death of a ghost

It's been an exhausting week. My maternal grandmother died last Friday night due to cancer. My mom flew in from Sydney last Sunday, and then she and I flew up to Ohio on Tuesday for the funeral - on puddle jumpers no less. We came back the same day, and Mom flew back to Sydney on Thursday. It all caught up with me Thursday afternoon, and I ended up working from home on Friday. I was literally in bed with a laptop.

It was a three-hour drive from the airport to the funeral home, though there were some nice stretches of Ohio countryside to see, and my cousin and her husband provided much-needed comic relief. We looked at their wedding photos and asked after their kids, and careers, and kept the rest of the family apprised, via mobile phone, of our travel progress.

Graysville, Ohio is about as small-town America as you can get, but I kind of liked it. Everything looked old and felt old and smelled old - buildings, roads, traffic lights, cars.

Everything went as well as we could have hoped for. We saw a ton of family that we hadn't seen in a long time, and some that we'd never met, like my uncle's kids, one of whom needed her hair re-done, so Mom did a French braid for her, while I listened to her talk about the science projects she had done in school this year (she's going into fifth grade next year).

Mom held up well, and my grandmother's sisters were glad to see her. It was like seeing shadows of my grandmother whenever one of them walked through the door. Aunt Betty had navy blue eyebrows to match her blue outfit, and Aunt Jeannie was decked out in a rusty orange shiny shirt, brown pants, funky sandals, and a Katharine Hepburn head bobble.

For 71, my grandmother looked remarkably well. Hardly any wrinkles and very smooth skin (I remember that she drank a lot of water). She was in a beautiful white crocheted shawl. I think she made it herself. Mom was on her knees crying in front of the casket for a good ten minutes - cathartic release, I'd say. I stood over her and the casket, passed tissues to Mom, and let myself feel guilty about not feeling anything. I hadn't seen my grandmother in more than 20 years due to a stunningly stupid family argument that I had no part of (I was about 10 when it happened), but which I was affected by. The argument was mostly my grandfather's doing, and my grandmother had little say in its results, or in much of anything from what I've heard, because my grandfather was always the one in charge.

The funeral director and his son were very kind and quiet spoken, which are probably typical characteristics of funeral people.

My grandfather gave me a locket that my grandmother wanted me to have, with a gruff "here, this is for you." After 20-some years, that's all he seemed to want to say to me. I had hoped for more - a "glad you're here," or "how are you?" or "I've missed you." I wouldn't have known what to say in return, so it's probably just as well. Mom noticed that he was wearing the same suit that he had worn at my parents' wedding 32 years ago. It was the only one he'd ever had tailor-made, and he was always proud of it.

The flight back home was very bumpy and uncomfortable, all the moreso in such a small plane. Mom and I slumped in our seats, held hands, and tried to come up with conversation topics to take our minds off the turbulence. I will say that seeing the lightening flash right in the clouds was pretty scarily spectacular.

Once back at BWI, we had a hell of a time trying to get to the carpark. We could see it from the windows but couldn't figure out how to get to it. We ended up trudging from one end of the airport to the other, stopping to rest and laugh at how ridiculously stressful and silly the whole day was.

We made it home by around midnight. I fell asleep on the couch in my suit, and Mom ended up sleeping until about 2 pm the next day. I ordered some takeout Chinese food for lunch, and got her up and eating. She was alarmed that she'd slept for so long.

I had no energy or heart to do much of anything this weekend. I stayed in bed, and only exerted myself to use the bathroom, change the DVD, and lift a book and look into it for awhile. I'm only at the computer so that I can say that I did sit upright at some point in the past two days.

I've got to hand it to my mom - to fly all the way from Australia to say goodbye to a woman who hadn't shown her much kindness or attention for 20 years and to face a father who had done far worse is really saying something: it was her mother, no matter what, and Mom didn't want to ever regret not making the effort. I'm pretty lucky to have a mom like that.

channeling the energy of the Universe into London

I sometimes listen to BBC radio on the Internet. This week, Radio 4 is running a series of programs on all the events that happened at this time last year:

- the G8 Summit
- Live 8
- London is chosen as the city site for the 2012 Olympics on July 6
- the July 7 tube and bus bombings
- the 60th celebration of the end of WWII on July 9

All of these things happened in the space of a few days. One woman put it quite well - "...imagine how much energy from the Universe was channeled into those events." Extraordinary, isn't it?

wedding

Hot. As. Hades. Even in a knee-length, sleeveless sundress and sandals and no stockings, I was dripping.

Ironically, my parents' wedding in 1974 was equally as bad, weather-wise. San Angelo, Texas. Middle of June. 110 degrees. Though my mom was in a paper-thin wedding dress, she still passed out once. How my dad made it through in his army uniform, I don't know.

It wasn't as bad as I expected. They decided against the electric palm tree, thank heaven. None of the guys' Hawaiian shirts were horrible. We didn't have to wear leis. I actually saw my father dance for the first time in my life. Us kids were introduced as the "blended family." Val did the introductions, and because it was Tim's birthday as well, Val gave him a singing telegram (one of her jobs from college). So combining my stepmother's kids and my stepfather's kids, I now have seven stepsiblings.

And we get to do it all over again when Em and Jamie get married next April.

fun with family

Today was a good day. I can't remember the last time I had one this fun.

Em and Jamie took aunts, uncles, and kid cousins to Baltimore for the day, but my grandmother didn't want to go out there, and my California aunt wasn't too keen on it either, so the three of us went to Ellicott City Main Street for the afternoon. I do much better in these small group settings and don't get nearly so drained.

We had a great lunch at Cacao Lane. Val had a wonderful ginger and lemon chicken soup (which I've got to find some way to reproduce) and the brie, which she said was awesome.

We checked out the herb shop, the tea shop, the print shop, a couple of the antique shops, the jewelry/fudge shop, and the fairy shop. It was fun to watch Val spend money on elf shoes, jewelry, a shawl, and a druid robe while my grandmother (her mother) scolded her to "put the jewelry back, you've got enough of your own jewelry to start your own shop."

My grandmother pointed out things in the antique shops that she either had at some point or still has, and remarked to Val that "when I die, you kids will have a gold mine." Val, of course, gave her one of those "mom-don't-say-things-like-that" looks.

We went back to Dad and Sharon's for a big family barbeque dinner, and then a bunch of the women decided that they needed hair help, so Em opened up the salon, and she and Mary Jo washed, cut, and colored for us while we sat around drinking wine, chattering, and flipping through magazines.

I hope Sharon learns to appreciate the family she's marrying into. The best thing about my family is how welcoming they are to newcomers, and even to ex's. My mom and my stepfather showed up for my 30th birthday party last year, and they weren't shunned by anyone. Quite the opposite. She may not legally be part of the family anymore, but she's still my mom, and that's reason enough to welcome her as far as my family is concerned. Isn't that cool?