This week can kiss my huge ass...
Yep, this is gonna be one of THOSE posts. I'll do a cut and you can skip ahead to the cutest Halloween pics ever. :P
SO...things were going smoothly Monday. I'd gotten paid the Friday before so we had a pretty good weekend shopping, attending Halloween parties and then the big candy raid. It was nice. We had fun. Pfft...then came Tuesday.
My mom calls me Tuesday morning to inform me that my grandmother was in the hospital. Let me give you a little history in which I sound like an ungrateful, horrible granddaughter...
My grandfather passed away, as some of you remember, about four years ago. He went quickly, six weeks after being diagnosed with lung cancer. My grandfather had ALWAYS taken care of my grandmother because she was a dependent, needy very frail woman. She'd had polio has a child and walked with a limp. She had her left breast removed due to breast cancer and several years back we discovered that she had Parkinson's disease. Later, she shook so badly that even her eyelids were in constant movement. Point is, she was always in poor health. So, my grandda dies and my mother (the only unmarried, only female sibling) and my sister move into my grandoparents home to care for my grandmother. This has gone on for four years and it hasn't been easy at all. There were 3 a.m. diaper changes, constant moaning, dementia, etc. My mother got no rest and hardly any help from any of her brothers or her sister in laws. Ultimately, the care of her mother combined with the stresses of her job led to her having very high blood pressure. So high, in fact, that one particular day, the blood pressure got so high that she had NO white at all in her left eye. It was all red. The doctor said it was essentially a bruise.
Anyway, ultimately, my mother took an early retirement to care for her mother full time. My grandmother has never been a nice woman. She was mean, gossipy and talked down to my mom and many of us over the years...so much in fact that when our grandda died, the cousins and her daughters in law stopped coming around. As in, totally stopped coming around. No one wanted to be around her and really, I couldn't blame them. The past four years have been such a burden to my mother that every night I prayed that she could find some peace, some joy in life. That she could finally begin to live again.
She got that Wednesday morning. Apparently, my grandmother had a pretty severe UTI and breathing issues. She'd wasted away to 77 pounds because she refused to eat anything, despite my mother's best efforts. She took a turn for the worse and at 3 a.m. my mom call to tell me that she had passed away. As horrible as it sounds, my first reaction was 'Thank you, God,' because I knew this meant my jmother's life would finally be hers again. She was finally free.
I don't think that makes me a callous person. I think that if you spend your life making others miserible, then it will come back to you. I think that if you are a hateful cruel person, then not many will cry at your death. Am I sad? Sure. I have no grandparents left. My mother has no parents. I hate that my grandmother wasted her life. I think that's what makes me the angriest. She never did anything at all with her life. She quit high school. She married. She had children. She NEVER read a book. She NEVER sang. She NEVER danced. My earliest memory of her was watching her sip coffee and watch soap operas. That was it. That is all. Absolutely nothing else. She was given the gift of life, an opportunity to take her life and live it to the fullest and she just didn't bother. That makes me angrier than it probably should. She had one friend. One, guys, can you imagine that? So yeah, I am sad. I'm sad that something as precious as life was wasted on someone who just couldn't be bothered with it. That makes me very sad.
Contrasting that entirely...was my nieces and nephew's OTHER great grandmother. (My sister's ex's grandma.) You see though my sister divorced her ex, his family was still very much a part of our lives because of my sister's kids. My ex-brother in law's mother and my mother were BFFs in high school so we have always been friendly with them. While my grandmother was in the hospital, we found out that my ex BIL's grandmother, Belle, was as well. She'd had a heartattack and yesterday she passed away. So my nieces and nephew have lost BOTH their great grandparents in the span of three days. I do not understand it. Belle, was sort of the reverse of my grandmother. She lived a full life, was always on the go, had many, many friends and danced her butt off frequently. She lived. She really lived.
It is an amazing contrast to look at these two women and notice the difference, to see how very different their deaths were...women, just as their lives were. Children wailing and sobbing because one died...and very few being upset when the other died. That sounds harsh and pathetic, but it's unfortantely the reality of the situation.
So...as you can tell, I'll have an exhausting weekend. I've cried for my sister's children who mean almost as much to me as my own. They are hurting. They are numb.
The lesson is this, bints, if you have a grandparent, a mother, a sister, a brother, a child a friend you love, who you know loves you...embrace them. Love them. Tell them how much they mean to you. We are all given the smallest amount of time here on this earth, we have to vocalize our effection and live, truly live our lives while we can.
I love every single one of you! Truly! Sincerely!!!.
Smooch,
Tee
Miss Grace, my Little Vampire
Trin was 'too grown up to trick or treat.
