Who’s in charge of the body?

My grandpa did indeed pass away later that beautiful day, holding his daughters’ hands and in peace.  I wasn’t there, but I’m told it was peaceful and as good as these things can be.  The issues didn’t begin until people started trying to mess with the way he left things.  My grandpa was the type of man who would sooner give you a dollar than to let you think you’d swindled him out of it or outsmarted him for it… he wanted things a certain way, and that’s the way he wanted them.  He was no different with his money and his wills and his funeral arrangements and everything surrounding his impending death.  He had some amount of money that he wanted my mom to have, and some amount that he wanted my aunt to have, and some that was to be split amongst the other siblings upon his passing.  I’m not privvy to all the details, but I do know that he gave my mom and aunt (the two who were there to hold his hand in his final moments) their share before he passed.  In fact, he said he was stubborn enough to not die until he was sure that they had what he wanted them to have.  He wanted to be sure no one was going to take their share away, nor swindle him out of his money once he was gone and couldn’t speak for himself any more.

He also made all his funeral arrangements years and years ago.  The man was nothing if not explicit in what was to happen to his earthly body, and it was paid for and settled long before this hospitalization.  Now it would seem that his second wife (who he’s been divorced from for most of my life) is contesting his will and is making other arrangements via her children (who are also his children, but I do not know these people – they haven’t been a part of our lives).  My mom and aunt are (understandably) upset, and my poor grandpa is in limbo until the courts open tomorrow so that a judge can determine what should become of his body.  Does he get the funeral and interment that he wanted, or does he get what some portion of his children want?  He has nine children all told, two from this second marriage, and those are the only two who are contesting things.

I am so upset over this, more than his passing.  His death was expected, we all knew it was only a matter of time.  In fact, it’s comforting to think of him in peace and not hurting any more and not being bound to this earth and a broken body (I know what that feels like, and it’s not good).  But to think that anyone has the right, after I’m gone, to do with my body as they please and not as I clearly stated that I wanted?  Is so upsetting to me.  If my grandpa were *in* a grave, he’d be turning over in it.  I suppose he’s turning over in … whatever storage he’s in at the moment, and I hope he’ll go haunt whoever messed with his wishes.  Hopefully this will be settled tomorrow, and it sucks that it was the weekend and had to wait for court to open up. 😦

 

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A Beautiful Day

Weird, I woke up this morning with the thought “It’s a beautiful day to die.”  And it is.  It’s the perfect kind of spring day, sunny and warm with a hint of breeze that keeps the air moving and the pollen from being too annoying.  A bright, blue sky with big, puffy, white clouds scattered here and there, and the promise of good things in the air.  It’s the kind of day I long for when the dark, cold winter days drag me down.  That said, my thoughts were kind of macabre since it would seem to me that this is the kind of day that inspires life, rebirth, and the joy of living – not death, dying, and the end of things.  I suppose one could view death as the beginning of something, but most of us don’t.  Still, what a thought to wake up with, right?  Perhaps I was onto something subconsciously, as I received a call a few minutes ago that my grandpa is in his final stages and will likely not last through the day.  I’m sending all my woo energy his way today since I can’t be there in person and hope it is a peaceful passing.

 

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Happy Mother’s Day!

Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms out there!  Mine has been interesting, to say the least.  I’ve been making a real effort over the past few weeks or so to get my own mom out of her funk and get her some help.  She can’t just bootstrap her way out of it, much as she’d like to think that she can, and I’ve kind of insisted that she see a real doctor, who will listen to her and deal with her issues one by one, and that means that I’ve kind of taken on the responsibility of getting her to and from the doctor and the resulting appointments.  I think that once things settle a bit this will turn out to be a good thing, because nothing is going to change as long as we just keep on doing the same thing over and over, day after day.  She has a referral to a psychologist, and she says she will go (as long as I will take her) and she is looking forward to having someone to talk to that is not related to her workers’ comp case nor her family.  I think that is a huge first step and will hopefully help, because I *know* she is suffering from depression and who knows what else is going on in that brain of hers.  But having a place to release all of that (which is not on my head!) cannot possibly be a bad thing.

