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this morning i took a town car to work. turns out it’s less expensive than a cab from mom’s hotel. the driver and i started talking about other bay area drivers.
“they think they’re ok cause they have insurance. they don’t understand they have only one life.”
he just about summed it up with that.
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for the past couple weeks i’ve had family in town. first the mom and dad who raised me came in for a few days to help set up the new, huge tv they gave me for the winter holiday. it arrived on jan 6, so i see it as an epiphany gift. jesus got gold, frankincense, and myrrh; i got an hd tv. jesus’ were delivered by three wise men, mine by two strong guys. the big differences seem to be that mine uses electricity and his smelled good.
after they left i had a day to myself then my biological mom and sis and sis’ friend showed up. we had a nice, but brief visit. bmom is very interested in getting me to date someone. we reviewed every guy she saw me speak to all weekend. when i mentioned my co-worker’s wife she said, ‘oh, we wondered about him.’
now, usually when i hear this from other people it sounds like a question regarding sexual orientation. i have never in the years that i’ve known this man heard anyone say they thought he was gay, so i was really interested in why they did. so i asked, ‘what did you wonder about him?’
bmom, ‘why you weren’t dating him. but now we know he’s married.’
‘even if he weren’t,’ i said, ‘i would never date someone i work that closely with!’
bmom just looked at me funny.
later in the car ride home from radical adventurer’s housewarming bmom was at it again. sis suddenly spoke up from the back seat, ‘i’m so glad i have a boyfriend so i never have to hear this!’
thanks, sis!
all in all it was a great visit, though too short. it didn’t help that i had to work over the weekend, as well.
this week is going to be a big week so i’m feeling pretty lucky that my current house guest (hamster grrl) has to work on her dissertation for her ph.d. while she’s here. giving her time to do that (by working on db stuff) means i’m a *good* host, and not just ignoring her. 
for thanksgiving day i drove to sac from the bay area. i figured it would take a little longer than the usual 1.5 hours, but i did not realize just how bad it would really be.
i’d misremembered the email and thought dinner was going to be earlier than what it was actually scheduled for. and i’m sure we’re all familiar with how being hungry can add to the difficulties of traffic. we were creeping slowly along when i decided i needed some something if i was going to make it to my cousins’ house in one piece. i pulled off at an exit which advertised several fast food places and treated myself to a nostalgic cheeseburger and fries from a drive through. since everyone was driving to dinner and apparently afraid to ruin their appetite, it was the fastest drive through experience of my life.
still, i had to wait for the light twice, and paused to unwrap my straw. you can imagine my surprise and frustration when i got back on to the highway and noticed i was still surrounded by the same people! no kidding! there was the suv with the two bikes on the back, one a little girl’s strawberry shortcake bike with a big strawberry in the middle of the spokes. and there was the same prius with the same personalized license plate. i was really glad i’d gotten something to eat.
i arrived late at my cousins’ house to the normal noise and confusion. the turkey wasn’t cooking fast enough for the starving masses so they’d carved it up and finished the bits in the microwave. not what jo would have liked, but she also wasn’t interested in the revolt that was stirring. eight screaming children under 5 years old and their hungry parents just don’t care if it’s microwaved.
between the two brothers s and j there are 17 grandkids. this holiday saw eight of the 16 under seven years old and the one young teen girl, who is stuck in between the major age groupings of under 7 or over 30. but this year she had a little company in the in between. one of the cousins was divorced earlier in the year and brought his new girl around to meet the family. what a boisterous introduction, i felt a little badly for her. aside from this being the first time she’d met the vast majority of them, she’s also in her mid 20s — much younger than he is. i know, i know, sometimes that works but there was something about her that really said Young, with a capital Y. she seemed really sweet, though, so maybe it was just being overwhelmed by this loud family. and by loud i mean sometimes i couldn’t hear the person i was talking to.
jo and s asked my to stay over instead of trying to drive home with all the potential traffic and drunk drivers and accidents. on the way in, one of the families had seen an accident featuring a man standing out beside the cars with his hands behind his back and officers with their weapons drawn. it seemed safer to have me stay over to sleep off the tryptophan and drive home when there were less people on the road.
the whole experience was a celebration of bounty — of traffic, of family, of food, of children, of love, of conversation, of noise, of energy, of concern, of happiness.
