family fun time

back in jersey after a relatively eventful few days in pittsburgh.

wednesday was long, but uneventful. i woke up at 4am, left my apartment a little before 5am, drove eric to the newark airport and took of straight from there for pittsburgh, got in around 11:30am... easy drive and beautiful weather. i stayed with mom's younger sister priscilla and her family for the weekend, in addition to my uncle and two cousins, they have 6 parrots, 2 dogs, a cat, a fish, and a rabbit... i was roommates with the rabbit for the week... he runs races around his cage around 5am every day and is good at trying to escape =P

thursday was obviously thanksgiving... my mom and brother drove up from TN on wednesday, and my cousin heather (not one of aunt priscilla's kids) came over for a bit to visit too (she lives in pittsburgh too)... we all had thanksgiving dinner at roy (my step-grandpa)'s apartment, and then went to visit w/ g-ma in the nursing home... i always tell myself she's a little slower each time b/c she's tired or something, but her memory is definitely gradually declining and that's weird and hard... she's still her, still knows us, still has a good sense of humor and is interested in what we're up to, but she's ready to "go home", is bored, is depressed, is frustrated, and is slipping that it's harder and harder to have a real conversation with her that involves more than yes/no, lots of waiting, and short half sentence answers.

the main reason mom and my brother were up is that my step g-pa has been worried that someone should sort through g-ma's stuff in storage since she'll never be in shape to go down and sort through it, so most of the weekend was spent doing that... it's kinda weird b/c this is the kind of thing you'd think you'd be doing after she's gone, but mom, ryan, and i worked for quite some time... she had like 40 filing boxes full of stuff somewhat sorted that goes back for generations before her... i enjoyed reading christmas letters from my great grandparents over the span of 30-40 years... looking through old pictures and stuff that belonged to my uncle jonathan (mom's little brother, died of cancer at age 6) and reading my grandparents' and great-grandparents' baby books. we found my great-grandpa's diploma from when he graduated from seminary in 1922 with copies in latin and in german too! i took most of the old books to distribute to people i thought would appreciate and mom and ryan took a lot of the general misc. since he's working on genealogy research... it was interesting but a lot of work!

yesterday was g-ma's 75th birthday, even though she insisted she was turning 88 and felt like 100. we read her baby book to her and poems she had written in high school and her high school yearbook (one of her nicknames was "math whiz" -- apparently i come by it a little more honestly than i thought =P).

it was a good time... just strange w/ g-ma... like to illustrate her mind going, she insisted i take her for a stroll in her wheelchair on thursday afternoon, which is fine and normal, but insisted we were going "to the door". so she had me push her down the hallway. when we got to the glass door with a nice view i though she was talking about she told me to keep going down the hall and gave me definite directions at each turn until she finally led us to a dead end in the hallway, farther into the building than i've ever been before that just faced a plan solid window-less fire escape door... i told her there was nothing to see and i was going to take her back to her section of the building or at least that direction, she looked confused, and muttered something about tissues and looked distressed when i got her back near the rest of the family.

apparently friday, while mom ryan and i were going through storage and aunt pris was decorating g-ma's room for christmas, g-ma kept asking where ryan and priscilla were instead of kris (mom) and ryan... and priscilla kept telling her that *she* was priscilla and ryan and kris would be back later... when priscilla told her bye and that she was off to find me for lunch, g-ma said "oh, look for lara at the door at the end of the hall".

aunt pris also says that a few times (she comes to visit g-ma every sunday since she lives in town) g-ma's also gotten really upset when she's brought her back to her room and insisted the nurses moved all her stuff and that her room isn't hers... the nurses come by and tell her she's joking and should be nice, but g-ma has really gotten upset some of the time...

when she first had her strokes i was really upset and not dealing well with it... now that i've come more to terms with where she is, it's hard but i've somewhat adjusted to where she's at now... it's just hard to see her go downhill so noticeably in just 3 months, that yeah... end of thought... it's getting dark and i have tons of stuff i inherited from storage to get out of my car and up to my room.

later people!