cosmolinguist | Entries tagged with family

I wasn't expecting hospice staff to do my grandma's funeral today, but they did.

Some of her carers read the Bible readings (Psalm 23 and that "I am the way, the truth and the life" bit) and the eulogy that I'd already seen on the website. The girl who read that, Brooke, started reading her name at the top: "Mavis... I called her 'my sweet Mavis,'" she added before she went on and I'm so glad she did. I am glad that my grandma who cared for so many others through her long life got such good care at the end of it.

The chaplain, Pastor Wendy whose accent made me think Jamaican but turned out to be from Trinidad, talked about how my grandma reminded her of Dorcas in the bible, who made clothes for her community and who was so mourned when she died that, the story goes, Jesus brought her back to life.

My grandma made all her children's clothes and crocheted hats (with ear flaps and ties under the chin) and mittens (on a string that goes through your jacket sleeves so you don't lose them) when I was a kid, and made baby-size dresses for my Cabbage Patch Dolls.

Until her arthritis got too bad, she would always be in her armchair crocheting, working on another afghan. It feels like a long time ago now, though, though of course the length of time she did these things would have been so much longer of course it's something she would tell a boisterous friendly hospice chaplain who came to visit her.

After the white-people hymns in the service -- "How Great Thou Art" (which always made me cry even as a kid when we had it in church and now makes me think of my grandpa's funeral so strongly that even hearing Johnny Cash's version in Andrew's mp3 collection years later had me bursting in to tears...I could mute it, which was one of the benefits of the livestream (another is that I was in pajamas) -- Pastor Wendy said she was going to try to share the last song that she sang with my grandma. She had a powerful and beautiful singing voice and, completely unaccompanied, sang the most touching version of "In the Garden." I'm not a religious person and I don't tend to cry at funerals but if anything was going to make me cry this would have been it.

I'm so impressed with the hospice and glad that I could participate in the funeral enough to talk to my mom about it which was my only real goal.

If I couldn't spend time with my grandma these last few weeks, I'm glad Pastor Wendy got to.

The friend I'm staying with and I drank a toast afterwards to my grandma, and for the toast he said what I've put as the subject line here: "To distance and the things we do to bridge it."

It's really sad to me how emphatic the response of "yeah, don't come to the U.S. now" has been from my pals who are there.

It's frustrating that a lot of the family I won't be seeing at this funeral (not my parents, but all the rest of them, including my grandma if she was physically able to vote in November) voted for a situation where I couldn't come back to be there with them.

To be clear, there are many reasons this would be difficult. And I fully expect to just have to drag up and style it out at some point. But the fact that this alone is sufficient for everyone to be like "yeah no don't"... Feels bad!

I've always been haunted by my what my mom told me her horrible sister's husband's response was when Mom was outraged at the Supreme Court decision overturning of abortion rights: "What do you care, you don't need one."

Not only is that morally bankrupt thinking on the face of it, but sometimes the guy they claim they voted for because eggs are too expensive is also gonna make it dangerous for their """niece""" or whatever to be at important family occasions. They're not as unaffected as they think.

But they'll never know. I didn't want to explain to my parents and even if I tried they wouldn't understand and even if they did they wouldn't relay the message to the extended family and even if all that happened nobody would believe this or reflect on it or think or do anything differently in future so why bother trying. I'm not their very important life lesson.

I am so lucky to have made it to the age of 43 while still having a living grandparent.

When I first moved to England, it wasn't the house I grew up in that I got homesick for, it was my grandparents'. Somewhere in the years before tags where I daren't venture because I'll cringe myself to death, that homesickness is extensively documented here. I dwelled on the bedrooms I slept in, the pancakes my grandma would always obligingly make us for breakfast from scratch, she taught us cribbage and little-kid card games like huckley buck (I actually do not know how to spell that; I've never seen it written down). She took us to yard sales (old people and little 80s kids love to see what they can buy for a quarter) and bought me books from the secondhand book store when she was there getting more Louis L'Amours and Zane Grays for herself. (One of those books is Contact, from which comes the phrase I want to get tattooed on me some day for the people I love who have died.)