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last thursday at the end of the work day my dad called. i could tell from his voice right away that something was wrong.
dad: did your mom tell you uncle dick was going into the hospital?
me: yes. some test something about his heart, right? is he ok?
dad: your uncle dick died today.
i was shocked. it was just a test. he had a heart flutter or murmur or something and they took him in to check stuff out. when they looked at his chest, they found a cloudy area in his lungs.
it was when they were taking a closer look at the lungs that things took a turn. he wasn’t very stable on the table, though it was a commonly performed procedure. when it was over they took him to an ICU sort of room and gave him an assisted breathing mask (the sort that push air into your lungs as you inhale). his oldest son was there when the doctor told the family they would have to make a decision.
it was certainly lung cancer. if they intubated, it would be the first step in several months of uncomfortablness before he died. his son said uncle dick had talked with him about it several dozen times and he didn’t want to that. they let him go.
uncle dick was my grandma rose’s closest brother. mom and i both felt he was the last link to that generation. we lost AJ in dec of 2005, grandpa in april of 06, grandma in late june of 06, and now uncle dick.
i didn’t go to ohio for this funeral. there wasn’t really the time. i had things to do when grandma and grandpa died. things to sort through. but with uncle dick, that will all be left to his children, plus aunt gloria and laddy are still living in the house. things don’t need to be sorted through the same way as with mom’s parents.
i was pretty grumpy all weekend. any little request to do anything, any little thing that didn’t go as planned, and i was irritated. i tried to acknowledge what i would have done normally, and go ahead and do that instead of telling everyone how i didn’t want to do anything for anyone. i remember feeling this way when grandma rose died, too. i guess it’s just part of my experience of grief.
uncle dick was a navy guy. he was happy almost all the time. and italian. there’s not another way to describe it for me. he and aunt gloria took a vacation to hawaii something like 20 years ago now, he never stopped talking about it. he loved his wife gloria, his brother in law laddie and his sister (my grandma) and her children and hated his mother (grandma great) and his aunt (aj). uncle dick had a huge heart.
i’ll miss him. he’s buried near grandma rose, grandfeathers, grandma great, grandpa pete (grandpa great), and aj.
Richard T. Adante
BARBERTON — Richard T. Adante, of Barberton, Ohio, went home to be with the Lord on Thursday, October 25, 2007.
Born on January 18, 1923 in Akron, Ohio, to Lena (Johns) and Peter Adante, Richard went on to graduate from Akron St. Vincent High School in 1941. Richard then went on to proudly serve in the U.S. Navy during World War II in the Atlantic Theater and with Halsey’s Third Fleet in the Pacific Theater; he was honorably discharged in June 1945.
Richard retired from B.F. Goodrich Company, Akron, Ohio with 40 years of service. He and his wife, Gloria are parishioners of St. Augustine Catholic Church, Barberton, Ohio since 1976.
Preceded in death by his parents; sister, Helen, and sister, Rosemary (Adante) Werner and her husband; and dear brother-in-law, Robert Werner; Richard is survived by his loving wife of 62 years, Gloria (Davis), married on St. Patrick’s Day 1945. He is also survived by his dedicated brother-in-law, Laddie Davis; his brother, William (Norma) Adante; sons, Richard (Maria) of Copley, David (Laura) of Massillon, and Thomas (Judy) of Twinsburg; grandchildren, Richard, Courtney, Nicole and Kristen; great-grandchildren, Natalie and Isabella. Many special nieces and a nephew, along with many friends and neighbors in the Barberton Community.
i had a bit of insomnia last night. my sleep was all out of whack due to a wonky sleep and food schedule (loved the dancy dancy, didn’t love being paged). i lay in bed reading a bonus book when i was buying a collection of short stories that had been recommended on one of the blogs i read.
