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Enough is enough with the AI applications. I’ve written about it undressing you and suggesting self harm but this might creep me out even more.
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No thank you.
Uh uh. No way.
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What the utter Hell.
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Come on. No one needs an avatar of grumpy Uncle Harold showing up at his funeral and berating you for not visiting more often.
And a Micheal Jackson avatar moonwalking between the pews hawking Thriller albums?
Just, no.
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Good grief.
Or more literally, not good at all.
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This is what gun violence looks like.
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18 innocent lives lost.
They were bowling.
They were playing corn hole.
Yes, the gunman was found dead so we’re safe.
Or are we?
I’m not going to type his name because he’s not who I want to remember.
I’ll type these names instead…
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Ronald G. Morin, 55
Peyton Brewer Ross, 40
Joshua A. Seal, 36
Bryan M. MacFarlane, 41
Joseph Lawrence Walker, 57
Arthur Fred Strout, 42
Maxx A. Hathaway, 35
Stephen M. Vozzella, 45
Thomas Ryan Conrad, 34
Michael R. Desiauriers II, 51
Jason Adam Walker, 51
Tricia C. Asselin, 53
William A. Young, 44
Aaron Young, 14
Robert E. Violette, 76
Lucille M. Violette, 73
William Frank Brackett, 48
Keith D. Macneir, 64
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Maine is still reeling from the shock.
We thought things like mass shootings couldn’t happen here.
We were wrong.
Hold your loved ones close tonight.
💔
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It’s fallen to me to gather old photos of my husband’s late sister for her celebration of life.
Her daughter is still having a hard time…so the get together will be small, informal, and at her home. I’m going to set up a table of remembrance with flowers, this plaque…
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A guest book where people can share memories…
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A flameless candle…
And a large digital frame filled with pictures that will play continuously like a slideshow.
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It’s been bittersweet collecting and uploading the photographs.
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Life.
It’s fleeting…
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And over far too soon.
I shed quite a few tears looking at the 160 pictures I’ve pulled together, but every once in a while I’d smile. Like when I found this old family portrait proof of my husband and his 8 brother and sisters. (Hint- he’s the one in uniform. Top left.)
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And sometimes I even laughed.
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That’s my husband, standing behind his late sister on the right. The couple with them had just gotten married and I think he was the best man.
I may have to print one of these for framing.
😉
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This is the last picture taken of my husband and his sister.
She had asked him to bring her one of his Marine Corps hats so she could wear it in honor of his service. He happily obliged.
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My sister in law passed a few weeks ago and it’s just now I can bring myself to blog about it. For those of you who read regularly, you know it was a blessing… and sadly what she wanted.
But that doesn’t mean it was easy.
We received the call from her daughter Monday at noon and rushed over to the nursing home to be with her. Though you know it’s inevitable, losing your mother is hard… and slowly watching her die? Just about unbearable.
It was a bedside death watch with everything that implies. Five family members and a close friend, sitting… and waiting. Watching her painfully gasp for breath, float in and out of consciousness and be given enough morphine to drop a horse. You could tell even the nurses were surprised how long she hung on.
Tears? I cried rivers and couldn’t stop. But not just for her…. it was watching her daughter trying to let go that really broke my heart. When it finally happened, 11 hours later, her daughter simply crumpled to the floor. Broken, exhausted, and physically spent.
We did everything we could to help then… emotionally and financially. Which is why the next day found us at the funeral home making arrangements for cremation.
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Death is big business, never forget that. I’ve learned painful … not to mention expensive… lessons about what is necessary and what is superfluous charging for things you don’t know you don’t need.
We chose the same place that cared for my mother, my husband’s mother and his brother. A small, honest, family run business… which are getting harder to find these days. We made the arrangements, we paid, we picked up her remains and brought them to her daughter a week later.
A small celebration of life is being planned at her daughter’s house for Labor Day weekend and we’ll try to help with that as well.
My SIL’s struggle is over.
Her daughter’s struggle… trying to understand why her mother could never find joy in life… is ongoing.
❤️
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Take a break from all the nastiness in the world and read this article I stumbled on the other day.
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The headline was enough to make me smile.
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Please don’t comment on the incorrect translation, just feel the love.
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I admit I choked up at this point.
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We all need a Corchito in our lives.
❤️
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We were told my husband’s cousin would call us. We thought it would be to lift the ridiculous no family visitors ban he’d implemented at Uncle Donny’s bedside .. but we were wrong.
When he finally did call and leave a message?
It was to tell us his father had passed.
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Uncle Donny.
When we lived in North Carolina he would visit once or twice a year. Our cat Bubba instantly adopted him.
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He was a Vietnam vet with over 20 years in the Air Force. An honest and decent man.
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Seen here with his sister, my husband’s mother.
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If you needed money to pay your rent? Uncle Donny.
If you needed someone to help you move? Uncle Donny.
If your child needed school clothes, a car, college tuition? Uncle Donny.
He was a lovable goofball with a big generous heart.
Though I hold him personally responsible for my spouse’s addiction to yard saling and filling our cellar with crap, I also have fond memories of trolling flea markets with him and enjoying his childlike glee when he would find a “treasure”.
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Rest In Peace Uncle Donny.
You were, quite simply…. a good egg.