My grandparents' home was a good combination of welcoming and familiar yet different and special.

In some ways I could say I've been chasing that feeling ever since.

Only as an adult could I appreciate my grandma's skilful home-making and childcare.

She died this morning. 96 years old!

I'm fine, it is a loss but she had a long life, I think it was a good life and certainly a good quality of life until the last week or so.

She had a good death too: she got to stay at home, in a house she's lived in since 1955 or something, with good care at the end and no pain, with as much of her family around as she wanted (and then some, my family does not believe in boundaries!).

May we all be so fortunate.

I was already content to do as my mom wants and wait for the funeral.

But now my grandma would be saying the same: no visitors. She is still having hospice care at home and she doesn't want anyone to see her, even her daughters (the ones who don't live with her anyway, I didn't hear if she has any opinions about E, the one who does).

Mom told me that my grandma thinks that my grandpa (gone since 2012) is in the basement -- as he so often was, in his little workshop.

Then Mom said Grandma thought that one of my cousins was there, one that rarely seen during our childhood but was along with her sister the most recent to visit, at Thanksgiving. Also, those two are the children of my aunt E, so might feel "closer" to my grandma right now.

Then I guess my grandma thought "all the grandchildren" were there with him downstairs. It made me think of how much I loved their basement: getting ice cream or freeze pops from the big chest freezer, jumping on the sofa, playing Pong on a tiny TV and the Atari console so old that all it would do was Pong...

My mom's distressed by my grandma "seeing people that aren't there," but I am finding this a lovely and comforting image.

I could quibble with the assertion that I'm not there. I don't know about spirits or ghosts but I do feel like a lot of me is in that house. When I first moved to the UK it was their house I missed, more than the one where I'd lived my whole life.

I like to think we're all hanging out there, my cousins and my grandpa, having ice cream and playing cards or something.

I like to think my grandma is imagining my brother there with the rest of us.

My parents very clearly want me there for the funeral rather than before, so that's okay.

My grandma is back at home! She's having hospice care there, which for now looks like home visits every other day and paying for consumables she needs for her care, but my aunt (who I think I've berm calling E here) who lives with her also has numbers she can call if my grandma needs more care, if E needs a break, or if my grandma just slips away in her sleep or something. ( talk of hypothetical death, family, similar intense things )

In these ways, everything is going as well as it can be expected to.

I got through an impressively annoying day at work, filled fridges and freezers with groceries for Christmas week, and got in a car to be driven to D's sister's for Christmas with his family.

Radio 1 on in the car, as usual, so we heard most of the chart show which was delightfully Christmasy: from Andy Williams and the Ronettes to Laufey and the exciting news, just as we pulled up at D's sister's place, that "Last Christmas" is once again Christmas number one.

Even with his annoying sister, even with another email about drama from my mom's annoying sister that has managed to ensnare me from four thousand miles away it's lovely to here: to be handed a gin and tonic (I had the pink gin and it did indeed taste vaguely Pink), to read a book while the others played a card game my eyes weren't up to (of course I started re-reading Hogfather again) and to finally have metaphorically collapsed over the finish line in to a much-needed break for the next week.

I know these feelings won't last, I said in February about a feeling that has not altered one bit since then.

With my usual level of insight and clarity lately, which is to say not much.

The feelings I was talking about were these:

I have worked so hard at spending time with [my parents], at sharing my life with them. To get so little back for all my efforts just makes me feel like... well fuck it, yknow? What if I just go back to Minnesota for the state fair they refuse to go to now it's full of "murders and killings" and do the fun part of the trip D and I had last year: the first part in Minneapolis seeing all my friends and doing fun stuff?

I've been seriously considering planning another fun trip and just hanging out in the Twin Cities. A dear friend of mine in Chicago really wants me to visit her and I'm like, heck yeah, why not. I've never been able to because I always had to spend my trips back with my family.

Anyway: the last couple of times I've talked to my mom she's said my grandma isn't really eating any more. My mom seems resigned to it, pointing out that my grandma is 95 and people just wind down sometimes.