‘the perks of being a wallflower’ is written as a collection of letters from charlie to someone we don’t know, who doesn’t know charlie. i loved this format. the reader really gets a chance to see inside the character’s mind in a way i’m not used to. not only do we see what he figures out and what he’s thinking, but we see *as* he figures it out sometimes. what he discovers about himself, about his past and the way he relates to the world, about ‘participating’… the story completely sucked me in.
usually i picture high school stories as taking place in my high school, and this one was pretty easy to do since it takes place during what was my senior year. it reminded me of what it felt like back then. the airiness of being in high school. everything felt different, somehow, than it feels now.
and as i lay in bed considering that feeling of high school i also felt the nagging guilt of not having cleaned the house in a long time. and it seemed strange, but i began to wonder if there was a connection there. the empty (even though that’s not quite the right word), big, airy feeling of being that age. was it really just high school? was it not having real responsibilities like a mortgage or even rent? sometimes i wonder if i just didn’t believe that decisions i made then, day to day what class to take and who to date sort of decision, could make a lasting impact on my life.
but when i think of it more, the big airiness of it all seems to center around my house. sure, we lived literally on the edge of the neighbourhood so that all i saw from my window were empty fields. really empty fields cut through with alleys and streets. ‘they’ had prepared the lots for housing already so it was mostly all dirt until you got to the next town north. i could see the next town from my window, and the border was marked by a row of trees along a street where my now current, then future boyfriend would race cars on the weekends. but i’ll keep the story of falling asleep to the sound of his squealing tires for another day.
i started to wonder if it wasn’t the big, empty, airiness of my parent’s house that helped set the tone for my high school years. our house had high ceilings, 24 ft ceilings in some places, and rooms we almost never used, sofas no one ever sat on. it was a lot of empty. my friends didn’t always like to come to my house and it was hard to explain to my parents why we didn’t ever want to hang out there. it wasn’t comfortable. my friends called it ‘the museum’ and it reminded us of the showrooms in furniture stores where you’re afraid to touch anything.
this is not what i want for my home. i want a cozy, warm, easy, yet clean, home. i need to learn how to strike that balance. i need to remember that not all empty space feels white and intimidating. i need to clear out a bunch of stuff and feng shui more people into my living room. i want to ‘participate’ more and be less of a wallflower.
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from storypeople.com.
this one is dead on. 
Known Future THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT THE FUTURE It doesn’t have to look any particular way, but around here, if it doesn’t, a lot of people will never speak to you again.
i’m still feeling hesitantly happy about the new condo. i should close on the 21st if all goes well, but i’m feeling a little unbelieving yet.
i figured i’d get grounded by reading some blogs and getting a dose of real life from my friends. and that’s just what i got.
i almost ruined my laptop’s mouse touchpad by crying into it as i read about jenni_froderik’s grandfather’s death. and i countered that with belated tears over dooce’s labour with leta.
ok, dooce isn’t really a friend since i’ve never exchanged email, or talked on the phone, or even seen her… but y’all blog readers understand.
jenni i haven’t seen in years, but i did go to university with her.
but i invite them both to come visit my new condo next month — if you want a break from real life.
first, in case you don’t read further, bid on a date at the not girls’ charity auction! go! do! all proceeds go to help stop violence against women!
i have continued to be a brainless dork all week. culminating in yesterday’s uber embarrassing request for a temporary badge at work — while my real badge was clipped to my pocket the whole day! good lord.
the appointment tuesday went very very very well. no cancer! woo hoo. and, even better for my immediate concerns, no needles! the cyst they were planning to biopsy had disappeared and the calcification had been reabsorbed. i asked the radiologist if that is really possible, and he said it is. still, i rewarded myself with a trip to krispy kreme. check up in three months, but no one’s worried.
i’m about half way finished with ‘the hummingbird’s daughter’. it’s hard to say if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. the book is wonderfully written, witty, funny, a great story… i don’t want it to end. i recommend it to anyone and everyone. it’s true, i was just recommending it to a stranger last night.
i had dinner with unc last night. bio-mom and sis should be in town this weekend. it’s a sparkle family extravaganza!
