charlotte is calling mark ‘mark’ and not daddy. hee. i thought she might be saying milk, but when i said “milk or mark?” she said “mark, daddy” and pointed.
i am still busy watching tv, moping a bit, sleeping, buying things from sephora.com, my biomom was here a couple days after the funeral for 5 days. did i tell you that? my memory is for shit. i scoff at archives. i scoff at scrolling down. i still have a gooey throat from the cold i had almost a month ago. i hope it isn’t TB or something.
so, uh, here are some photos for now.
i love you like a sister i never had but wanted.

i love you Dora (check out THAT mullet!)

mark and i were celebrating a happy work thingy for mark with champage. charlotte was non-plussed.

mommmmmmy

giggling

i am not sure if i can say who, but someone nominated me for best personal blog, for the canadian blog awards. you will see some familiar names there. i am not sure if i feel anything about it either way, but i am touched that someone nominated me. i am rambling, my blood sugar is low and you damn americans are celebrating thanksgiving while i am having a granola bar, a cheese string thingy and a diet pepsi for lunch.

best personal blog is the category

i am compelled to post although i admit i haven’t felt really inspired to share until i was about to finally go to bed about 15 minutes ago. it also seemed ridiculous that i hadn’t appeared to thank you for all the comments and emails. “thank” doesn’t seem strong enough a word. i felt overwhelmed and a little undeserving frankly. while i am grieving and sad and well, sad. my uncle and cousin and my mom and other family members are probably feeling this loss more acutely. none the less, i loved reading your comments, LOVED it.
i also wanted to thank jess for sending me a totally gnarly 80s movie and cool kids CD.
I am going to mention some non-sad death in the family related things, then an anecdote and then bed, i hope.
i need book recommendations for christmas. for me. i am trying to make an amazon and a chapters.ca wish list, which i have never done before, but my brain is like errrrrrrr me like books. recommend one, or link your wish list and i will pilfer. i do this to mrs. kennedy all the time.
secondly, i am asking for a camera for christmas. well, a new camera. and i am just learning more and am by no means even a decent amateur, but i am looking at the nikon d50 or d70. i will go to our favourite camera store and check it out, but while i have you here…. with your wealth of information….
ok, i have a third thing i forgot. so, i did this powerpoint slide show for my aunty. which was grueling and made me sob and was harder than it should have been. don’t even get me started about adding music to a powerpoint presentation. fucking microsoft. anyhow, i made it on my PC, office 2003. does anyone know if it is possible to turn such a thing into something a mac user could see? i wanted to burn copies of the slide show onto CDs for the 14 other siblings, some cousins, my uncles family, and a few other people. darnit wouldn’t you know if a couple of them use macs, my father included. help a slow witted sad chick out wont ya?
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i don’t know if any of you have spent time with a loved one who has recently passed away. in the room i mean. it is an accurate usage of the word surreal. i tried to find another term for it but failed. it is really really hard to reconcile that our bodies are but a “shell” and our spirit lives on and that sort of thing. when you are hugging your dead beloved aunt. she was so completely inanimate that it was kind of confusing. she is here, but she is not. these observations may seem obvious, but alas, here i write them. i mentioned in my previous post that i felt compelled to cover her with a blanket. she was covered with a blanket already. my blanket. i brought one from home for her and my uncle or aunt who stayed with her in a cot in her room. i see i am perhaps preoccupied with people staying warm. it is a cotton blanket with tropical fish woven into it like they are swimming in their own little pool of cotton. it was bright and cheery and lorraine loved it and i was thankful. i really brought it to be utilitarian, but she died with this blanket on her, i hope keeping her warm.
some retro. i will join this decade in photos again soon, i promise. maybe.

the whole family, 1969

80s easter, i am the young’un

Lorraine died this morning at around 5am. yesterday morning i guess officially, since it is past midnight as i write this. my mom and i went with a few other family members to say goodbye and cry a bit with each other. we held hands and said an Our Father. i am not sure if there is an official name for this process. it was horrible and sad, but i am glad i went. i didn’t want to stop touching her, she wasn’t warm anymore and i was worried about her being cold. i put a blanket on her. not enough blankets in the world unfortunately. she looked so tiny and frail on her bed, just a wisp of who my aunty was. i didn’t manage to see her since my last post. i was a little feverish and horribly congested and chose to stay home. it was an awful, raspy, loud sob i let loose this morning. i was regretful about not going to the hospital last night. i am trying not to dwell on missing one last visit, she was unconscious and i was lucky to spend the time i did at her side. my uncle said he was with her a few minutes after she passed and was able to tell her all the things he wanted to. my other uncle who was there said through his tears that she was his little sister, but she took care of him.
last i heard the funeral and “celebration of life ” will be monday. family is about to descend. i just want to be quiet now, for a while.
continued thank yous for all your support. it really and sincerely touches me and helps to clear the blue.
xo

