When it rains

This is probably a lot more somber than my usual posts so those of you who come here for my low brow humor should probably just skip this one. Don't worry though, the low brow stuff will be back in the not so distant future, I promise.

As there is no more reason to not post entries on my blog regarding the recent tragedies in my family, I guess I should just go ahead and get them out of my system.

First, this past Tuesday, my grandmother passed away at the age of 81 with what I can only imagine as the majority of her loved ones surrounding her hospital bed. As bad as this situation was, it was not an unexpected one and I’m just glad that she had the time she did to see everyone. I was fortunate enough to be able to meet her twice during my recent trip back home and though part of mind knew it could be the last time on this earth I could see her, the optimist that always guides my actions refused to let me treat our meetings as such.

When I finally did get to talk to her on the phone for the last time, my mind was poised to try to say everything I needed to say to her in a few short sentences since I knew she couldn’t respond to me. After fighting off the urge to say the trivial “How are you doing?” at the beginning of the conversation, I couldn’t realign my thoughts. My mind started flooding with thoughts and emotions and I was for a brief moment completely silent as I realized that nothing I will ever say after this moment would ever touch my grandmother’s ears. After doing my best to sound stable and saying the few things I needed to say, I hung up and found myself back in my silent company bathroom, with a loud horn playing in my mind. I will miss you, Grandma.

R.I.P. Grandma

A few days before this happened, an unexpected tragedy happened: our family dog, Colt, died. Since he was only about 5 years old, this was really a surprise and when my mother recounted the events, I was sad she had to go through the night-long ordeal without me or my brother there. Colt was a great dog, as anyone who knew him could attest, and it’s a real shame he had to go the way he did. I will miss you too, Colt.

R.I.P. Colt

Now it would be completely inappropriate to follow this sort of entry up with a story about how my Christmas went, wouldn’t it? Well, if I had a happy, merry, whatever Christmas then I’d probably agree with that but since I didn’t, I’ll sum it all up here with as much humbuggery as possible.

I got pretty sick from some sort of flu bug which I have now recovered from on Sunday, or Christmas Eve-eve. The bug lasted just long enough to keep me pretty much incapacitated in my apartment by myself until the day after Christmas. So the only real celebrating I got to do was watch the occasional 30 minutes of Scrubs and hoist my huge bottle of orange juice to my lips before I fell back asleep.

So all in all a pretty good couple of weeks.

When it rains, huh?