My Uncle John

 My cousin John called me last night to tell me that his father, also named John, had died.  Here is what he wrote on Facebook:

My dad passed away tonight at his home, just like he wanted to do. He was 93years old. He was the best dad I could ever ask for. He would do anything for anyone. He was kind to all. As he was in bed having a heart attack he was still asking about a pet of mine that isn't doing well. Thinking about everyone and everything, but himself. He lost the love of his life, my mom on January 9th of this year after 71 years of marriage. I truly think he died of a broken heart. He died hearing how much we all loved him as we held him. I miss you dad!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The mind plays tricks

 As I was falling asleep last night, I told Nick that I need to call my mom in the morning because I have not spoken to her in a long time.   It is true that we have not spoken for a long time.  She died in 2004, almost 20 years ago,

It's weird and normal at the same time.   You cry when you get the news of a loved one's death. You cry at their funeral. You actively grieve for a long time.     But your life goes on.  And there's an empty space where once there was none.

The first time I was aware of a person's death was when my grandmother was visiting us and she got word that her brother had died.  None of it made much sense to me.   Grandma was old (though probably not ant older than I am now).   The concept of her having siblings and my mother having aunts and uncles did not really register in my child brain.

And then you are all grown up and have your family.  Your own children,  And for the most part you feel like an adult with responsibilities,  Even if it is just making sure everyone has clean clothes.  

I think that for Nick and I, being married for almost 6 years when we had our first baby gave us a step up as far as being committed and secure.    She was so wanted and welcomed into our lives.

We used to go stand next to Courtney's crib at night just to be sure that she was still breathing.  Mortality is awesome but frightening as well.  Having the new human totally dependent on you for everything.

And now she is all grown up and taking care of herself and her responsibilities.  She, and our other kids, now all adults, don't really need us anymore.  Not in the ways that they did for a while.    They have all moved out and are on their own.  Some in couples some not.  All of them.

And I think of the people we have lost.  My brother.   Our parents. And now more frequently friends and family members.

I wonder, we wonder, Nick and I, when will our kids realize that we are mortal and won't always be around?   When the buffer of parents is no longer here and they are bumped up into being the older generation.  Then will they have a glimpse of what we have had and felt for so long?  

Among my mother's last words, as my sister and I held her hands, were "I'm going to miss you".  And then she was gone.  A last breath, we thought and then another as the breaths came further apart and then they stopped.

I miss her.

My mom and her grandfather, who is holding my sister

My mother with her first grandchild and first great grandchild

 

 

Crazy blog

 I am looking at my previous recent posts and don't know what happened.  They all had pictures, but now all I see are squares where the pictures are supposed to be.

What happened?

Happy Hanukkah to those who celebrate

 

A special birthday

 When Chance was born on December 6, 1990, I was not sure if he would be born alive, or would survive.  A 32 week pregnancy is two months too early.

But he did survive and thrive.  And now he is 33 years old.  It takes my breath away to think about it all.

The glasses are for scale

Chance in front of his house.  Martinsburg, West Virginia

Sixty Years ago today the world changed

 I was nine years old when President Kennedy was assassinated.  It was one of those moments that you remember- where you were and what you were doing.   My dad and I were both sick.  He stayed home from work and I stayed home from school.  We were watching TV when Walter Cronkite came on the air, holding back tears as he announced that President Kennedy had died.   

Even as young as I was, I knew immediately the feelings of shock, disbelief and horror.

Living in the Washington, DC area, my family and I went Downtown to witness the funeral parade.

A Nation of Eyewitnesses to J.F.K.’s Assassination

How it feels—and what it means—to watch a President slain on TV.

By John Updike

November 29, 1963

Photograph by Carl Mydans / The LIFE Picture Collection / Shutterstock

It was as if we slept from Friday to Monday and dreamed an oppressive, unsearchably significant dream, which, we discovered on awaking, millions of others had dreamed also. Furniture, family, the streets, and the sky dissolved; only the dream on television was real. The faces of the world’s great mingled with the faces of landladies who had happened to house an unhappy ex-Marine; cathedrals alternated with warehouses, temples of government with suburban garages; anonymous men tugged at a casket in a glaring airport; a murder was committed before our eyes; a Dallas strip-tease artist drawled amiably of her employer’s quick temper; the heads of state of the Western world strode down a sunlit street like a grim village rabble; and Jacqueline Kennedy became Persephone, the Queen of Hades and the beautiful bride of grief. All human possibilities, of magnificence and courage, of meanness and confusion, seemed to find an image in this long montage, and a stack of cardboard boxes in Dallas, a tawdry movie house, a tiny rented room where some shaving cream still clung to the underside of a washbasin, a row of parking meters that had witnessed a panicked flight all acquired the opaque and dreadful importance that innocent objects acquire in nightmares.