I'm so lucky to be in my 40s and still have a living grandparent. When I moved here, I missed my grandparents and their house at least as much as my parents and their house. And my grandma still gets to live in that house, at 95 (with the massive, completely unpaid, labor of my aunt, her daughter, because social care doesn't exist in this country, sigh).

But yeah, it does sound like my next flight to MSP might well be short-notice very expensive one.

I've got a bunch of other things I should talk about but I'm too tired. I'll just say that I had an update from my mom saying Les is awake and (after some ableist editorializing from her, sigh) she said "His laugh and smile are there and he knows the family."

There aren't many people she'd describe by their laugh and smile. I know just the ones she is talking about and thinking of them made me smile too.

I feel like I'm in a monkeys paw situation where I didn't want to talk to my parents every Sunday night but now my mom is fobbing me off any time she's doing one other thing on a Sunday and that feels bad!

Maybe I just can't be pleased.

Today she won't call because my parents are going to see my grandma (who I guess is still in the hospital?). Mom's email this morning says "She is doing good except they haven’t gotten back pain under control completely." Except my treacherous brain skimmed the first few words as "she's not doing good," argh. Didn't need that adrenaline spike!

Next sentence (my mom doesn't believe in paragraphs, it's very jarring) is "Then [my aunt] has COVID. She was very sick but since she got on medication she is slowly getting better." This is the aunt who lives with my grandma. She's had cancer two or three times and lots of other stuff. Can't afford enough healthcare. So she's vulnerable too. I'm not surprised she got very sick and is only "slowly getting better."

She and my gramdma have been diligently staying home since the very start of the pandemic. I'm so mad that their caution has been rewarded by her finally getting covid because my grandma had to go to the hospital, and no one is wearing masks even there. Not just my mom's Trump-voting sisters, but my parents too, they're no better now.

It's hard to reconcile how big a deal it feels like to me that my aunt finally has covid, when it doesn't seem like anyone thinks covid is a big deal any more. But this is really fucking me up. It means my grandma is the only person in my family who hasn't gotten covid (and she better not get it, jesus fucking christ), and I hate to think of how even the people who are most cautious might get it when they or a family member have to go to the hospital.

I got an email from my mom, subject line "Grandma," so of course I panicked.

I've said before about how bad my mom is at writing emails. They're just stream of consciousness, all the more so when she's worried or stressed as I assume she is here.

My grandma is in the hospital but she is basically okay. She had a bad reaction to the pain medication she was given after her back was in so much pain that she couldn't stand (her spine has some kind of grim-sounding condition but my mom is light on the details and never knows the name of anything so that's all I can tell you). The meds meant she couldn't eat and that got her weak enough that she's back in the hospital.

All the tests have come back okay so it sounds like once she has some physical therapy to help her walk she will be about back to normal.

Normal for a 94-year-old lady with a bunch of chronic conditions (including leukemia!) anyway.

But that first sentence really shook me. My first thought was Will I get to see her again? My second was: if I do, is it going to have to be really soon?

One of the reasons I really wanted to do a trip back to see my family was as a kind of dry run for something like this. I didn't want my first trip back to be for a family member's funeral or end of life. I was stressed enough as it was, I didn't need something like this on top of it.

I'm lucky that I don't have to worry about anything else though. I can afford it. I am sure I could get the time off work at short notice. I could do it. I would do it. I guess it helps to know that.

I am glad I don't have to now though.

I am so fortunate to have a grandparent still living when I am in my 40s. All my grandparents have lived to 90 or just short of it, so I didn't even start to lose them until my early 20s. And both sets lived nearby, so I saw a lot of them while I was growing up: we never had babysitters or anything, just grandparents. My brother and I thought it was a particular treat to stay with my mom's parents. Especially overnight. So much so that when I moved here, it was their house I pictured when I was homesick. It was those sleepovers that I missed. My fond memories of Christmas Eve are all in their house. I love their weird little house so much. And my grandma still lives there.

I am glad she gets to go home. Home home. But some day something will happen and I will lose my connection to that house as well my parents soon moving out of the house I grew up in (they're looking at new houses, haven't found anything they like yet though). Is this going to be the year of losing all my childhood places? I can't help but think.

