RIP Grandpa

My Grandpa passed away Friday night. He surprised everyone by lasting just one night shy of a full 2 weeks with nothing entering his body but morphine to make sure he wasn’t in pain and the very occasional sip of water when he was conscious. He was even talking to the nurses at the beginning of the week.

I’m so sad he’s gone, but he would never have wanted to be like he was, so I’m glad he’s no longer wasting away and in a way that was not him. He never wanted to be like that.

The funeral will be Wednesday, I do feel bad that we can’t go. I want to send my Grandma something, but I don’t know what. She’s in what I guess would be an assisted care facility herself. If anyone has any ideas of what to send, please share. So far all I can come up with is a letter and some pictures, I’m horrible at writing letters though, not sure what to say. Grandpa loved trains, I wish I could find some sort of train themed thing that could be engraved in his memory or something. I don’t know. I’m not used to this sort of thing, I don’t know what’s appropriate and I don’t have much money to spend. I’m worried that now that Grandpa is gone she will go downhill fast, I hope I’m wrong. Grandma is tiny but strong.

I have so many posts I want to do, hopefully I’ll feel up to doing some better posting soon. It’s not just Grandpa passing away, but I’ve been feeling a little down lately anyway. Money is definitely high on the list of reasons. But everything else just seems to come together all at once too. I hate never feeling like I fit in anywhere. I have felt like this my whole life. I’m always too fat for the skinny crowd but too skinny for the fat crowd. Too poor for the rich crowd but too rich for the poor crowd(bwahaha, yeah, right, rich). Too smart for the dumb crowd, too dumb for the smart crowd. Not conservative enough for the conservative crowd, but way too conservative for the liberal crowd. Too funny for stick up their ass crowd, but not funny enough for never take life seriously crowd. Too nice for most, not nice enough for some. I just feel we live in a world where if you’re just nice, calm, cool and  middle of the road you’re nothing, you have to be extreme to get noticed or be worth anything. I refuse to change who I am, but wish more people would realize that middle of the road is a good thing too. I always feel this way, just sometimes it bothers me more than others. I think it has been bothering me a lot lately because I tried so hard for the past years to gain more followers for my blog. I see others who started their blog around the same time as I did and they have hundreds of followers even though I never see them commenting on other peoples blogs. How do they get so many followers? While I haven’t had as much time lately, in the past year I have spent a LOT of time reading, following and commenting on other blogs. I have done everything that top bloggers list to recommend getting more followers and none of it has worked for me. I know having a lot of followers shouldn’t be a big deal, and in many ways it’s not, but in a lot of ways it is. If you have very few followers it makes you feel like you’re not good enough to follow, having a decent amount of followers makes you feel like what you’re spending the time to post is worth something. I don’t know, I don’t think I’m explaining very good what I mean lol, my mind is mush. I know there’s some out there who understand what I’m trying to say and struggle too.

Hubby works this week and then is on holidays for 2 weeks, the first week we’re sticking around the house and getting stuff done, the second week we are going to go camping again(please let the weather cooperate!), so I likely won’t be posting at all that second week. I’m going to try and pull my emotions together though in the next couple of days here and get back to posting some good stuff!

Jolene

The Great Outdoors

It’s been a pretty good week! We went camping for 2 nights, first time in 20 years hubby and I have been camping, first time ever for my boys. We all had a great time. It would have been better if it was a bit warmer and a little less windy, but we had a lot of fun nonetheless. The boys didn’t get to go fishing as they were hoping to, we even had the river running right behind our campsite, but the fish are still spawning and the first day fishing is allowed is tomorrow. They were kind of bummed about that. We’re going to go camping again in a few weeks when hubby is on holidays and we can go for longer hopefully because he has more days off and it should hopefully be warmer by then.