What did it mean? Can we hope for a meaning? “It’s the fashion to hate people in the United States.” This quotation might be from one of a hundred admonitory sermons delivered after President Kennedy’s death. In actuality, it occurs in an interview granted in 1959 to a United Press reporter, Aline Mosby, by a young American defector then living in Moscow, Lee Harvey Oswald. The presumed assassin did not seem to be a violent man. “He was too quiet, too reserved,” his ex-landlord told reporters. “He certainly had the intelligence and he looked like he could be efficient at doing almost anything.” In his room, the police found a map on which was marked the precise path that three bullets in fact took. The mind that might have unlocked this puzzle of perfectly aimed, perfectly aimless murder has been itself forever sealed by murder. The second assassination augmented the first, expanded our sense of floating on a dark sea of potential violence. In these cruel events, democracy seemed caricatured; a gun voted, and a drab Dallas neighborhood was hoisted into history. None of our country’s four slain Presidents were victims of any distinct idea of opposition or hope of gain; they were sacrificed, rather, to the blind tides of criminality and insanity that make civilization precarious. Between Friday and Monday, three men died: a President, a policeman, and a prisoner. May their deaths be symbols, clues to our deep unease, and omens we heed.

The dream began to lift at the sight, on television, of President Johnson giving his broad and friendly handshake, with exquisite modulations of political warmth, to the line of foreign dignitaries who had come to Washington as mourners. Reality was knitting itself together. The sanity of daylight has returned, but the dissipated dream should not be forgotten; it must be memorized and analyzed. We pray we do not fall into such a sleep again. ♦

It's almost Thanksgiving

 So many thoughts going through my mind that I seem to just skip writing because I don't know where to start.

The other day, when I got up and took Buddy outside, it was cool and windy and I thought about how beautiful the fall leaves are.  Even as they are blowing off the trees, they are something to admire and enjoy.

It's the time of the year when I get all confused about what I feel.  I have dreaded this time of year.  Not because of the shorter days and the cold weather.  But because there are so many events to figure out. Obligations to family and self.   

None of the kids live with us any more.  They live all over the place.  None of them are coming home to our house for Thanksgiving this year.  we are driving to North Carolina (with Buddy) to have Thanksgiving with Darcy and Jody and much of Jody's family.   I am taking along some gluten free things- stuffing and pies.  

We have had so many Thanksgivings together, Nick and I.   We usually would go to Nick's parent's house, or my mom's place.  And later we had family to our house.  In laws, parents, kids, cousins (the kid's cousins not mine).   It could be busy, messy and chaotic.  And I loved it!

Christmas has always been more complicated.  What to get for who.  There were the years when we were in the States, and Nick would go to Toys R Us for some midnight shopping.  He would get some fun stuff for the kids.  I was more practical, giving underwear and socks.  Some clothes and books.   Our Christmas mornings were fun.  

We have a system that stared I guess when the kids were old enough to understand and occasionally take directions.  The gifts were opened one and a time. from the youngest to the oldest.   Then the kids (and maybe me) would throw the wrapping paper at Nick- as he held the big trash bag.

I like to think that our kids enjoyed their Christmases growing up.   I often tell people that our best holiday seasons were when we were overseas.   Depending on where we lived and what the social life was, we didn't feel the rush to visit this and that grandparent.  No hurt feelings.  

I guess a lot of these feeling I have start with Halloween.  I have written about this before.  I always made the kids' Halloween costumes.  Every year.  I was so busy sewing and first getting idea from the kids of what they wanted to be.  It was so much work.  But so much love went into all of that sewing.   I know at times I felt overwhelmed, but I never resented it.

The relationships with adult children are so different and complicated than when they were younger.  We had to have enough food in the house for lunches and for all the meals we ate at the kitchen table.  I don't really remember a lot of complaining at the table .  We tried to have a system in which each kid got to choose the dinner meal for one days of the week.  I remember having a calendar on the refrigerator door with the meals for the week or month.  I don't remember.   

And Nick and I.  I somehow don't think of us as "old".  But then I look at pictures of us with the kids when they were young and we were sure a lot younger then too.

I feel more fragile than I once did.  The other day I saw a young person running down a staircase, almost hopping from one step to the next.  And I thought about how I used to be able to do that.   now I hold tight to the banister and go slow.  And I know I will get more fragile and feel more fragile.

We have an under the bed storage box with wrapping paper in it.   I tried to bend down to see if it was there.  I kind of thought I could see it.  So I got down on my knees (ouch) and then flattened myself even further down so I could reach under the bed to pull it out.   And as I lay on the floor, fishing the box of wrapping paper out from under the bed, I wondered how I was going to get back up.  Or if I would even be able to.  Nick was out and I was home alone.  And I did not have a phone near me.

Obviously I did get up off the floor and eventually a standing position.  But wow, if you had told me 20 or 30 years ago that this would be how I am doing now, I don't think I would have paid attention.  I probably would have just let the words fly through the air not even touching my consciousness.

So now to bed.   Baking in a couple of days.  And sharing a meal and giving thanks for the people we love and care about.