The second part of my mom's email was just bitching about her sisters and filling me in on the particular horrors of the USian healthcare system which are relevant here. So the daughters can stress about money as well as about their mom's health. That'll help. They're all mean to each other. Here my mom is saying that the other two are deciding things and she has no say. They're probably telling their kids that my mom isn't contributing to the decision-making conversations.

It was a real emotional roller-coaster of an email.

My mom said my parents are off to see either my grandma in the hospital or her sisters, possibly both, so I might ask if she wants to Skype tonight rather than tomorrow night.

Feels odd, writing this from the desk that's part of the built-in fittings in my bedroom: wardrobes and drawers otherwise, on my big monitor and external keyboard.

I've moved all my work stuff up here today, because the room where I normally work is a bedroom for L, mother_bones's visiting son. The other son J and his boyfriend T already have the spare room. She hasn't seen L for quite a while, and J since he emigrated almost two years ago. It's not the best occasion that has brought everyone together but the worst of that is over and she's clearly delighted to see them both.

D and I walked to Tesco this afternoon and bought provisions to make everyone dinner tonight and make sure we have stuff for breakfast tomorrow. The three of them got here just in time for dinner.

Having to make room on my bedroom desk for all my stuff encouraged me to finish a long-overdue tidy-up so I moved stuff to its homes in other parts of the house, threw away some stuff, and most excitedly bagged up a lot of clothes to donate. I have so much stuff I was never going to wear again and it's a big weight off my shoulders knowing I don't even have to look at it any more. It's going to a queer disabled friend and their girlfriend, and I'm delighted to know that they're benefiting at least as much as I am. I've so often been the poor friend who survived on other people's cast-offs, the least I can do is give my precious (because expensive) plus-size femme clothes to a good home!

It was a nice day. Lots of snuggles and time spent with D too, which was especially nice after a week where for one reason or another we didn't see much of each other.

My cousin was in a car accident -- couple broken ribs but I guess he's fine otherwise -- and his mom has been telling my mom, her own sister, that this is the most devastating thing that has ever happened.

My mom, whose son died in a car accident, is unimpressed with this to say the least.

My parents have had their house appraised. They're not imminently going to move but they're getting closer. It tears me up to think that I might only see the house I grew up in once more. If that.

( Family and money and frustration. )

( Christmastime is sneaking up on me. )

Anyway, the most authentic Christmas experience I've had so far is probably being frustrated at my family and resigned to the fact that they will never listen to me. Happy holidays!

And writing this out has made me think I'll donate the money they gave me to a food bank or Warm Welcome or something. If my old people refuse to keep themselves warm and fed on my behalf, I can at least make sure that some strangers are warmer and less hungry instead!

Making a photo book for my family as a Christmas present seemed like a nice idea. I haven't seen them, they don't know what my house is like or what I've been up to this year.

But doing it when I can't tell my family anything about myself feels like doing this on Hard Mode. "Do I look enough like a girl in this photo?" "diffrentcolours and I don't seem too couple-y here, do we?"

But I expected that. It turns out the most surprising thing for me in this whole process has been realizing that, while I have a million hoodies, I wear the red one all the time. It's in so. many. photos.

(Doesn't help that in a couple more of the photos I'm using, I'm wearing a red t-shirt!)

I had a cute story lined up for today, but then something happened that rattled me. Bad things are a pain though, so I'll include the nice story too.

( family, covid )

Now for the good story. Sometimes

diffrentcolours talks a little in his sleep, not usually intelligibly but sometimes I can hear a word or two. A little fraction of the understandable words are funny but mostly it's just random.

This morning, I woke up because he was telling a story. "When we were with my family, [niece] and [nephew] had just gotten a Nintendo Switch for Christmas, and [niece] was like 'Uncle [family nickname], I'm gonna beat you at Mario Kart, I'm gonna kill you!'..." He even did a little bit of a voice for her.

I knew he wasn't telling me this, because I was there when this story happened! It did happen. He did not let her win, heh.

He started out as easy to understand as an awake person slurring their words. It got a little more blurry as it went on and faded out, but he did finish it with a little chuckle.

The whole thing was so ridiculously adorable.

