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My beautiful Annie
I've rarely talked about my Annie in this blog, maybe a mention here or there...I've been remiss!
Every family has a black sheep, one who bucks the status quo and does her own thing, and that's my beautiful cousin Annie. I was always the oddball they didn't understand, but I was malleable. Annie, malleable? Never!
We have a family event every two weeks or so, or at least once a month. All 14 of us are expected to attend. The first time Annie didn't show up, I was shocked. You mean not showing up was an option?
Annie has tattoos. An ankh on her back, a huge tribal tattoo on her arm, a panther on her leg. I made the mistake of asking why she had a lizard tattoo on her leg and she didn't speak to me for hours. IT'S A PANTHER, NOT A LIZARD!!!
Annie has a nose ring.
Only Annie is allowed any of these privileges. My grandmother would have spanked me with the yardstick for the second time in my life if I had showed up with a nose ring and tattoos. But I wouldn't, anyway, because long ago my grandfather told me I wasn't allowed. I guess Annie didn't get 'the talk'.
My mother and Annie's mother are sisters, so, due to the way my grandmother raised all of us, Annie and I might as well have been sisters, we grew up so close to each other. I was her maid of honor, and her beautiful little girl calls me 'Aunt Michelle'.
In the month that my grandmother died, Annie and I both ended up in the same treatment facility. Annie was admitted a few days before I was released. When I think back on it, our mothers had just lost their mother, and their daughters were in the hospital. We didn't make it easy on them, did we?
While my reaction to Moma's death was nearly killing myself by falling into the black hole of depression and never resurfacing, Annie's reaction was to dive deep into drugs to numb the pain.
We're both doing better now. I still have a ways to go, but I'm so much better than I was. Annie lives in the country in a bona fide farmhouse which is too far away for my liking, but she's become so capable, I'm so proud of her. She's a wonderful mother.
She'll be 29 in a couple weeks; and always my beautiful Annie.
I had a rough time getting out of the house on Easter morning...any other Sunday, I get to church on time (well, my usual five minutes late for Sunday School, no problem), but this Sunday...well...
I know what the problem was. I usually just wear my work clothes to church...dressy casual dark slack-type clothes, and my black Skechers, of course! I've gotten used to being the only woman at my church who doesn't wear dresses, I hardly even notice it any more.
But my grandmother bought me this lovely purple skirt and jacket-type thing for my birthday, that's been hanging in my closet ever since, that she begged for me to wear at least for Easter, before it's relegated back to my closet with all my other lovely skirts and dresses that my grandmother has bought me...
So that was the problem. I know it took me twenty minutes to figure out how the stupid skirt went. It had TWO slits in the front, when I finally figured it out...whoever heard of that?!
When I finally emerged from my bedroom, all dressed and grumpy and purple, D laughed and laughed when I told him about my skirt confusion. I think his exact words were, "You girly-girl, you...". It's a good thing he also told me how nice I looked!
But after the rough start, Easter settled down into a good day. What's a little skirt grumpiness compared to the magnitude of what this day means to Christians like me?
It was also my grandma's birthday. After church, the whole family went to my grandma's house for dinner. Then C and I, and my cousin, made Easter eggs. After that, things are a little hazy because I fell asleep on D's knee in the family room, but I vaguely remember the kids having their Easter egg hunt inside (it rained outside all Easter long). Then my grandma opened presents, we had birthday cake, and we watched the Kentucky game,
insert big sad :( here, nothing worse than fighting through two overtimes and still losing...but I'm still so proud of my team...I love my Cats!...
I was sitting around the table with my mom, and my grandma, and my aunt, and my cousin, and my daughter...everyone else was in the family room or the living room or elsewhere...and my grandma boasted about how she still had her eastern Kentucky accent...and my mom and my aunt said, no, not like you used to, and then they all started talking over each other in this old language...the language they all had forty years ago when they still lived in the mountains of eastern Kentucky.
I just remember feeling so lucky, sharing amused glances with my daughter and my cousin, that we all shared a moment like that, together, in 2005. Every holiday seems like a precious gift, to make just one more memory with your family.
When I was at the hospital Friday to see my aunt, the rest of the family left and it was just us and my cousin, Amy.
