing up, our family was super close to another family. This friendship went back to my babyhood when my parents lived in the same building as their parents. The dads worked at the same company and were best friends for many years. When one moved to Atlanta, the other soon followed and our families were close all the years I was growing up. At this point, our lives diverged quite a lot and we saw less and less of each other. The last time I saw them was at my wedding over 25 years ago. But I consider them close friends despite the distance and time away. The dad in the family died yesterday and I’m feeling pretty gutted about it. This is hitting me harder than losing some family has been.
I talked to my mom tonight and while talking I also discovered another mutual friend had died some time ago. She was ten years older than me and lived across the street. She was our babysitter and at times she had all six of us kids together at once and loved it. She often spent more money on us than she earned. The last time I saw her was at my brother’s wedding which was a few years before my own. My parents discovered this while checking out her Facebook page and seeing an RIP message from someone going back a couple of years. It aches to know it’s been so long but we had no mutual contacts who might have alerted us to her death.
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Dwindling family
Both my father’s parents were one of multiple children. I’m talking about over ten in each family. So there’s a lot of family around that I don’t know and probably never will know. I think I’ve run across a few through the DNA testing sites.
My mom’s father was an only child although she had a step-father who was also from a large family. My maternal grandmother was the oldest of nine children. There were five girls and four boys. The youngest two are actually younger than my mom and the third youngest is only slightly older. You could say they grew up more like siblings their true relationship. My mom even lived in the same house for a period of time growing up.
Less than two years ago, the youngest, my aunt E, was diagnosed with lung cancer. Like most of this part of the family she’d smoked all her adult life and I don’t know that she’d quit like some family members or not. Anyway, her prognosis initially wasn’t good but then she saw a different doctor who did surgery. Apparently that made things a lot better and she was doing okay. But then she ended up rushed to the hospital in massive pain and it turns out the cancer had spread throughout her body. The outlook was was poor but there was a plan to start her on chemotherapy. Then she decided she wasn’t going to go down that path. It makes no difference because she died soon afterwards on September 7th, just three days before her 75th birthday.
Out of that family of nine kids, she was one of the ones I was closest to. She lived across the road from my grandma until my grandmother moved into an apartment. I last saw her on my November 2017 trip and we had a good visit one afternoon. I’m grateful I was able to spend that time with her. For my mom’s part, it’s much like losing a sister. In fact she was closer to her aunt than she was her sisters (who were ten and fifteen years younger). I am glad she didn’t suffer a long time but it really is sad that I will never see her again. Instead I will keep my memories of her close.
This brings that part of the family down to two brothers and one sister still living. The sister is also another close relationship and this is made harder by the fact she is suffering from Alzheimer’s and is living in the nursing home where my other aunt spent her last days. It’s weird to think of this family passing out of existence but it won’t be too long until it happens.
Not to mention that my parents are no longer young. With both in the latter 70s it’s possible they could be struck down by any number of ailments. At the moment, though, they are both in relatively decent health, which is a relief to me.
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Rhianna
Early last week, there was a shift somewhere in my being very much to the positive. I felt energetic for the first time in ages and I felt good. It’s not so much I’d been feeling bad all along. Just that feeling so energetic was such a good feeling that it made me realise how lacking I’d felt before. I couldn’t say what the cause of this was but it was a good thing.
The feeling carried on through the week.
Friday, everything changed. A phone call came reporting someone having found our cat in the road. The Scientist went out and found her on the edge of our front yard and she had died. We don’t really know what happened, except she had some injuries on her chest and around her front legs.
Rhianna was our first permanent pet in the family. We got her over ten years ago because Lego Lover was afraid of dogs at the time. He was pretty attached to her, especially these last years as he’s gotten older. She was never a particularly attached cat. Most of the time she was quite aloof and the only time she showed much affection was once the dogs joined the family and that tapered off after a while. I had attempted to show her more attention in more recent months or maybe even the last year or so but it was never as much as it should have been. Part of this was just because she wasn’t too attached to people. But she also kind of got a bad deal with the dogs joining the family. It might have been better had one of the dogs not taken an active dislike to her once she scratched him for getting to close.
It’s funny how little we realise a creature is so much a part of our lives until it is gone. She used to follow the Scientist around the front yard while he watered the plants. When I got up most days, there’d be evidence she’d been sleeping on my desk chair. Funnily enough, I had to get a new one a while back and she didn’t start sleeping there for a while. But then she took it over pretty much every night. Of late, I’d come out to find heaps of sand and cat hair all over it. Then, of course, there was the clawing of the front screen, which was her way of saying she wanted yet more food. Sometimes she’d hide away in our closet to sleep and the only evidence was we’d hear her bell tinkling as she shifted around a bit. And sometimes our bedroom would be her safe place from the dogs. Fluttershy always loved her to death, which was bearable, if annoying. Maromi often kept his distance but then would become aggressive with her.
