On Thursday, my Dad called and told me that my aunt (his sister) had what appeared to be a stroke while out with her friends for lunch. In the hospital she seemed to be better, but then had a seizure when she tried to get up. On Friday, he told me that it appeared that she had a brain tumor and that “things were grave”. He and my mom were packing to go to Illinois the next day, and planning on taking the week off to be there and visit. He told me he’d keep me updated.
Saturday morning, I went to the last basketball game of the season for my FRM’s son. Before the game, while waiting the other game to end, I got out some paper and started folding. Another fan was standing there and asked what I was making – I replied, “A dodecahedron”. I think he was a little taken aback, which I found amusing. During half-time, just before the minister started to speak (yeah, it was a basketball game, but it was held in a church’s gym) , I located that guy and gave him the finished model. He was impressed and started to hand it back to me and I waved him off and told him to keep it – then I had to head back to my seat before the prayer. The game itself was great and the little dude was on fire. He was quick, confident, and a really good team player.
Saturday afternoon, my room-mate’s sister, brother-in-law, and niece and nephew arrived. They were in town for a birthday party and stopped by for a visit. We watched a movie, played some playstation 3 and wii (I did okay in tennis and bowling – and kicked some ass in boxing for a while) . His sister was drinking wine, as she usually does to excess. It seemed like she had less than usual and was pretty okay to be around, but my room-mate thought that she had tremors from not having enough wine. She complained of a stomach problem and didn’t eat much – but my room-mate thought she was bad off. There was some tension that evening, but I think I managed to keep it from getting out of hand.
Sunday morning everyone was up early and my room-mate made rolls for breakfast. They left not long afterwards. I played video games much of the day – Bioshock 2 and Darksiders – and in the evening I called my Dad to get an update on my aunt since I hadn’t heard anything. It was a somewhat weird conversation.
He answered the phone with a “hey son, what’s up?”. Very casual with an undercurrent of “why would you be calling me?” Seemed pretty obvious to me. He didn’t really have much of an update and seemed distracted by the Scrabble game going on. Rather abruptly, he asked if I wanted to talk to my mom. I said okay and he passed the phone off – and mom had pretty much the same greeting for me. She had a little more detail about what was going on, but even with that didn’t have much to say. She mentioned going to visit grandma, but didn’t elaborate. They were getting ready to eat dinner and we ended the call on a strange note.
I talked to my sister later that evening and she had more detail on what was going on from a conversation with one of our cousins – details that I would have expected to get from dad and mom. We both agreed at how weird this has been and the problems with communication.
I guess I’m slightly torqued that this has all been a somewhat dry recitation of the facts. My dad’s sister-in-law passed away recently, his sister is now in the hospital with a brain tumor, and his mom is not getting better in the nursing home. I wanted to say to him, “Walk away from the scrabble game and tell me what’s going on with you and the family”. But how do you do that without sounding like a jerk?
So, I’m restless. Out of sorts. Not sleeping well. Tired, cranky, and wishing there was something I could do. There’s a line from Mr. and Mrs. Smith: “There’s this space between us and it keeps filling up with things we don’t say”.
Seems like I’ve got a lot of those spaces to deal with. And how do you get rid of those spaces without making things worse?
Well, I need to get back to work – big projects today that won’t wait for me to be in a better mood.