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i’m getting ready to leave the house for a new year’s eve brunch with some community members. it will be a small, intimate gathering. pretty much exactly what i’m in the mood for tonight, but might not get. we’ll see — i’m still undecided. anyone have a small, quiet party going on they don’t mind me joining in on?
last year at this time i was clutching my phone waiting for the call that would tell me my grandmother was dead. it didn’t come until june 30th but the stroke was on christmas eve last year.
thankfully there are no recent or impending family deaths this year.
words to describe the trip
family
snow
difficult
long
over
things i’m thankful for
i got buzzed by the blue angels after dropping mom and dad off at the airport sunday. ok, maybe not buzzed exactly, but they flew closer to me than at any other time during the weekend. turns out, hearing very loud jet noises while still very near the airport makes me nervous! luckily, it didn’t take me too long to sort out what i was hearing.
we celebrated my birthday while the ‘rents were here. mom found a really beautiful pen for me. it’s a blue swirlly pattern and has a very nice weight to it. she said she looked for green, but they didn’t have a green one out right now. the company has a different person design each pen so they’re all wildly different and all limited editions. and, they write well!
she also bought me a new set of dishes. the one i have is over ten years old and i never loved loved loved it. although they are nice dishes. mom had spotted the new ones before i’d said i wanted dishes and thought they were just up my alley. she was right! classic style with mix and match colours.
we spent saturday and sunday looking at condos and lofts in both sf and the east bay. they both say they’re encouraged, but i’m exhausted! extending the search to the east bay is intimidating. who has the time to work with two realtors?
flo and i were planning to go to decompression after mom and dad left, but she was also feeling anti-big crowd so she gave me a cookie and we went to hoop and spin poi in the park. from there we went to a fabulous birthday sushi dinner and stopped for a pint of chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream on the way home, where we played trivial pursuit after playing with plutoes (the corn snake) for a while. it was exactly the speed i was looking for!
last night i watched ‘the princess bride’, which i have not seen in years! i forgot how good it is. laughing with friends felt really really good.
before the movie started, c and i sauntered into the living room to talk about knitting. we both nested down on the couch with the cat and started knitting and catching up on life in general while everyone else finished off dinner. i totally need a knitting circle!
today mom and dad fly in. their flight was delayed two hours in dfw due to fog around sfo. dad has a theory that they never tell you the real reason flights are delayed, so mom actually asked me if it was foggy today. yup. the sky is glowing white. foggy days mean diffused light. great for photographs, but hard on the eyes sometimes. the light comes from everywhere, which means no harsh shadows but also not just one place to shield your eyes from. maybe we’ll find some nice sunglasses this weekend.
i have a HUGE pile in the kitchen of things to give away, and as i look around the room i find more and more i could really do without. i should take photos of this process, really. i’m being harsh, or trying to be, and realistic. no, i never really do wear those bright red high heeled mary janes with the rhinestone stars. someone else will find them just as cute as i do. and one of the women’s circle’s i’m on a mailing list for (though have never been able to make a gathering) is planning a clothing swap! i figure as long as i promise to take bags of leftover stuff to out of the closet, they won’t mind if i bring lots and take next to nothing.
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i brought glahad down to sp guy’s house this morning to see if he’ll get along with walter enough to stay here over the burn. walter is all kinds of crazy excited about galahad, but gahalad doesn’t seem to be as excited about walter.
galahad spent the day lying in his litter box. i pulled him out when i got back after work. i took him into the bedroom and locked walter out. galahad was pretty comfy, hanging out by the window on the dresser. sp guy tried to put him on the tall dresser, thinking he’d be even more comfortable since walter certainly wouldn’t be able to reach him. unfortunately for sp guy, galahad doesn’t have quite the same logical reasoning.
now walater is with me on the couch and galahad is still under the dresser watching closely for black paws.
we’re watching some show about mummies.
if you’re near philly, and interested in seeing some weird medical abnormalites, go here: http://www.collphyphil.org/mutter.asp
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i wrote this a few days ago in an email to some friends. i can’t really think of much more to say at this point so i’m using it as my post.
i’m in colorado after grandma’s funeral. when we got in last night it was the fourth state in as many days for me.
sp guy and i drove from ca to nv on sunday, from the playa to reno monday, i flew from nv to ohio (with a stop in co) tuesday and flew back from oh to co wednesday with a two hour drive to the condo after that. *whew*
grandma looked really nice in her casket. beautiful, even though her mouth didn’t look quite right and they’d picked a wrong colour of lipstick for her.
i was a pall bearer this time. i’d asked to do it for grandpa, but was turned down due to my uncle saying no one had ever heard of a woman pall bearer. i thought this was crazy talk and checked with the morticians who assured me there were female pall bearers. this time we looked like we were one short so i told mom i’d like to do it, that uncle b had said no last time, but that the people at the funeral home thought it was fine. (mom also wasn’t sure about the female pall bearer thing.) so mom asked the priest who said of course and pointed out that nuns do it all the time for other nuns. so it was settled.