Best part was, I got up to go to the bathroom then and when I got back to bed he was awake, so I told him what he'd just done and he said "I was dreaming about telling that story!" So I got to say "You were telling that story!"

( A bunch of images and thoughts and events and conversations have been cluttering up my head, all about covid in some way or another. This is going to be long and disjointed, I just wanted to get them all out of my head. )

In an effort to keep in touch better (i.e. at all) with my family outside my parents, I made the herculean effort to e-mail two of my aunts when I had the excuse of it being Christmas to hook the unprecedented communication on. One wrote back quickly (same day I think? or the next) and we've exchanged a couple of e-mails, mostly about our dogs. The other one took longer to reply but when she did it was full of effusive affection, it was so touching to read.

We really missed you! I would have worried about you traveling, but Christmas just wasn't the same. I thought about you a lot. I really hope you had a nice Christmas with your friends. I'm so thankful you have them. You're always in my prayers, Holly.

How are you really doing? As a divorced woman, too, I know how hard it is in so many ways. You deserve so much happiness. Things will get better. At least your friends are there for you. I'm always here for you, too.

Reading this kind of stuff just feels like a warm bath, you know? So sweet.

I do feel like I should update her though that the worst thing that's happened to me since leaving my husband is a lot of wistfulness. Materially, logistically, and in most other ways things improved embarrassingly quickly for me almost immediately. I don't think any of that information, which I tried to give my parents, will have trickled through to my aunt though.

So I'm trying to think about how to tell her, I'm trying to think about what the answer to the question "how are you really doing?" actually is. And then I'm trying to figure out how to say it.

I don't actually have any practice in having family relationships as a fellow adult with anyone besides my parents (and actually we can still be pretty terrible at interacting as adults, I think because I've spent so much of my adulthood so far away and because of Chris's death putting that huge rupture in there right at the beginning when we were still figuring out how to get out of the parent/child or parent/teenager dynamics).

And I don't have any idea to talk to my family about my emotions beyond sports analogies (which I think was the first CXG song

diffrentcolours sent me, saying something about how he thought I could relate).

When I struggle to say how I'm doing here sometimes, and now I'm playing that game on Hard Mode by wanting to translate it to something suitably Familyish, admittedly for the other family member who "got out," honestly you can tell the ones who got away from Minnesota, even though she's right back there eating unseasoned food she knows there's a wider world out there. This is something we bonded over that time we all went Up North together, six or seven years ago now. I hid in their cabin and we drank beer and my cousin's boyfriend bought me salad (I am always so hungry when I'm around my family...) and we Talked and that's when I realized, this is the common thread: my aunt and I love Minnesota and I'd want to be able to move back there for my parents just like she has for her mom but goddam, this upbringing comes at a price and that price is, all too often, complete emotional illiteracy.

Joys of pandemic times mean I've been dating someone for...two...and a half? years now but this Boxing Day is, thanks to a slew of negative LFTs, my first Event with his family.

I'd met his mum a few times and his sister once or twice, but when his mum and her boyfriend came to visit us in the summer I could tell from the kinds of questions I was getting asked that I'd been upgraded to partner-levels of concern which is nice. I want them to like me, I'm trying to be nice and helpful and stuff.

It's been so nice to be in a different place (I think this will be my fifth night of 2021 that I spend somewhere other than my own bed).

And if you want a lot of different conversations happening to you, possibly all at once in the most delightful way, I can suggest the company of a clever, kind, astute eight-year-old.

I'm full of cake (I made the traditional chocolate cake my mom would've if I'd been there, and

mother_bones made bittercream frosting flavored with the fancy hot cooca powders J had to leave here when he went to New Zealand, so it's chocolate and cherry-flavored) and beer so I'm so tired.

I really enjoyed making the cake this morning, dancing around to Christmas tunes in the kitchen, and just enjoying the familiar process and the smell of it baking.

I noticed that the pan I was using has what I'm pretty sure are my grandma's initials scratched into one side. This is the cake pan with a lid that slides on, it's good for taking stuff to church sales and potlucks and stuff. My mom writes her, our, last name on hers. I thought this pan I had was one of those but I guess she got it from my grandma. Which is also where this recipe (for "German chocolate cake" which it probably isn't or for "oil cake" which it is (as in, oil and vinegar doing a job more traditionally expected to be done by eggs; it means the cake is vegan even though it's made by people like my mom who honestly seemed to think veganism was an eating disorder when I first explained it to her) ) came from.

