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February 20 2022
Feb. 20th, 2022 11:27 pmThere's a spot on 42 where dumpsters used to be, and every time we pass there, my dad tells a story. EVERY. TIME. And it's a story I was there for it when it happened anyway! I don't need him to tell it. Story: when we were little, we (me, mom, dad, brother) were going up to the junction and we had stopped at the dumpsters (my dad has always been big on dumpster diving) and my brother was chucking rocks across the road. There was a dip on the other side of the road, and apparently there were a couple cows hanging out in the stream in that dip, and one came charging up the hill, we assume after it had been hit by a rock. It's become a family legend now.
I actually heard something new from my dad tonight though, which is super unusual, because he usually sticks to the same topics when he's drunk and I thought I'd heard them all. But tonight he was talking about his sister Evelyn, how she was raised by their grandparents and how she looked more like a Via or a Morgan than a Patterson and no one was ever sure if she was actually Granddaddy's. She was the one closest in age to my dad, and the one that I sometimes I'm told I remind people of, and the one that they don't talk about, and the reason my dad hates when I talk about my mental illness.
Evelyn committed suicide when she was 21.
My dad's sister Nita is the in hospital today on comfort care. She's been sick for a while, and declining rapidly the last couple of months, but she had a pretty bad fall last week and hit her head; she regained consciousness in the hospital but was not coherent. My aunt Vicky was at the hospital with her today and called me to ask if I'd get in touch with Nita's kids to tell them that they should really be/get to the hospital. One of the kids is dead, one is in prison. One went and stayed several days in January when I needed my dad to be in town with us, and when Nita ended up in the hospital that time, K stole a bunch of stuff from the house. And the car. She brought the car back though. The fourth kid - who biologically belongs to my Aunt Nancy but was raised by Nita - is Travis, and he took a week off work in December and a week off in January to spend at Nita's with her, but he and his wife both don't have licenses and have no way to get to the hospital. So that's fun.
My Aunt Lettie and my dad's other daughter Tonya went up to Nita's today and took a bunch of stuff - like, not sentimental items, but STUFF, like things they can turn around and sell. When I went up to get my dad - who has been staying there lately, but also on and off for the last ten years - I found the one piece of cast iron that Lettie didn't take and snagged it. And rescued a bunch of pictures that had been dumped out on the floor, so that I can give them to Travis. (I don't need any more family pictures - I really need to go through the ones I have, preferably before anyone else dies because there are already some people/places in these pictures I'll never be able to identify. Somehow I became the picture person, so I got all the pictures after my Grandma died, after my Aunt Nancy killed herself, after my Aunt Shirley died. There's a lot of them.)
Yeah. 2022 is shit.
And my mom hasn't eaten in a week, so there's that. She's under hospice care, and she caught COVID when it ran through our entire family in January, and she's just not doing well.
I actually heard something new from my dad tonight though, which is super unusual, because he usually sticks to the same topics when he's drunk and I thought I'd heard them all. But tonight he was talking about his sister Evelyn, how she was raised by their grandparents and how she looked more like a Via or a Morgan than a Patterson and no one was ever sure if she was actually Granddaddy's. She was the one closest in age to my dad, and the one that I sometimes I'm told I remind people of, and the one that they don't talk about, and the reason my dad hates when I talk about my mental illness.
Evelyn committed suicide when she was 21.
My dad's sister Nita is the in hospital today on comfort care. She's been sick for a while, and declining rapidly the last couple of months, but she had a pretty bad fall last week and hit her head; she regained consciousness in the hospital but was not coherent. My aunt Vicky was at the hospital with her today and called me to ask if I'd get in touch with Nita's kids to tell them that they should really be/get to the hospital. One of the kids is dead, one is in prison. One went and stayed several days in January when I needed my dad to be in town with us, and when Nita ended up in the hospital that time, K stole a bunch of stuff from the house. And the car. She brought the car back though. The fourth kid - who biologically belongs to my Aunt Nancy but was raised by Nita - is Travis, and he took a week off work in December and a week off in January to spend at Nita's with her, but he and his wife both don't have licenses and have no way to get to the hospital. So that's fun.
My Aunt Lettie and my dad's other daughter Tonya went up to Nita's today and took a bunch of stuff - like, not sentimental items, but STUFF, like things they can turn around and sell. When I went up to get my dad - who has been staying there lately, but also on and off for the last ten years - I found the one piece of cast iron that Lettie didn't take and snagged it. And rescued a bunch of pictures that had been dumped out on the floor, so that I can give them to Travis. (I don't need any more family pictures - I really need to go through the ones I have, preferably before anyone else dies because there are already some people/places in these pictures I'll never be able to identify. Somehow I became the picture person, so I got all the pictures after my Grandma died, after my Aunt Nancy killed herself, after my Aunt Shirley died. There's a lot of them.)
Yeah. 2022 is shit.
And my mom hasn't eaten in a week, so there's that. She's under hospice care, and she caught COVID when it ran through our entire family in January, and she's just not doing well.