So, all this to say that I have been rather close with my mom lately, and in the flow of things when things are going well between us and she actually feels like a mother.  I know better than to think this will last, as I’ve been here before and know from experience that it’s only a matter of time, but I’ve decided to just ride the wave and not expect anything and take each day as it comes.  I don’t dare depend on her for help or assistance or anything important, but it’s nice to have her around when she’s like this.  Reasonable and all that.  As a result of all that, today all my five kidlets and I went to a cookout with my mom and dad and the rest of the aunts and uncles and insane family.  Cousins and such too.  It was fun, and tasty, for a while.

Then my not-sister showed up, unannounced and uninvited.  I think a cousin maybe let her know about the cookout and invited her, but it sure wasn’t me or anyone close to me.  They know better.  She’s been blocked from my facebook and cell phone and out of my life for a couple of years now, and I’ve enjoyed the silence.  If she is invited to a family function, I don’t go, and everyone knows this.  I think maybe someone just wanted to see some drama today, who knows.  She came up to me when she arrived, and I managed to stay quite calm and said simply, “I have nothing to say to you, and as long as you refrain from speaking to me then we shall have no dramaz!” and with that I turned and walked away.  With a pep in my step, even!  I have to say that it felt really good to not pretend to like her, to not keep the peace, and to just blurt out the thoughts that were on my mind.  I could hear one aunt saying “What was *that* about?” as I walked away, and another answering that she didn’t know, but I did not care (still don’t!)  It’s a long story as to why she has been removed from my life, and I won’t go into it here, but I just don’t have time for that bullshit in my day-to-day and I fare much better without it.  I gave myself permission to not deal with people who do nothing other than cause harm and drag me down, and she’s one of them.

In other news, my grandpa is really really sick and not likely to hold on through the week.  It’s one of those situations that is a blessing in a way but still not something you wish for if that makes sense.  He’s had cancer for years and mets to bones a long time ago which they said was going to kill him within a month.  That must have been a few years now.  But now he has pancreas and liver involvement, and he’s jaundiced and has ascites and his blood glucose is way high and won’t come down even with the maximum dosage of insulin they can give him.  He is still in good spirits and not in pain for now, and my aunts and mom are taking turns sitting with him.

And if all that weren’t enough, my mom informed me, since I am currently in charge of All Things Medical for her, that she discovered a lump in her breast last night.  She wanted me to email or call her new PCP for her (this is also my PCP, who is awesomesauce in so many ways hence me taking her there) with the details and see if she could get in for a mammogram.  So I did that as soon as I got home and expect that PCP will get back to me tomorrow, but I’m a bit worried about her now.  My one aunt already went through mastectomy and chemo and all that jazz, and the other aunt was BRA+ but I don’t recall if it was 1 or 2.  Anyway, worry worry.

BUT!

In happy news, I got to hang out with all five of my kidlets today for a while, and I got a new photo of the six of us together.  That usually only happens at Thanksgiving, so it was a special treat for me to have them all today.  I really do treasure them, and hope I tell them (and show them) often enough how much they mean to me.  ❤

Hope you all had a great day!

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Spring Continues

I see on my facebook feed the sad, pitiful pictures of some poor friends who are stuck in places like Iowa, and their messages in the SNOW this morning.  I feel for all of you people living somewhere that spring is refusing to visit this year.  I would be an incredibly sad panda if I had to wait into May and beyond for spring, sunshine, flowers, renewal, rebirth, fresh starts… My sympathies to those of you stuck in winter’s grasp.  However, I have been here fighting this year’s version of the ant and spider invasion, so perhaps a little snowfall would be a welcome distraction.  Maybe it could warm up enough to lure them out of hiding and then BAM! insta-freeze and kill them all off.  Except it seems that the cold days are the ones where the wolf spiders invade the worst; I suspect they’re trying to avoid just such a fate.  I had a night recently when it was cold and rainy outside, and I fought FIVE spiders (two of which were the dreaded monstrous, huge, terror-inducing wolf spiders) in a span of about thirty minutes.  At 4 a.m.  And did not sleep the rest of the night.  Or the following night.  I’m still recovering, actually.  I’m lucky my heart survived the ordeal.

