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I've actually got several things to share that I hadn't included in the two fairly notable posts already written about last weekend, which included Saturday's
Theo Chocolates factory tour with Alexia, and the
Happy Hour at Alki Beach Pride with Laney on Sunday.
But, I have more news from Sunday that was a bit of a bummer.
Jennifer, my cousin, started chatting with me on Messenger Sunday morning, because she had an idea for my next Birth Week, maybe sharing a room to stay overnight at Fort Worden. Now, ordinarily I would love this idea, except my plan is to make "islands" my Birth Week theme next year, and Fort Worden does not involve any islands. I could make an exception—not every single Birth Week activity necessarily has to align with the year's theme—but, I also just spent time in Port Townsend, and even a bit in Fort Worden, last June for my anniversary trip with Shobhit.
I actually think it would be even more fun to see if we could get more family to go stay there later in the year, outside of my Birth Week. That may be a tall order. I'm just not gung-ho on returning there less than a year after I was already there for my anniversary.
That's not the bummer part, though. It was when our discussion about this was winding down that Jennifer texted,
I'm sure he did but your dad told you about aunt raenae right. I wrote back,
Wait no. What's the news? Jennifer replied,
She's on hospice care.
I was genuinely shocked. Now, Aunt Raenae had mentioned on the family group chat on July 25 that she had been "on the phone with oncologists etc" and was "too tired" but had not been more specific; Valerie (my dad's cousin, thus also Aunt Raenae's cousin) texted me to ask if she was sick and I didn't know. I messaged Toni and James—Toni being Aunt Raenae's youngest, another of my cousins; Aunt Raenae has been living with them—and learned that she had been diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver and was set to go for a radiology appointment and get a biopsy.
I heard nothing more about it until Jennifer asked if I knew Aunt Raenae was in hospice care.
So, after messaging with Jennifer Sunday morning, I gave Dad a call to see what was up. He told me he had planned to call me but hadn't gotten around to it, which was fine. I didn't feel left out of the loop per se; although Aunt Raenae is easily the one of Dad's siblings I've always been most fond of, I'd also say we weren't exactly close, just at a lot of family gatherings together over the years. She was always a bit bonkers-religious for my taste but, unlike her deeply fundamentalist son, we still always got along.
The news was still jarring. Hospice means final step before the end, just making the person as comfortable as possible. Dad told me she's in a hospital bed at Toni and James's house; Jennifer told me both Troy and Michael (her two older sons, both of whom now live in Texas, probably delighting in the legislative bigotry there) were on their way. And of course, Uncle Paul—Jennifer's dad—
just died last year. So, having two of my aunts and uncles die two years in a row is also jarring. Granted, Aunt Raenae hasn't passed away yet. But, according to Jennifer just this morning, Michael told her he figures she has weeks to go at best.
She just turned 75 last month. Uncle Paul would have turned 73 last year, I believe, but hadn't gotten to his birthday so he passed at 72. All of my grandparents (including Sherri's mom, Grandma Rhoda) died in their early to mid-eighties, so I have become conditioned to expect "dying of natural causes" to happen in people's eighties. These two happening a good decade earlier than that is also dying, and I'm beginning to feel like the defining characteristic of middle-age is feeling like people in the generation ahead of you are dropping like flies. To be fair, neither Uncle Paul nor Aunt Raenae led especially healthy lifestyles. Dad, at least, is easily the healthiest of all five of them and always has been. So be better fucking last a while! I didn't tell him that.
Anyway, for a day or so I thought the last time I saw Aunt Raenae was at
Uncle Paul's Memorial Picnic, which was in June of last year. I looked up photos of her this morning, though, and totally forgot she had come to Dad and Sherri's family gathering this year for
New Year's Day. In all likelihood, that will be the last time I ever saw her.
Dad told me he was actually with her to a fairly recent medical appointment, and made an offhand comment about how this all happened so quickly. Apparently the doctor said, "No, it didn't." Apparently Aunt Raenae just didn't share it with a lot of people, until it got to this stage. While I was talking to Dad, Sherri texted me a photo she had taken of her when they went out for lunch two weeks ago. She looked quite unwell. "She looks a hundred times worse than that now," she said. Jesus.
I knew Valerie would want updates, so I let her know what I knew after talking to Dad. She's thinking about going out to Aberdeen to see her and asked if I wanted to come with her. I said it would depend on the timing, but probably not. I'd rather have a better final memory of her anyway. Also, I just realized this morning, her son troy literally thinks I am "an abomination" (at least he said so specifically in a letter
in 2008; there's no indication he's ever changed his mind) and I'm sure he doesn't want me hanging around while he's with his mom. I had thought this morning about how I would likely go to a memorial, and it hit me again: if Troy is there, he probably wouldn't want me to be. Jennifer then noted this morning that she didn't want her brother Andrew at her dad's memorial—for very different reasons, although disgustingly, probably not in Troy's mind—but "nobody seemed to care what I wanted."
Now, Troy and Michelle have a history of basically boycotting any family gatherings because I am hardly the only one of us they consider heathens on some level or another. Whether they have come now for one final visit but won't come for a memorial seems somewhat likely. But, she's still his mother, so I could be wrong in this particular case. I'll just have to see what the word is on that, if and when there is a memorial serice. Besides, admittedly I'm getting a little ahead of myself here. She's not dead yet. The very weird thing is the expectation that she will be soon. And then, out of the five kids my paternal grandparents had, there will only be three left. (There are still two left of Grandpa's siblings, if I recall correctly.)
It's kind of weird to be suddenly thinking about Troy again too, actually. It occurred to me while writing this that it's possible that letter he sent in 2008 was the worst treatment I have ever received from any relative. That would be why I generally have not thought about him at all, with very few exceptions (when something like this comes up to make it relevant again), since.