Miss Faith, my Butterly Fairy...who is, by the way, notoriously camera shy, hence more pics of Grace
SO...things were going smoothly Monday. I'd gotten paid the Friday before so we had a pretty good weekend shopping, attending Halloween parties and then the big candy raid. It was nice. We had fun. Pfft...then came Tuesday.
My mom calls me Tuesday morning to inform me that my grandmother was in the hospital. Let me give you a little history in which I sound like an ungrateful, horrible granddaughter...
My grandfather passed away, as some of you remember, about four years ago. He went quickly, six weeks after being diagnosed with lung cancer. My grandfather had ALWAYS taken care of my grandmother because she was a dependent, needy very frail woman. She'd had polio has a child and walked with a limp. She had her left breast removed due to breast cancer and several years back we discovered that she had Parkinson's disease. Later, she shook so badly that even her eyelids were in constant movement. Point is, she was always in poor health. So, my grandda dies and my mother (the only unmarried, only female sibling) and my sister move into my grandoparents home to care for my grandmother. This has gone on for four years and it hasn't been easy at all. There were 3 a.m. diaper changes, constant moaning, dementia, etc. My mother got no rest and hardly any help from any of her brothers or her sister in laws. Ultimately, the care of her mother combined with the stresses of her job led to her having very high blood pressure. So high, in fact, that one particular day, the blood pressure got so high that she had NO white at all in her left eye. It was all red. The doctor said it was essentially a bruise.
Anyway, ultimately, my mother took an early retirement to care for her mother full time. My grandmother has never been a nice woman. She was mean, gossipy and talked down to my mom and many of us over the years...so much in fact that when our grandda died, the cousins and her daughters in law stopped coming around. As in, totally stopped coming around. No one wanted to be around her and really, I couldn't blame them. The past four years have been such a burden to my mother that every night I prayed that she could find some peace, some joy in life. That she could finally begin to live again.
She got that Wednesday morning. Apparently, my grandmother had a pretty severe UTI and breathing issues. She'd wasted away to 77 pounds because she refused to eat anything, despite my mother's best efforts. She took a turn for the worse and at 3 a.m. my mom call to tell me that she had passed away. As horrible as it sounds, my first reaction was 'Thank you, God,' because I knew this meant my jmother's life would finally be hers again. She was finally free.
I don't think that makes me a callous person. I think that if you spend your life making others miserible, then it will come back to you. I think that if you are a hateful cruel person, then not many will cry at your death. Am I sad? Sure. I have no grandparents left. My mother has no parents. I hate that my grandmother wasted her life. I think that's what makes me the angriest. She never did anything at all with her life. She quit high school. She married. She had children. She NEVER read a book. She NEVER sang. She NEVER danced. My earliest memory of her was watching her sip coffee and watch soap operas. That was it. That is all. Absolutely nothing else. She was given the gift of life, an opportunity to take her life and live it to the fullest and she just didn't bother. That makes me angrier than it probably should. She had one friend. One, guys, can you imagine that? So yeah, I am sad. I'm sad that something as precious as life was wasted on someone who just couldn't be bothered with it. That makes me very sad.
Contrasting that entirely...was my nieces and nephew's OTHER great grandmother. (My sister's ex's grandma.) You see though my sister divorced her ex, his family was still very much a part of our lives because of my sister's kids. My ex-brother in law's mother and my mother were BFFs in high school so we have always been friendly with them. While my grandmother was in the hospital, we found out that my ex BIL's grandmother, Belle, was as well. She'd had a heartattack and yesterday she passed away. So my nieces and nephew have lost BOTH their great grandparents in the span of three days. I do not understand it. Belle, was sort of the reverse of my grandmother. She lived a full life, was always on the go, had many, many friends and danced her butt off frequently. She lived. She really lived.
It is an amazing contrast to look at these two women and notice the difference, to see how very different their deaths were...women, just as their lives were. Children wailing and sobbing because one died...and very few being upset when the other died. That sounds harsh and pathetic, but it's unfortantely the reality of the situation.
So...as you can tell, I'll have an exhausting weekend. I've cried for my sister's children who mean almost as much to me as my own. They are hurting. They are numb.
The lesson is this, bints, if you have a grandparent, a mother, a sister, a brother, a child a friend you love, who you know loves you...embrace them. Love them. Tell them how much they mean to you. We are all given the smallest amount of time here on this earth, we have to vocalize our effection and live, truly live our lives while we can.
I love every single one of you! Truly! Sincerely!!!.
Smooch,
Tee
Miss Grace, my Little Vampire
Trin was 'too grown up to trick or treat.
Miss Faith, my Butterly Fairy...who is, by the way, notoriously camera shy, hence more pics of Grace