I’ve been keeping myself stupid busy and off the internet a lot, and although it has been good in some ways it’s also not-so-great for me in others.  The ‘net is my primary means of social interaction these days; I don’t have many “IRL” friends that I just hang out with.  My hanging out is done virtually, via monitors and keyboards, and so if I spend too long disconnected from the screen, I feel shut off from the world and socially isolated.  In fact, the social networking is one of the things I love most about the internet; I can connect with people all around the world, and there’s always someone awake to talk to and something interesting to read.  I don’t know how we survived so many years without it!  Thank you, Al Gore, for inventing the internet!

But in all this disconnectedness, I’ve been running myself ragged and if it weren’t so beautiful outside I’d crawl into bed and stay there for a month or so.  My boys, all three, had state-mandated testing last week and their virtual school had it arranged in such a way that my entire week was consumed and NOT FUN.  One had to be there the first two days (at 9 a.m., and it’s a 30 min. drive to get there), one had to be there the second two days (also at 9 a.m.) and the third had to be there on the last day but only for an hour.  I tried to have their days combined, but was told that the State of Ohio does not allow for seventh graders to test on the same day as third graders and so I had to go on ALL the days.  Now, given that it’s a thirty minute drive one-way, and I drive a ’95 Jeep Cherokee, you can imagine what this did to my budget.  Does anyone care?  No.  No, they do not.  I spent in the neighborhood of $75 for the week, which is more than 10% of my monthly income, for the record.  I sent an email to the principal of the school asking her to please consider families like ours, on a fixed income and with multiple children who need to be tested, so that hopefully at least in future years someone can come up with some solution that does not create a financial hardship for the families in question.  We survived, with the help of CoinStar, and I’ve never been so happy to see payday.  

At the end of this insane week came Prom for my daughter and all that entails.  We spent most of the day together Saturday getting ready; I took her to town to have her hair done and went to her dad’s house and hung out while the boys played and I “helped” her get ready.  Which mostly consisted of me sitting there watching her and telling her over and over how beautiful she is and how lovely and how proud I am of her for all that she is and does.  Her date was due around 3, and by 3:30 he still hadn’t shown; calls and texts to him from her went unanswered, and she started to panic.  I saw the tears welling up in her eyes, and I was seriously ready to go hurt that boy.  I called his mom, got voice mail, left a message that we were worried and hoped everything was okay, and she received a call back from him in about three seconds flat.  He said he’d gone with his grandma to get a dog (wtf?) and had forgotten his phone and the car broke down and blah blah blah he’s on his way and will be there in an hour.  

We spent the hour taking pictures and being silly and trying to get her mind off the fact that she was all dressed up sitting around waiting for him.  He finally showed, and was then in a huge hurry because they were running late, but I did get some awesome pictures of the two of them.  And I made it to their Grand March and got some video and pictures there, and she was so gorgeous and awesome and wonderful and grown up.  

Well, yesterday I received a text from her that said he had been ratted out, and the reason he was MIA on Saturday was because he was with another girl.  Now I’m back to really wanting to hurt the boy.  This is the same boy that she’s been with since middle school; I have on my wall in front of me a picture from their first Homecoming, 2008.  She is understandably crushed, and she found out just before she went to take her final in history, so she says she didn’t do nearly as well on that test as she’d hoped.  😦

These, I swear, are the moments that break me as a parent.  Time and time again.  I can still fix my 6 year old’s boo-boos, for the most part.  He falls and gets a scrape and I put a band-aid on it and kiss it and he’s off and running again.  I can’t fix this.  I can only listen, and remind her that he’s the jerk and it’s not her.  I can’t stand to see her hurting though, and just want to take all the ouchies away.  Not possible, I know, and she’ll have to find her own way, but I’d gladly take it on for her if I could.  

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