We thought about staying one more night, but figured we wouldn’t push our luck and since it’s Friday we knew the campground would fill up more and not be quite as peaceful as it was during the week. It was my birthday today too(I can’t believe I’m 37! Seriously hard for me to comprehend I’m that old already LOL!), so hubby wanted to take me out for dinner(a hamburger since that’s all we can afford LOL, but it’s my favorite food so I love it all the same!). I also haven’t had much sleep for a few days, I don’t sleep well at the best of times so sleeping somewhere “different” doesn’t help. I probably slept 3 hours max the first night, but I managed about 5 hours last night. I’m definitely exhausted and ready for my bed tonight.

Amazingly my Grandpa is still hanging in there. My Mom and Dad ended up flying out at the end of last week because the Dr said 2 days at the most. A week later and he’s still hanging in there. He was taken from the hospital back to his bed and taken off the IV last Saturday. For the first few days all he did was sleep, but in the past few days he has actually been awake and even talking to the nurses a bit(though can’t really be understood much). He has had nothing going into his body except morphine to make sure he’s not in pain and the occasional sip of water for a week and he’s still hanging in! It sounds like my Grandma might be having some difficulties though and on top of it there’s some sort of outbreak at the home she’s in. I’m hoping she will be strong and stick around for a while longer. I’m so happy for my Dad too, they were able to go see his Mom today and she actually knew who he was and looked pretty good.

So that’s been my week! I have a ton of cleaning and organizing stuff from camping to do, amazing how much work just for 2 days of camping lol, at least it was fun though! I need to get back to some regular blogging though, and soon! I know last summer I slacked a bit, just so much on the go, I’ll try to be better this summer!

 

Jolene

 

Grandpa

I’m very fortunate that at my age I have not had to deal very much with death. I’m an extremely emotional person, but I don’t like to let people see me be emotional. Some people may find me “cold”, when I’m fighting with everything I have to keep my emotions in check, keep from breaking down. A huge amount of time that I’m alone is spent crying, it’s just how I deal with things. I have had a lot to deal with in my life, just not death. I guess eventually everyone has to. Sure, lots of family I don’t know well is gone, but people I don’t have much memory of even meeting. Now it’s coming closer though.

We’ve never been too close with extended family because they all live in Ontario, my parents moved away from Ontario when I was just a newborn. My Grandpa on my Dad’s side passed away when I was about 12, my Grandma hasn’t known who I am for a very long time. That set of Grandparents were farmers, they didn’t go anywhere, I never saw my Grandpa except when we would go there to visit. Grandma finally left home to travel after Grandpa passed away. I called her about 6 or 7 years ago, she barely knew who I was and certainly did not know who my kids were or that I had any. They got to meet her once at my brothers wedding, 12 years ago I believe(the last time I saw her), but at less than 6 months old and 2 years old they of course don’t remember her. Grandma’s hanging on. For the past few years I’ve heard that it will likely be her last Christmas, but I guess she’s not ready to go yet. She’s 96.

I haven’t seen my Grandparents on my Mom’s side in a very long time either. I’m guessing 9 years, maybe 10. I saw them a bit more growing up. We would visit them, they would visit us. I have great memories of both of them. I wish we lived close and I got to spend more time with them. I loved Grandpa’s blacksmithing and his old Rumley. I loved Grandma’s pies and jams. I loved “camping” at their old caboose in the bush. Grandpa hasn’t known anyone for a little while now. Grandma still is doing ok for her age.

My Mom called the other day, Grandpa is in the hospital. He has pneumonia. In both lungs. He’s 93?(either 93 now or on his next birthday, can’t remember what Mom said now). Mom called again yesterday, it’s not looking good. He can’t swallow, he’s not getting any food. They don’t recommend feeding tubes at this age and he’s already pulling out the other tubes so probably wouldn’t keep it in anyway. His only nutrients right now is through a tube, an IV I guess? My Dad called today, my Mom must be busy packing or too emotional to talk, likely both. The family(my Mom and her siblings) have to decide when to pull the tubes, it has to be done. He’ll be gone soon after that.

They were waiting for Grandma to ask to be taken to see him. Yesterday she hadn’t yet asked so they asked her. She did. She got to see him. Today she asked to go see him again. I know Grandma is pretty strong. She still knows who everyone is, she still remembers. I can’t imagine how hard it is to be strong, they have been married for 66 1/2 years. She hasn’t been able to be with him for a while, they’ve both needed a different level of care.

