With my Grandpa, we also lost an aunt and three cousins ... disowned just like that. Christmas was never the same again. I didn’t even want to have the last several Thanksgivings, Christmases, or New Years. I was like, let’s just go out to eat, leave the mess somewhere else so I don’t have to cook it and clean it up. Grandma died a week before Christmas 1997, which further ruined the holidays for us. Then we get around to Christmas of 2003.
My mom had been on a diet and lost a bunch of weight. But Christmas Eve of 2003, you could tell it wasn’t just that. Everybody demanded that she go to a doctor. One minute they’re telling her she’s got either bronchitis or pneumonia, fluid around her heart and lungs, and possibly a small spot of cancer near a kidney. By the next visit, it’s the fourth or fifth stage of cancer. Before she could get a wig and start chemo, she was in the hospital. On January 24, 2004, she died of lung cancer.
She was the one keeping what was left of her family together. In fact, the last several years we had the yearly parties at her house. During her hospital stay and funeral, we destroyed several relationships. Her house is still in the family and the parties are still held there, but I’ll never go to another one. I’ve had no one to mourn with. My only child acts like it didn’t even happen. And now she’s off in Texas chasing a man. Life goes on.
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