I only got word from Jennifer this morning of a specific diagnosis: according to Michael, it's stage four liver cancer. Jennifer told me that's what Michael told her, after I sent her the photo above, from New Year's Day, of Aunt Raenae with Grandpa's youngest sibling, Aunt Arliss, who I learned on that day is only one year older than Aunt Raenae, Aunt Arliss's niece.
Oh, just one more detail. Valerie texted me that Aunt Raenae took her to her first concert, and it was The Bee Gees! That's all kinds of funny to me, especially since all of a decade later, Aunt Raenae was railing about the supposed evils of all rock music. She even lumped Tracy Chapman into that: I tried to tell her how great her songs were when I was like 13, but Aunt Raenae was having none of it. Pop songs that had a good or positive message made no difference to her. She's definitely been far less militant about such things over the past couple of decades, to her credit. And also to her credit, even while having clearly different opinions and worldviews, she did always accept me for who I was. That much at least, I'll always appreciate.
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And I still have two other things to tell you about!
First, let's get back to Jennifer. In the discussion about Fort Worden, I mentioned that Shobhit will likely visit India again by the end of the year and we should plan to get together whenever that happens. And then she messaged me,
Are we still going to the chocolate festival in November? Oh, shit—I completely forgot suggesting that to her last year! Good thing she has a better memory than I do.
So, I looked it up, and the
Northwest Chocolate Festival has two key changes this year: in the past, it was always held in Seattle; now the venue has been changed to downtown Bellevue, at the Meydenbauer Center, the convention center over there. (They should have held it at the new building of the Seattle Convention Center! What the hell!)
The other thing is, they're holding it in October this year instead of November. Laney and I have a double feature in the Braeburn Condos scheduled for Sunday October 8th, so we settled on going Saturday October 7th. She'll drive up after work Friday the 7th, and head home the morning of Sunday the 8th. She had her ticket purchased within minutes, which was a bit surprising.
You're stuck with me now! she wrote. I guess she won't be bringing Matthew as usual this time, as he doesn't have the extra time off to take from work. I like Matthew, but ever since they got together I've really never gotten any quality time with just Jennifer, and it'll actually be nice to have that again.
I've been to the Northwest Chocolate Festival a couple of times, most recently
in 2018. Shobhit actually volunteered two days to get us free tickets for the other day. I bought my ticket, to go with Jennifer, yesterday. I did check Groupon at Shobhit's suggestion, but no suck luck. No discounts for us this time.
I guess the day tickets back in 2018 were worth $25, and now they're up to $40! But, whatever. I'll be spending a fun day with Jennifer sampling chocolate. I don't do this every year. She plans just to park at my building and, because she doesn't like driving around Seattle, we'll take the bus over to downtown Bellevue together. The convention center is only a few blocks from the Bellevue Transit Center so that should work out fine.
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Finally, the thing I didn't mention about yesterday but will tell you about now: I had my first virtual lunch with Karen since July 7—six and a half weeks ago—because our July 21 lunch had to be canceled due to the passing of her 93-year-old dad back in Massachusetts, where she therefore had to go and travel to help take care of a bunch of things.
We had then been scheduled to do a virtual lunch August 4 and I completely spaced rescheduling it: I was in Saint Paul on that date. I think Karen saw one of my posts on Facebook and commented something along the lines of
I take it we're not doing lunch on Friday then? Uhhh . . . nope!
After that, due to an appointment she needed to drive her friend Diane to, she asked to reschedule the lunch we had scheduled for Friday last week to Monday. That worked fine for me.
We spent most of the hour talking about her parents. She seemed to really appreciate the questions I had, especially when I opened by asking how her mother is doing. Apparently they had a lot of friends, and they have been coming over to the house to spend time with her, have tea etc., every day. That's awesome and I can only hope to have that many friends who care that much close by if and when I am ever in a similar circumstance. (There's no telling whether he's right, but Shobhit is convinced he will die first.)
Karen also told me some pretty cool stuff she found in her father's belongings, such as boating logs that spanned from 1963 to 2001(!), one of which noted them listening to the moon landing on the radio from their boat in 1969, something Karen can remember from when she was about 10 years old.
We only got to my Twin Cities trip, which we had yet to get to talk about, when there was about ten minutes left of the hour. But, she said she did read both my
travelogue emails about it, which she does not always have time to do. And, she was truly delighted for me that I had such a good time at the Co+nvergence conference in Saint Paul, as I had been slightly anxious about how relevant or effective it might be for me and my job—but it was absolutely worth all the time and effort.
Even the
suitcase debacle! Which I also told her all about, as quickly as I could. Then I had to get back to work.
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As for
last night, it was spent mostly shopping. Shobhit and I drove up to the Costco in Kirkland, hoping to find frozen naans and parathas there, neither of which did they have this time. We then went over to Mayuri Foods and got them there, along with a bunch of other stuff. It was after 9:00 by the time we finally got back home, and we must have left around 6ish. We had some chai first.
I tend to get irritated with Shobhit's insistence on double checking grocery receipts, but he sure felt vindicated last night. I paid for those groceries, and Mayuri Foods accidentally charged me $8.99 for a full pound of bulk thai chili peppers, which were a fraction of that weight. I got a refund of $7.28, which is a pretty huge discrepancy.
Shobhit had made eggplant squash for dinner which we waited until after shopping to eat, so we'd have some frozen parathas to have with it. We ate while watching one episode of season 2 of
Heartstopper on Netflix, which is as absolutely sweet a show as ever.
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[posted 12:33 pm]