We left my aunt while the nurses came in to help her, ostensibly to go downstairs, but really to go to the waiting room and talk about things we couldn't talk about in front of her.
We settled down on the waiting room couch, me on the right, Amy on the left, and my mom in front of us. And while Amy gave us the updates, I couldn't help but think about how thankful I was, to Amy, and to my aunt, for being in my life, and how often through the years Amy and I had slouched, in those same positions, next to each other on a couch, through good times and bad.
We were born within a month of each other, and were always together growing up, interrupted only by my frequent moves around the world as an Army brat. When I came back home for good in 1986, we were best friends.
All through middle school and high school, we were a constant presence in each other's house. She always wanted to come to mine, because it was cleaner, and I always wanted to go to hers, because there was less supervision. I spent days on end at her house...I was my aunt's fourth daughter, and she was my second mom, only without the constant monitoring I got from my real mom!
Amy and I were with each other when we learned our grandmother had died, and again when our grandfather died. We got in trouble all through high school together. Courtesy of Amy, who fixed me up with my first boyfriend, I got my first kiss...and also my Junior Ring Dance date with a different guy, when I no longer had a boyfriend!
We continued in this vein, through a lot of ups and downs and tragedies, and through my one girl and her three boys, not seeing each other nearly as often, but, when we do talk on the phone or see each other, as comfortable and comforting as always.
I'm so proud of her for what she's accomplished. Also a little worried, as most of the burdens of this are falling on her shoulders, even though she has two sisters. It's Amy who always goes to every doctor visit with my aunt and uncle, because she acts as their interpreter (my aunt and uncle are deaf). I could tell she was unraveling there, in the waiting room, even as she made us laugh as usual. You know one of those people who can always make you laugh? That's Amy.
So anyway, I felt that one moment of grace when I was sitting there, as usual, beside my lifelong best friend, who saved my life many times as I was growing up. Tears, and uncertainty, but also grace, which hopefully she felt as well. I know she'll always be there for me, and I will always be there for her.
Here we are, circa 1973:
Thank you all so much for the kind words and prayers, you have no idea how much it meant to me that you were thinking about and praying for us. I'm truly grateful.
Not a very fun day...
When I got home from work this evening, my dad called me. He was upset with me, because he had been leaving me voicemails since yesterday and I hadn't called him back, and it was bad...my aunt is in the hospital. Not the same aunt that was in the hospital a few weeks ago, this time it's my dad's sister.
I haven't been listening to my messages lately.
My aunt went to the hospital with pains. They thought it was her heart, and so they did a heart cath. Her heart was fine. Then they thought it was her gallbladder. She had her gallbladder removed this morning. During the surgery, they saw her liver.
They came out of the surgery, saying everything went fine, but...
And they showed my cousin, my aunt's middle daughter and my best friend, a picture of my aunt's liver.
They said, "Your mother will have to stop drinking. We're going to schedule some programs for her...".
She has cirrhosis of the liver.
The doctors didn't know then that my aunt doesn't ever drink.
And they didn't know that those were the only words that had the ability to put my family in a tailspin and strike fear in our hearts.
My aunt's dad, my grandfather, died of cirrhosis of the liver. He actually was an alcoholic. He hemorrhaged to death in his apartment. It was...terrible. Terrible.
My aunt doesn't drink. She doesn't have hepatitis. But she has cirrhosis of the liver. It may not be that advanced, and it may be manageable. We'll know more when the real doctor comes in tomorrow.
But the gut reaction of my family was the reaction of a family who has already been torn apart by this disease. My dad, sobbing over the phone, wondering why his sister, who has never done anything wrong, has this. My uncle, hovering in the hallway. My cousins, disbelieving and in tears.
They haven't told my aunt yet. She was devastated when my grandpa died the way he did. My cousins decided she wasn't in any condition, after her surgery today, to hear this. I don't agree with their decision, but there's nothing I can do about it. I felt horribly guilty sitting by her bed and knowing something she didn't.
I hope that tomorrow the doctor will come in and say, this is not as bad as that, this can be managed...
I just didn't realize that the pain of my grandfather's violent death, over fourteen years ago, still had the ability to destroy us this way.
