Friday, my mom flew in from Oregonia. Before coming down to San Jose, she drove in her rental car to Modesto to see my Aunt Lisa who is in the hospital. My Aunt Lisa is diabetic, lives alone and is blind as a bat. She was in the ICU because she couldn't give herself her insulin. Her body cramped up and somehow she managed to get to the phone and get help.
That evening, my Mom made it down to SJ and she picked me up to go to my cousin Pauline's house. We had some red wine and put our bathing suits on and sat in the hot tub for a bit. It was pretty relaxing. Well, as relaxing as being around Pauline can be. She's kind of an intense person.
Saturday, we went to my cousin Liza's birthday party. Evan and I got her a CSI Junior Investigator kit. She had a great time playing mini golf with her friends. I also got to see some family members that I had never or only briefly met before.
Saturday night we had all planned to go dancing in Gilroy. We got lost and spent 20 minutes making several illegal turns and driving in circles. Then my mom called me on my cell, she was in the car in the front of our caravan. She called to tell me that our Great Aunt Mary (whom is 93 years old and has been battling Parkinson's disease) had a stroke while napping and has a severe brain bleed. Well our plans changed immediately.
Bless my mother in law's heart. She drove us all the way out to Fremont, so we could see this woman and say good by to her. And believe me, being in a car with my female family members wants to make you tear your own face off. I don't know how she managed to drive all that way and not once tell them all the to shut up.
Aunt Mary was a beautiful woman who knew how to throw the best parties. She was such a fox. She outlived her husband George(who died of a heart attack) and both her sons. The last thirty years she has been living alone. This lady was a very successful realtor, and traveled all over the globe, several times.
I remember when I was a child and I spent quite a bit of time with her. My mother used to clean her house and I would go play in Aunt Mary's bedroom, looking at all of her beautiful clothes and playing in gigantic jet bath tub. I remember the first time I realized that people could have fake teeth. She took out her false teeth to clean them and it scared the crap out of me. I remember when her and I spent a weekend together and we took care of this baby bird.
Needless to say, she was a great woman and a wonderful human being. It was hard to see her the way she was in the hospital, but I said my goodbyes. I'll try to remember her the way she was before the stroke and to remember all the fun we had together and how nice she was to was to me.
Saturday night was a bunch of tears. When I got back home at midnight I got a back rub from my boyfriend while I was eating a piece of chocolate cake.
I went out to breakfast on Sunday morning with my mom. It was the only alone time I got to spend with her the whole weekend. We talked about Aunt Mary, and the whole weekend, almost as if it had happened a million years ago. We were probably just instinctively distancing ourselves from the horrible image of her from the night before.
After breakfast she was back on her way to see my Aunt Lisa and Grandma. Then back to the airport to return to Oregonia. It was a short trip, but I'm glad she was here through all of this. I probably wouldn't be able to handle it without her.
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