When she ate, she was very careful and dainty as she ate. This became most apparent when we had neighbour cats turns up and sneak in to eat her food. We’d suddenly hear a noisy, messy sound of eating which was definitely not her. We also never we able to feed her any cat treats. She would never take food from our hand. If we gave her anything, we pretty much had to put it in her dish or she wouldn’t bother with it.
We are pretty sure she actively tormented Maromi by walking across the front yard when he was there, setting him off to bark madly at her. She knew she was safe from him out there and she took full advantage of it. She also had a cat “friend” which she would tolerate hanging out in our yard. They would sit or lie down not too far from each other. Sometimes one would be on one side of the driveway and the other on the opposite side.
Once, she disappeared for about day and we worried about her well-being. She was very much an outdoor cat and hated being forced to stay inside. So she wandered around our yard and the neighbouring yards. She never went too far, so much as we knew. Anyway, when she didn’t show up, we were worried that she might have walked into the street gotten hit by a car. She was found quite by accident in one of the drawers in Game Fanatic’s room. I think the drawer had been sitting open for some reason and somebody closed it, not realising she was in there. But we never heard a peep from her. We guessed she was doing a lot of sleeping at the time but it was weird she never cried to get out. What a relief it was when she was discovered.
I don’t have that many photos of Rhianna because she was rather difficult to pin down for a photo. The last photo I have is quite by chance and accident. I was taking a photo of a flower in the front yard and she walked into the frame. It’s kind of a neat photo, for being an accident and I’m glad I have it. It kind of suits her since she wasn’t very affectionate.
Rhianna walks past -
Mary Poppins
Last November my close friend, K, and I found out the stage show Mary Poppins was coming to Perth and we were both quite excited as we’d heard it was playing over in the eastern states before and wondered if we’d be lucky enough to have it travel west. I’d ordered the tickets a few days after they’d gone on sale and managed to get some pretty decent seats, a vast improvement over the previous show we’d seen earlier last year. The date was set for May 10th at 8pm. It was just a matter of waiting for the performance.
Unfortunately my friend K wasn’t there with me to enjoy the show a couple days ago. For more than a year and a half, she’d been undergoing treatment for cancer that had spread to her liver. In February she stopped the treatment and started palliative care. Last month she was taken to hospice and her condition deteriorated rapidly in a matter of days, such that she wasn’t expected to live more than a few days. She hung on for more than two weeks but finally had her release from the pain and suffering on May 3rd. It was expected but still such a shock and will continue to be for a while.
K had been so looking forward to Mary Poppins. Her memory had gotten really bad and she’d call up quite regularly to check she hadn’t missed it and I’d reassure her. When I finally had the news of her death, one of the first things I thought was she really was going to miss the show. It wasn’t until that point I could or would do anything about her ticket…although it would have become necessary to take some action before the night. I thought about not going but I knew K would want me to be there. I was fortunate to have another friend able to go at short notice and understanding the situation completely.
Last Thursday I went to see Mary Poppins and it was a really lovely show.. My friend K would have loved it and we’d have marveled over the set designs and changes. And the songs and the dancing. A very entertaining show it certainly was. I did enjoy seeing it with another friend but it wasn’t an easy night and I so missed my friend and her company. And I’ll continue to miss her company at many shows in the future but her memory will always be with me.
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A couple years ago or so, my uncle had a stroke which caused significant damage. He spent some time in the hospital and then was sent home to be cared for by his wife. He was not a very good patient and didn’t really do what he needed in order to improve life. His condition deteriorated and he was moved into a nursing home about a year ago. His quality of life has been quite poor over the last several months while his health continued to fail. I heard that my dad was looking to buy a suit a few weeks ago because he thought he might need it soon. I got the news that my uncle died yesterday in the nursing home. Dad never did find a suit so he will just make due with what he has. He’s flying off to Pennsylvania in a few hours and the funeral is on Friday.
My dad was the youngest of three children in his family. His mother died when he was a teenager. His father died about 30 years ago. His sister died a few years ago and now his brother is gone. While he has been expecting this for some time, I can imagine the reality is still quite hard, especially since he is now the last of his immediate family. Fortunately, this means the end of two years of a poor quality of life for my uncle and a chance for his wife, my aunt, to move on with her life.
RIP, Uncle J.