My Mom didn’t know when to go, she’s the only one who doesn’t live nearby. Going too early would only mean sitting there unable to do anything, he doesn’t even know who she is. If he hung on for a long while they couldn’t afford to stay, if he improved and they came home they couldn’t afford to go back, though I’m sure a way would have been found. Now they know for sure it’s the end. My parents will leave this weekend, they’ll drive. I hope for my Mom’s sake that they wait to pull the tubes and he holds on until she gets there. Even if she only gets minutes with him to say goodbye.

My sister and one brother will go to the funeral. Another brother apparently says he’s thinking about it, I don’t think he will though. I can’t go. My financial situation is no secret. There’s no money to go. But I’ve known that all along. I knew the time was coming and even when our finances were better I knew there was no way I could afford to go when the time came. The days are numbered before my Grandma’s are gone too, yeah one is doing well, but for how long after her love of so many years is gone? Thank goodness for memories, the memories I have of younger and healthier Grandparents are what makes it easy to accept that I never got to say goodbye. In some ways it’s comforting to know that my great memories are my last and not a funeral.  I’m already crying more than I thought I would, I’m not very good at this.

Jolene

Friend Makin’ Monday

Sorry I just haven’t been in the blogging mood. I want to be posting more but I’m struggling right now and as usual for me I don’t know how to handle things. We’re planning on 2 or 3 days of camping next week, first time in 20 years I’ve been camping. Fortunately other than the camping fee and gas, both of which are not a lot because we only need a tent site and our car is really good on gas, it’s the closest thing to a “free” break we’re going to get. I’m hoping it will help clear my head so I can figure out what to do. Between the yard sale and selling some homeschool items we don’t need anymore we made more than enough to pay for the little camping trip without having to touch what little money I have to pay bills with. Of course I could really use that money to pay for food and bills, but I need to clear my head and sitting here day after day trying to figure out a solution is only leading me to my breaking point.

Anyway, as long as Friend Makin’ Monday’s are simple to do at least it’s a way for me to keep posting without too much thought for now. So here’s this weeks FMM:

If you’ve taken part in FMM then you know the rules. If you’re new, please take a moment to answer this week’s question on your own blog then add your link in the comments section here at: www.alltheweigh.com so we can all see your FMM questions and answers. Please invite your blog readers to add their links here too so everyone has to opportunity to be seen. The idea is to connect with other awesome bloggers so take a moment to post your own FMM post and comment on a couple of other posts. Now it’s time for this week’s topic!

FMM: Quick and Easy

 

1. When is your birthday? June 15

2. When was the last time you wrote a letter to someone on paper and mailed it?  omg, a letter? Like a real handwritten letter? Holy cow, it has to have been 25 years I’m sure! I’ve never been good at keeping in touch with people lol.

3. What did you eat for breakfast this morning? Eat, nothing. Drank coffee LOL.

4. Who is the next band/artist you will see perform live? Who knows, last concert was about 4 years ago, I’m sure it will be a very very long time before I can afford a concert .  It will likely be someone Country though. If I could it would be either Brad Paisley or Garth Brooks who are both coming here next month for the Calgary Stampede, Garth Brooks sold out in seconds though , so even if I had money I wouldn’t get to go to that one.

5. What is the last song you listened to? Honestly don’t know, usually only listen to music in the car.

6. If you could be fluent in any other language, which one would you choose? Definitely Spanish, I learn some and then forget it because we don’t speak it, then learn some again and forget it again, been like with me for years. Would love to learn and make it stick.

7. Does anything on your body hurt right now? Better question would be what doesn’t, I think my pinky is feeling ok.

8. What’s your favorite sports team? Stewart-Haas Racing, loooove my Nascar. Next would be Calgary Flames.

9. How often do you watch the news? Lately, never.

10. Do you wear glasses? Yeah, everyone and everything is a blurry blob without them. Went years without them, can’t figure out how I managed to get by.

 

Jolene