And will be deeply missed.
💔
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We visited my husband’s uncle in the hospice last week. He was in good spirits…. laughing and joking with the nurses.
When we visited yesterday? We were met by a nurse who said we weren’t allowed in his room and then ushered into the chapel.
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We were told to wait here for someone to come talk to us.
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We waited and a woman we hardly knew, someone my husband’s uncle called ‘niece’ but wasn’t actually related, came in to inform us the uncle had taken a turn for the worse a few days before and was totally unresponsive. The end being near, his son was flying in that day from Florida and left instructions no visitors were to be allowed.
Needless to say we were beyond shocked.
Barred from seeing him. Barred from saying goodbye.
It was all I could do to stop my husband from storming the beachhead.
Since the son is legally next of kin and has power of attorney, the facility listens to him. There was nothing we could do.
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Except cry.
I did a good bit of that.
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I don’t usually blog about deeply personal things, but the past week has been tough and my heart is too heavy for the usual fluff today.
It started with the death of one of my husband’s coworkers. An unexpected heart attack. He was 52.
The next day we learned an old childhood friend of my husband’s had passed from the cancer he’d been battling for years. Not unexpected, but still sad. He was 71.
We’ve also been helping to care for my husband’s elderly uncle who still lives alone at 91. His mind is strong, but his body is failing and he’s unable to do everyday things. We do his grocery shopping, run his errands and clean his house… and while I know he appreciates the help, he also gets very cranky with the invasion of his personal space. He really needs nursing home care now and though it’s not unexpected… it’s been sad seeing the slow decline of health of a once vibrant man.
But the situation that’s broken me is my SIL. A big hearted, funny, generous to a fault, deeply troubled woman who’s suffered from depression all her life. An unhappy childhood, an abusive marriage, a bitter divorce and a diagnosis of MS in her late 40’s led to a deep slide into alcoholism and opioid addiction. After trying to kill herself in 2010, we took her in and she lived with us for a year. We got her off the booze, the drugs and the cigarettes. We put over 30lbs on her frail frame, got her substance abuse counseling and psychiatric help and shared what she always tells people was the best year of her life. We gave her love and a fresh start and felt good about setting her up in a nice little apartment. But left to her own devices, the last 12 years have been a slow road to self destruction. Isolating herself from friends and family and smoking two packs a day led to COPD and emphysema and a total dependence on oxygen. Somewhere along the line she gave up on life and though we tried to help numerous times, you can’t save someone from themselves. Now… at barely 80 pounds, she’s dying in a hospice facility. We visited her yesterday and the literal husk of the woman we saw there broke both our hearts.
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It is.
But damn, it’s a hard price to pay.
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If you’ve ever loved a dog?
Hell, even if you haven’t… please watch this video all the way though before you read my post. It’s 7 minutes of your life well spent. I promise.
Grab the tissues.
I’ll wait.
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The husband and I have been there, although it was winter and only a few four legged visitors were romping around.
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The chapel is small…
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But bursting at the seams with love.
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And when they said every square inch is filled with layers of pictures, letters, notes and expressions of grief?
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They meant it.
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I wept the entire time I was inside.
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Look around…
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How could you not?
If you’ve ever loved and lost a dog, or any animal for that matter… this quiet, unassuming, solemn place will grab your heart and tug. The outpouring of love, loss and grief is positively palpable from the moment you cross the threshold.
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I’m not a religious person… but there’s something otherworldly about this building on that little mountain in Vermont.
Something beautiful… and almost spiritual.
If you’re ever near St. Johnsbury, please go experience it for yourself. And don’t forget to bring a picture of that special someone who’s no longer walking by your side.
❤️
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Warning – I’m going off the rails of my usual blog fluff here. It’s been that kind of day.
Not sure why I feel I need to post this, perhaps the anniversary of my mother’s death is bothering me more than I realized, but here goes.
I read a series of novels written by Rob Hart recently…
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It was a good romp, but in almost every book there was a section dealing with this topic:
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They say you write what you know, and this author nailed it.
If you’ve never seen a dead body…. and I mean right after death, not processed by a funeral home…. I’m glad. I wish I hadn’t, because what he says is true.
My mother passed in a hospice. She was only there for five days and it was blessedly quick as deaths by cancer go. I was at her side every day, all day and into the night. It was horribly sad and utterly exhausting. I did it alone for the first four days but on the fifth, my husband insisted on coming. To be honest I didn’t want him there. He doesn’t wait well or patiently, and when you’re sitting bedside vigil that’s really all there is to do. My mother was heavily medicated and thankfully free of pain, but she was also mostly unconscious. He tried, but only made it until 5:00pm and then convinced me to leave for the night. She died an hour later. I’ll never forgive myself for not being there, but that’s not the point of this depressing post.
The point is that the author was correct. When I returned to say goodbye and gather my mother’s things a mere hour after she passed, the difference was startling. I don’t know what I was expecting, hers was the only recently deceased body I’d ever seen… but it was indeed just that. A body. Sunken in on itself and completely empty. Everything that was mother had vanished. In a perverse way, it made the final goodbye easier. She was well and truly gone, spiritually and physically.
It’s definitely not like the movies, neither serene nor beautiful.
Just empty.
💔
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River's world..... 