I said it wasn’t going to be so long, and I’m trying to keep my word! Of course, I started this in January, and now it’s already April, so I need to try a little harder. We got our Christmas tree at the first farm where we got out of the car. Note that I didn’t say the first farm we went to – the first one we went to was already closed. Then there was a dilemma – should we go north from where we were, or south? Once again, it was late in the day (this time, there was a soccer tournament, picking up the car from the repair shop, lunch, and THEN the tree) and we probably couldn’t do both. We went north, to another place we had never been before, a little off the beaten path. They had a limited selection of tree varieties, and the kind we liked also happened to be the kind you have to wear gloves to put the lights on, because the needles are so prickly. There were a couple of reasonable trees, not ridiculously fat, not too tall. I thought they were perfect. The kids thought they were too small, of course. But it was late in the day, and if we had gone to the other tree farm, there were no guarantees that they would have anything better, or even as good, and this one would be closed by the time we knew that. (And I wasn’t coming back by myself the next day to cut this tree!) So reason prevailed, and we got a normal sized tree! Of course, it looked great once it was inside and had some lights. It took me a week to get the lights on it, and it never did get any ornaments! But it was beautiful anyway. Matt’s girlfriend was here from Texas, and she joined us on the adventure. Later on, she commented that the experience was just like a Hallmark movie! That made me laugh – I can’t imagine any part of life here being anything like a Hallmark movie. The negative part of the day spent together was that the next day, Matt didn’t feel well. His symptoms didn’t even last 24 hours, so we didn’t really think anything of it, until Susie got a sore throat, and Matt got a positive Covid test. So we went to get tested. Three hours in line on a cold Saturday morning – what fun! Susie’s test was positive, and ours were negative, but we hadn’t done any kind of isolating in the house, so it seemed like it was only a matter of time. Sunday evening, I was trying to tell myself that I didn’t really have a sore throat. That didn’t work! More tests, thankfully scheduled and not involving a long wait outside, and mine was positive. Steve never did have any symptoms or a positive test, so I guess his booster shot started working right away! So we spent Christmas here with just the four of us, again. On the positive side, it is very freeing to know I have some antibodies. I still wore a mask for a while, and now that the numbers are down, I don’t worry so much. We had to postpone our booster shots, which were scheduled to be during our isolation time, but we got them eventually. I mentioned in the last post that my dad was living here in our in-law apartment. Well, that was going well, until it wasn’t. He was having some intestinal discomfort, and things got out of hand from there. Very long story short, he ended up with a perforated bowel that required emergency surgery. After many days in ICU, where we couldn’t visit, he was moved to the step-down unit, but he passed away before I could get there to see him. I had gone to Pennsylvania for a funeral in New Jersey, and the hospital called to let us know. He was just 5 days short of his 95th birthday. I couldn’t believe it! He had so many garden plans for this summer, so many things he wanted to plant, and seeds he still wanted to order. So now, I will be planting at least a few seeds of all of the things he had already gotten. I hope we get more than we can eat, like he would have gotten! My sisters and my brother came down here to help go through Dad’s stuff and clean up the apartment. Dad disliked cleaning even more than I do. They were amazing! I would have left it as it was, and done a little bit as I felt the urge, but they were having none of that. Things were sorted and donated, and we sent pictures of things to the grandchildren in case they wanted anything. I couldn’t have done it without their help. We spent a lot of time laughing, remembering, and only a little time crying. Dad had a good life. It was weeks before I stopped looking for the things he got regularly at the grocery store – small greenish bananas, his particular brand of peanut butter, among other things. I never mastered the potato selection, even after 6 months of trying. We went on our usual ski trip in January. It was so nice to experience “normal” for a weekend. We went to the glass museum again, and still haven’t seen everything there even after three visits. There was enough snow to ski in some places, so we went out on Sunday and Monday. It was great to see everybody! I’m fine being alone a lot, but it’s definitely nicer to have my social life returning to normal. One of those “normal” things has been a trip to Florida with my sisters in the spring. One sister who lives in Maine has a house in Florida, and the rest of us join her there for a week. It’s so nice to leave the cold for a few days! Last time we went, it was just at the beginning of Covid Times – we didn’t even know what it was! One of my sisters spent much of that week talking to people at work about how to deal with a group returning from Italy, which was a hot spot at the time. I don’t know if any of those people ended up being sick, but it was a mess, and there was a lot of stress on what was supposed to be her vacation. We had no idea what was coming!! On our previous trips, we would spend a day with Dad while we were there. This year, we went to the town where he lived to attend a memorial service hosted by the USSVI base where he was a member. It was a very nice event, and all of the veterans there clearly knew him, which was nice. We came home with a flag, some certificates, and great memories. While we were in the area, we drove by his old house. The new owner and the wonderful neighbor who did so much for Dad were outside, so we stopped to say hello. The house looks good, and there was a boat at the dock. We were happy to see that the new owner loved the place as much as Dad did. As I’ve mentioned a lot, I hate to clean. Dusting is the worst, so there’s a thick coat of it on a lot of surfaces in my house. The other day I was looking online for cleaning advice (the best advice is to hire somebody!!) and one of the things I saw was to turn on some music. Since I’m trying to be better about cleaning (I have trouble justifying not doing it myself, since I’m home all day) I tried it, to see if it would help. We have two playlists that we made, country and classic rock. I chose the country one – I’ve been thinking about Karen a lot in the last few days – and the first song was “Red Solo Cup.” Karen knew all of the words to a lot of country songs, but definitely that one! It always made us laugh when it came on the radio back in the day. The next song that caught my attention was “Road Less Traveled” by Lauren Alaina. Karen loved traveling, and no vacation was complete without at least one dirt road. We still try to find them when we go somewhere. I mostly only know the chorus, but when I looked up the words, I realized that it was a good Karen song, and I’m sure she liked it. And then there was “Who You’d be Today” by Kenny Chesney. Bawling, again. I frequently mention how much I appreciate hearing from people remembering Karen. Around Christmas I got a note from her oldest friend, telling me about how she was motivated by memories of Karen. I set it aside so I could mention it, but now I can’t find it. I don’t want to get my facts wrong, so I’ll include the details in another post, but thank you so much, Kalene, for sending me that note! This post was more timely than the last one, but hopefully I will do better next time. Thanks for being interested enough to read them.
2 Comments
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9/9/2022 06:31:47 am
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AuthorI’m Karen. I was originally diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL) in August 2004 when I was 10 years old. When I was working on my college and scholarship application essays two years ago, I wrote about my journey. Although it was a rough few years, it became such an influential part of my life that I can’t, and wouldn’t want to, imagine my life without having had cancer. I called it the worst best thing that ever happened to me. Archives
April 2022
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