I should definitely have gone to bed an hour ago, but I’m wide awake, so whatever. I’m in Syosset right now and it’s 1:15am. I have to get up at 6am to get ready to go into the city with Uncle Lou & Aunt Anne for Grandma’s surgery tomorrow morning. I think my mom feels really bad that she can’t go – she’s always gotten to be there in the past, but has no choice tomorrow; she has to go to work. I have always been extremely close with my grandparents – there are times when they were the people in my family whom I’ve been closest with – so when my grandpa had to have surgery this summer, I got up at 5am to be at the hospital with my mom, grandma & aunt at 6:30am and now I’m getting up early to go in with my aunt & uncle (my mom’s older sister/brother).
I’m kinda nervous, even though it’s not a big deal at all. She’s having surgery on her knee & she’s been in a lot of pain for the last few months. If you’ve ever met my grandmother, you know that she is not one to ever complain about anything. She’s Italian. If something’s upsetting her, she goes to church or sits on the couch & says the rosary over & over again. Everytime I whine about life or am visibly depressed, she yells at me to be optimistic because all things pass. But lately she can’t even walk around the house within wincing in pain & it’s very strange. The woman’s always healthy, always very strongminded, always here to take care of you. So I’m just having a difficult time accepting that my grandparents are getting older. I’m so lucky that before now my family’s never had to deal with something like this, at least from Grandma (my grandfather’s had prostate & skin cancer removed). And it’s not even a big medical problem.
I just keep remembering what happened last October, when my great aunt Lilly had a similar knee surgery done & my great uncle Emilio (my grandma’s brother) passed away completely unexpectedly when he went home for a little while. Imagine your husband of 53-years telling you he’d be back when you woke up & then just never coming back. He fell asleep in a chair watching TV around noon & had a heart attack in his sleep. My 16-year-old cousin saw him in the chair & got nervous when he wouldn’t come to the door (he lives next door; they all live in the same neighborhood in Syosset as my grandparents & uncle), called his father who called my uncle. My uncle ran out of the house, my grandma saw him & got in her car to follow him & then my grandparents watched as my uncle broke in a window to try to resusitate their brother, who had been over for dinner the night before. It was probably the worst thing my family’s gone through in a very long time. I’ve never seen my grandparents or my uncle cry like that. They sat with the body for hours afterwards, waiting for the ME to come & pronounce him dead & the cops to come investigate (when someone dies anywhere that’s not at a hospital, the cops have to come, even if it’s clear what happened). It was…very bad. It happened during that 3-week monsoon. I had Rocky Horror rehearsals/production staff obligations & midterms. I missed my Marriage & Family midterm, as well as the one for whichever Carol Pauli class I was taking. Matt Andrews, ever the understanding professor, deducted me a letter grade for missing class for the funeral even though he knew that’s where I was & Eddie, Steph, Randy, etc. all backed me up on it. That’s why I’m not a Matt fan. I drove from Marist to Syosset to Marist to Ridge to Marist to Syosset to Marist from a Thurs-Tues time period in that pouring rain. That was not a good week, no.
Anyway, I think I feel a little better now, maybe. I had a fun weekend, I’ll talk about it when it’s not 1:31am & I don’t have to be up in less than 5 hours. I’m going to a saloon opening in NYC tomorrow night for some dude who does Sarah Jessica Parker’s hair (through Starked NY). So that’ll be sorta neat, at least for the potential networking? Meh, I’ve rambled way too much. This post is depressing. Sorry.
