Family Loss

Today was a bit of a rough day for the kids and for me -on a couple different levels though.

This morning, the kids had their final therapy appointment with the therapist at the agency we have been working with and this particular therapist is very good and both kids loved her very much too. To realize today may very well have been the last time they will see her for a long, long time to come. Also, that I will not see her either, in all likelihood, is a very sad, depressing thought for me too.  I know eventually it will come through to the kids what's happened here, who they will or won't possibly ever see again and that's going to be a tough pill then for them to swallow.

Thankfully, she's on Facebook and is one of my friends there so I can still somewhat keep in contact with her as time goes on anyway!

Then later today, I saw a post on Facebook from the granddaughter of one of my first cousins who lives about 12-13 miles from me. It hit me as ominous since the granddaughter had just written "I'm really missing my "Pap" now." (Pap being the name she called her Grandfather and I knew she was very close to both her grandparents there.) So I went to the granddaughter's mother's facebook page but she had not posted anything, however I did notice there were several messages there offering condolences to the granddaughter's Mom and that set the wheels in my mind to spinning.

Sadly, about 3-4 hours later, a message was posted by my cousin's niece, stating that her Uncle had passed away this morning so then, with that, my suspicions were confirmed.

Both my cousin and her husband are a couple of zany characters for sure! A good match in that respect. Also a match that had held up very well for about 56 years (if my math is correct.) He and another cousin of mine on that side of my family were about the only people I knew who could tease my youngest aunt about various things and they could both get away with harassing that aunt about some of her little quirks and she never got mad at them. One of those things that my cousin, the deceased's wife, and I came to realize that our aunt favored the men in the family over the girls!

I remember at our Aunt's birthday party when she turned 85 and as was the norm for her house, she had to have had the thermostat turned up to at least 80 degrees as it was hotter than Hades in the place. (As my daughter Mandy would say "She could turn a person into a grilled cheese sandwich in nothing flat!" And my cousin's husband of course was at this event as he was as close to our aunt as we nieces and nephews were. And he made a crack to her about the heat, saying "Aren't you going to try to save any oil for next year?" And my aunt laughed at his wisecrack but had I or his wife had made a comment like that to her, she'd have given us "what for" ya know!

When my older daughter heard what he had said to our aunt, she was totally dumfounded that he dared to say anything at all to our aunt, much less a wisecrack like that and live to tell about it!

So with my cousin's loss today of her beloved husband along with the finality for the kids of closing out their last therapy session here, it's going to be a doubly depressing week now for me, for my kids too and especially for the grandkids as they will be leaving me this week now instead of being here with me another week, at least, as had initially been planned.

Gonna be a teary one, that's for sure!