still when we lined up outside the church mom came up to cousin t.a. and asked if *he’d* ever seen a female pall bearer and he said no but was sure that if anyone could do it i could! right on cousin t! (who is really my first cousin once removed, i think.)
i also unfolded the pall (the cloth which covers the casket during the funeral mass) with my other two cousins who were there (both girls) and mom and i took the gifts up (the wine and bread) during the mass. i really felt connected to grandma and like the women of her family were playing a big role in her funeral, as it should be. and i also felt it was appropriate for me to end up doing so much as i am the oldest granddaughter and the oldest daughter of the oldest daughter.
i wish i had a picture of l so you could see how funny it was when he realized i was going to end up at the front of the casket as a pall bearer and tried to convince me to trade places because ‘it’s going to be heavy!’ l is probably in his mid to late 70’s, about as thin as me, and a few inches shorter. i held my ground.
my uncle b wrote another great eulogy which we also hope to get up online.
here is her obituary: http://www.legacy.com/ohio/Obituaries.asp?Page=Notice&PersonID=18304327
and grandpa’s if you want to read that, too. his eulogy is in his guestbook, but rosie’s isn’t up there yet: http://www.legacy.com/ohio/Obituaries.asp?Page=Notice&PersonID=17325822
and just for good measure, here’s aj’s: http://www.legacy.com/ohio/Obituaries.asp?Page=Notice&PersonID=15980868
and now i’m going to go to the local breakfast place and get something to eat and sit and try to absorb some of this. mom and dad drove back to denver to get my aunt “eat rat”, brother flies in tomorrow, and we’re all going to sit around and have some family decompression time.
oh, yeah, brother missed the funeral! his flight took off from la on time, circled a bit, then went *back to the airport*! something about the door not sealing correctly. he wouldn’t have made it in till 2 in the morning, missing the family calling hours, so he wouldn’t have gotten to see her again. plus, he’d be there just over 12 hours, and on almost no sleep. he did manage to get a refund on the ticket by explaining that because of this he’d never see his grandmother’s face again.
it all seems so weird and there’s a bit of a feeling of “now what”. eat rat was a school teacher but took the last part of the year off and decided to retire. she literally has no idea what to do with her time now that both chief and rosie are gone. she said she filled out a form the other day and under hobbies she wrote, “taking care of mom and dad.”
well, new to me, anyhow.
i flew to la friday to pick up what used to be my brother’s car, and which was my father’s car before that. on the way down i sat next to a guy who worked as part of the stage design team for madonna. he said they’d had to fly to sjc to spend two hours sorting out some weight problems with the lighting. actually, he only said the two ours part, the rest i sorted out based on what he was talking to his co workers about.
la was just like pretty anywhere else with my family. we painte a wall in bro’s new place, watched a move (d.v.code) and ate out. i napped while bro and dad painted the wall since i didn’t know to bring painting clothes.
then, sunday am dad and i got in the car super early and drove up to sf where we met my realtor and looked at property. then we met sp guy for lunch and i dropped dad at the airport. after working out with ‘b’, during which i was in an even worse mood that usual, i met up with sp guy again and we went to see ‘hedge’ since it didn’t seem it would require a huge amount of mental or physical energy.
my cat was very glad to see me come home, and immediately dripped two spots of drool on my leg as a reward for returning. love that galahad.
again: new car! new car!
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while i was in ohio mom decided i needed to get the orange out of my hair and that it would be good to do such a ‘normal’ thing in the middle of all that we were dealing with. the woman who did my hair told me i’d be ‘the height of fasion’ even out in sf with this hair. well, she may have missed that aim, but it does look nice.
of course it doesn’t look this way when i do it at home. not as full and no flippy ends, but the colour is the same. what you can’t see in this picture are the blonde and even more red stripes.
by the way, for those of you familiar with the story, this is my ‘fairy godmother’ aunt. actually, she’s still that aunt even if you aren’t familiar with the story.