It's very touching, to have that kind of continuity in my life. I'm feeling very grateful for it lately.

Anyway, birthday. For months now I've been saying "I'm nearly forty, you know!", the way disgruntled old people round up their age to the next birthday sometimes, because I think it's funny. It was silly but it was fun. And I'm going to miss it because I can't do it any more! Because I am forty now!

"Now you can't make fun of me for being in my 30s!" I told

diffrentcolours. Which he has been doing in the last few weeks.

"I can make fun of you for being in your early 40s! I'm nearly in my mid-40s," said the 42-year-old.

"When do your mid-40s start?" I asked. "When it's useful?"

"Yep!"

I woke up this morning with a scratchy throat and sore ears. I managed to go all last winter without my chronic sinus problems flaring up but it looks like I won't be so lucky this year. It hasn't been awful but it has made me really uncomfortable and sorry for myself today.

Not as much, however, as the fact that there's something wrong with our boiler. Not something worth a Sunday call-out fee, so the plan is to call a guy tomorrow and to just muddle along today with wearing hats or fingerless gloves in the house and keeping internal doors closed to conserve what little heat the radiators could produce.

Closing the doors is Garyphobic though, he really hates not being able to get from one room to another, and maybe some combination of that and the cold (of course this happened on the coldest day we've had so far; it snowed not heavily but steadily all afternoon), and how tired and miserable I was because he's a little emotion-sponge, meant that he was mithery all day and didn't calm down until I shut him in a room with me so I could Skype my parents.

Who are having a tough time with the now-impending Christmas, since Thanksgiving is finally out of the way. They always decorate the house the weekend after, and my mom didn't put up as much of my stuff as she normally would because I won't be there.

And my dad's sister had already tapped out of Christmas Day how that side of the family usually spends it, since her emotional support dog is too old and sick to travel that far, and my mom's currently annoyed at Dad's brother's wife for not answering pointless emails and texts with further pointless emails or texts, so days she isn't even going to invite them for Christmas. Which will mean my mom and dad are on their own for it, which is a huge fucking bummer.

My mom is going to make a few of her usual Christmas cookies but not many for the two of them. And, it just occurred to me, it'll be my mom's first year doing them without Bonnie. They always devoted a day to making Christmas cookies and candy, ever since I can remember and no doubt before that.

So yeah, this Christmas really kinda sucks already.

My mom really likes the new interim pastor at her church a lot though: she seems very approachable and compassionate. Having heard at church-basement coffee the other week about my brother dying and me moving away so soon after, this lady asked my mom how her Thanksgiving had been and said that when she got to spend it with her own (grown) children it made her think of my mom who didn't get to do that. Little stuff like that is really valuable to my mom, who doesn't get to feel known as seen as often as I do but probably values it as much. I'm glad to hear about the new lady. (Though this was the second or third time I'd heard an anecdote about her, and they always start with how fat she is (in my mom's approved language: "she's very very heavyset," which always makes me want to barf). They immediately go on to "but she did this nice thing! she's this incredible person!" Could we maybe get right to that bit, and skip the body commentary? Apparently not yet. Today Mom even made it worse by following "she's very, very heavyset" with "she's like [aunt who doesn't answer pointless texts]," which alarmed me, but it turns out my mom meant she's just "like her" in body size, which is the least objectionable thing about that aunt, sheesh.)

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Sometimes it's better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness

To distance and the things we do to bridge it

More processing sorry

Small creatures such as we

Down the basement

Grandma update

We made it

The next time

His laugh and smile

[155/365] the pandemic despair is strong today

[140/365]

[121/365] here comes the sun

[24/365] faaamily

[345/365]

[326/365] unexpected consequences

[23/365] good and bad

[21/365] early-2022 covid thoughts

[17/365] really doing

[360/365] boxing day

[356/365] birthday

[332/365] not a good day

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April 2025

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