if you did a google search for goo right now, i would be number one. or i should be. my head is full of goo, or more accurately, my sinuses. i am certain that charlotte got the bug from the froot loop and licorice necklaces we made at the daycare on halloween. all those moist toddler bugs festering in a bowl of frooty loops. she got snotty, and lo, so did i.
i have gotten so much support from y’all (trying to pretend i am from arkansas), about my aunty, that i will continue to update the you on her status. i was going to say progress, but there is none of that now. unless you count the progression towards death progress. sadly true i am afraid. Lorraine is still with us. I haven’t seen her in days though. partially because of illness and partially because of cowardice. she is no longer conscious, or has shown no signs of being conscious since the wynona judd night. she is on as much oxygen as is possible to give her and we are continuing to talk about funeral arrangements, services, etc. there has been some discussion about how having a mass would be bad since a lot of the 15 brothers and sisters (my mom is the oldest for those new to jennui) think that catholicism sucks wang. while my mom and i will admit some suckage (me more than her), we were kind of hoping for some sort of traditional ceremony, with some praying and some rituals and some G/god around. it will not be so. i am not sure of the final plan, but i am in charge of a powerpoint presentation/slide show thing for the “celebration of life” which is the day after the service and whatever that will eventually entail. i feel kind of dirty about doing a powerpoint thing for my aunt, it is something i used to do when i had a “job”. i will call it a slide show instead. my uncle asked me to take care of it, and of course i will. it is weird to start working on it soon? fuck this is strange business.
watching someone die has been such a different experience than having someone you love die suddenly. that is a link to when my friend shonda died of a drug overdose. with shonda, i have mourned sporadically and continuously. just tonight i looked up (to heaven i guess) and said (in my head) “shonda, didn’t ronny cox die? here he is on an episode of Medium?” ronny cox was is one of those actors that you see in tons of movies, but you often don’t know his name. shonda knew his name, we both seemed to know the names of the secondary actors in movies and tv shows. shonda was a pop culture savant. which reminds me of doug savant, who was on melrose place (as a gay dude), but is now playing lynette’s husband on desperate housewives. maybe i need to look back into that ADD medication.
ok, the tv tangent took what brain power i had left for this post. apologies. snot is occupying the rest of my brain.
i am going to find out tomorrow if i can see Lorraine if i wear a surgical mask or something because of my cold. i would beg someone to come and keep me company at home tomorrow, but i don’t want to infect anyone.
xo

this is an easter dinner circa 1980something, one red arrow for me and one for my aunty Lorraine.

this is me, my mom, and my cousin sherry, 19late80something. check out my garfield nightshirt that says “mister sandman, bring me a dream” and my cousin’s awesome sports socks. and i think my mom is wearing a pierre cardin bathrobe housecoat thing. hee.

i guess i need to buy more bandwidth. if you tried me yesterday at all, i had exceeded my bandwidth for the month. let me first say that i contacted my domain host last week when things were looking iffy and they assured me i needn’t worry, they would toss me a megabyte or two if the time came. hmpf. secondly, it seems it is all my boobs fault. boobs – so much of a problem in the world these days, with the t-shirts and the cancer and all. apparently y’all were coming to see me in my fussy t-shirt and that caused my popularity and server usage to spike a wee bit.
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going off the ADD speed meds seems to have helped a bit. but i ’spose it is too early to tell
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there are a few halloween photos on flickr fer ya, in case you haven’t been.

be wary of the shiv!
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my aunt is still with us. i didn’t see her yesterday, but went today. my mom and i are sort of alternating days. selfishly, it is getting more difficult to visit. she is very much being taken by the cancer. her body is shutting down. i went tonight and was surprised to find no one with her. my uncle must have been taking my 17 year old cousin home and then coming back. he has been sleeping in her room every night. she awoke very briefly when i arrived and said my name. she tried to speak more, but seemed unable to. i am not sure if this was because of weakness or confusion. i don’t know what she knows or is aware of. she fell back asleep and i held her hand and touched her arm. you know i love my aunt because i let the television stay on CMT (Country Music Television), the whole visit. i didn’t know she was a fan, but other family members confirm. i was surprised, she always seemed so urban to me. had i known, i might have tried to help her. so sad to find out after the fact that she liked some dude named brad paisley and keith urban. blech. so, with my hand on her arm we watched an entire episode of Grand Ole Opry. now is that just cutesy country talk for Grand Old Opera? i don’t get it. well, sure ’nuff Wynona Judd comes on and sings How Great Thou Art, and i cry and cry and cry with my hand on aunty Lorraine’s arm, thankful no one else is there with us. i told her a couple of secrets, wished her peace and wisdom wherever she was at that moment and left, grabbing the pamphlet on “coping with loss” as i searched for my keys.
it seems really surreal (i feel i can actually use that word accurately in this context) to be planning someone’s funeral when you can still touch their arm. i am still so deeply sad.
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very sincere thanks for all the lovely comments and emails. could you people BE any nicer? (channeling chandler bing)