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he wrote to her almost every day till she got on the train to come marry him. then it looks like she went back to ohio for a visit. the last stack is when she moved back to ohio before him, with mom, when he was reassigned and she wasn’t allowed to stay with him anymore. the ones in the middle are just random, undated cards and notes.
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where to start. i’m just going to give up the attepmt at telling a clear story and let things come out as they do.
last night mom and i stayed here alone. her brother, his wife, and cousin loney all left for kentucky. she told me as i went to bed that she was glad i was here because she wasn’t sure how she would stay here alone. on future visits, she plans to stay with patty ann. i thought i heard mom moving around, so i got up to check. i’m in the guest room and mom has been staying in grandma and grandpa’s bed. the door to that room is open so i figured we’d be starting the day here soon. nope, she’s out in the tv room on the fold out bed with the tv on. looks like she did some more sorting after i fell asleep. and there’s a magnolia blossom on the dresser, she must have cut that last night.
yesterday grandma was pretty alert. they only gave her half her normal dose of xanax, so her nerves were calmed but she wasn’t so out of it all day. when we went by in the early afternoon with loney, the nurse aid called mom out into the hall to speak with her. apparently, that morning grandma had asked her, ‘will you do something for me?’
the aid asked, ‘what do you want?’
and grandma said, ‘i want you to help me die.’
she hasn’t said anything to any of us yet. not that there is anything we really could do — we’re not going to take her feeding tube out and starve her to death.
going through jewelry and things last night my mom nearly had a breakdown. she knew what we were doing was right and she thought we should be doing it, but that it felt really bad because grandma is still alive. no one thinks she’s going to come home, especially not to this house, but she is still alive.
if she does another miraculous turn around, mom’s mentioned trying to move her down to florida to live with she and dad. i guess mom would have to take early retirement for that, but it seems so far out of the realm of possibility that no one’s thinking seriously of what we would do.
mom really wants to get as much done as we can while we’re here so it doens’t all fall to pat. husbands, with the exception of my dad, don’t seem to be as understanding as we would all hope and there’s extra stress there, too.
mom made a hair appointment for me with my aunts’ hair place. cut and colour. she likes to make things look nice when there’s stress. it’s not a bad approach and certainly works to some degree. i know she doesn’t think it will make everything all better, but treating yourself does create some cusion. i wonder what it is about that which works. is it focusing on something else for a bit? my mind isn’t working that way right now. i’m having trouble with more ‘complex’ concepts.
as we left the nursing home yesterday, loney said to me that she thought i was really good with grandma, that grandma seemed to really respond to me. i’m glad of that, i’m glad i can help calm her and sometimes get her to focus a little. i wish i lived closer so i could be here more often. if i lived in the area i’d come by every day after work and maybe in the mornings, too, so i could catch her at her best. i just want to help her know it’s ok for her to go if she wants to and that where she is she’s fine. she’s ok.
she’s afraid of being alone, she told me. she knows everyone loves her, she pshawed and said, ‘i know *that*.’ last time i reminded her. but i think she really wants people physically with her.
i think she doesn’t like that she isn’t home, that grandpa isn’t there (we still haven’t told her why), that she can’t just do what she wants to when she wants to. that she can’t die but she can’t really live.
please click here, and scroll down if you have to, to find the eulogy my uncle wrote for my grandfather’s funeral. it’s amazing, really, i’m not just saying that.
we’ve started the hard hard work of going through grandpa and grandma’s things. she won’t be back, so we’re doing it all at once. it’s heartbreaking, necessary, and raw.
today is grandpa’s birthday. he would have been 86. wow, grandma was a cradle robber! he was just really lucky that no one else got to her first.
(she was engaged twice before marrying my grandfather, but grandpa’s engagement was the only one that took.)
mom said that when grandpa was sick in the hospital, she asked him to please send her a sign if there is a heaven and he gets there before her. she said what she wanted was for, wherever she was, please make it rain on his birthday.
(her original idea had to do with just one video conference, please. she changed to the rain, though, because she thought this would be really easy for him to do.)
the past couple days have been warm and sunny. yet, this morning when she left to take my dad to the airport as they pulled out of the garage it started to rain. it rained the whole way from barberton to cleaveland.
mom asked her brother, ‘what do you think?’
and he said, ‘i can tell you i’m glad it rained.’
me, too.
