So, I’m having a rough week. I should be heading to bed since my blood pressure has finally returned to normal, but I decided I’d waste a lil more life while I have it to waste.
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I’ve felt badly for a while about not seeing my cousin in forever. It’s ridiculous, really. He doesn’t even live 2 hours from me & I think the last time I saw him was when my sister visited; I think that’s been over 2 years ago.
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He’s the cousin I was always closest to. We used to spend days on end playing, fighting, & staying at one another’s house. He busted the awesome number plate on the front of my first bike… on my birthday, the day I got the bike, no less. I was five & still in the forgiving mood, I guess. He used to tell his mom he was afraid of me because I was such a bully. Can you believe that?! I forgave him for fucking up my 10 minute old bike! I’m pretty sure he was just a sissy… We used to listen to Joan Jett together, feed tomatoes to his turtle that was strangely named Tuna, & before his dad died, we’d all 3 snuggle on the sofa or ride his power wheels around the house.
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His mom has always been my favorite aunt of the 3 I have, despite the on/off relationship my family has always had with her. She was always fun, funny & reminded me of mom a lot. But ya know, it’s really difficult to be close to an addict so I can’t really place any blame on anyone. Things just go how they go, ya know? It’s just impossible to deal with at times.
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So we’ve currently been in the “off” position for the last couple of years since my grandma died. Due to the other bat-shit-insane aunt’s ability to drive wedges into other perfectly reasonable & maintained wedges, all 4 of them (mom & her sisters) quit talking for a time. My cousin’s mom made up with the bat-shit-insane aunt, while my mom made up with the distant-yet-obnoxious aunt. Living in Florida is my buffer zone & keeps me out of all the craziness – I only talk to my mom.
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After grandma died, bat-shit-insane aunt did some horrid shit to the other 3 & my sister. She stole a lot of the items my grandma had set aside for the others. She’s just a very petty, selfish, vindictive (without provocation) person that never learned how to behave in public, or private, for that matter. The only thing I remember about her from my childhood was her telling me, “Tan fat is better than white fat”. Charming thing to say to a chubby white kid, isn’t it?
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Anyway, since my cousin’s mom has had various medical issues, he decided she needed to live closer to him. He took the initiative to move her to Georgia & make sure she was all set up with everything she’d need to get better. His plan was actually working until bat-shit-insane aunt got involved. After that, his mom was suddenly moving to Colorado to live with bat-shit-insane aunt. He begged his mom not to go, but she insisted. Bat-shit-insane aunt began calling my cousin & leaving horrible voicemails for him. She told him he was the worst son anyone could ask for and that he should man-up & take care of his mother… & that’s the G rated version.
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Fast forward to Tuesday…
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My cousin called me. He’s always calm, laid back, not very excitable unless I do something stupid. And even then it’s generally to laugh at me; I’ve never seen him angry or panicked. But when he called, he told me that his little sister called him out of the blue to talk about their. They never talk because she’s basically trash with feet, but I digress…
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So when my cousin called me, he was relating all the things his sister had told him about his mom. I hadn’t talked to him in several months so I had no idea what had been going on with the bat-shit-insane aunt & his mom moving to Colorado.
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The story…
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His mom went back to Ohio to visit the little brother & sister (trashes with feet, both of them) in July. She ended up needing emergency surgery and has been in the hospital since then. Since July! Why no one else knew about this is beyond me. So I listened to his story & started to wonder why no one has done anything & why my cousin doesn’t know which hospital she’s in & why he hasn’t called the hospitals & why he doesn’t know about her condition aside of “it’s bad” as the trash with feet sister put it. Apparently the trashes with feet had been visiting her once in a while, but my fucking mother lives there! She lives less than 10 minutes from the damned hospital, she’s also a nurse & she had no idea her baby sister was in the fucking hospital.
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So I let him tell me what he knew & then tried to call my mom. Isn’t it amazing how no one’s ever around when something major is going on? Mom never answered & didn’t call back for several hours. In the mean time I had called the hospital I thought my cousin’s mom was in, found out her room number, her condition & discussed the family situation with the nurse with the hope that she’d have some guidance to avoid a war-like visit. And without violating anyone’s HIPAA rights, she let me know that war or not, time was of the essence.
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My mom called, finally. I had the lovely duty of telling my mom that her baby sister had been in the hospital for 3 months & was dying of various disorders ranging from a stroke, to diabetes to colon cancer & liver failure. Fun times. After mom was done freaking out, I gave her the info & she decided she was going to do what the nurse suggested; war or not, someone had to do something.
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After my mom visited the hospital, she called to tell me more about her condition & said it wasn’t as immediately grave as trash with feet had said it was, & she offered to get my cousin a ticket to get up there; I called my cousin to let him know this.
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Guess what happened then?
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His cunt of a girlfriend wouldn’t wake him up to talk to me. His mom is fucking dying 900 miles away & the cunt wouldn’t fucking wake him up!! She actually said, “he’ll be up after 11, you can talk to him then”. I said, “this is a bit of an emergency, it’s about his mom”. She said, “he’ll be up after 11, you can talk to him then”. I hung up on her.
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I will harm her one day for that.
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So I stayed up to call him after he went to work. He decided to tell his managers he was going to need to go soon & didn’t really know what the situation would turn out to be. He was relieved to know that it wasn’t as dire as trash with feet had made it sound; I was, too.
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Today…
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On my way to school tonight I called my mom to get the “what’s up?” run down so I could report back to my cousin to find out when he wanted to go up there. Apparently they did more tests on my cousin’s mom today & it’s so really super bad that I think she’s only alive because she’s a stubborn bitch. The diabetes is out of control, her platelet count is about as low as it can go & she’s actually still bleeding internally from the surgery in July, despite god knows how many super packed platelet transfusions she’s had. The colon cancer is beyond anything that can be controlled. The liver failure is imminent & even if there was a liver to transplant, she’d never live thru it. Her immune system is shutting down & the white cell count is barely measurable. She can’t eat by mouth because she’s aspirating anything she eats or drinks which is causing chronic pneumonia. The stroke she had left her slightly paralyzed on top of the osteoporosis, so she can’t really move well even if they would let her out of bed. And she could basically bleed out at any moment.
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Imagine how much I loved telling my cousin all of that. It broke my heart to pieces.
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Tuesday I tell my mom her sister is dying.
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Wednesday I tell my cousin his mom is dying.
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FML, really.
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It took me until tonight while driving to school (as it was all happening in that 45 minutes that it takes me to get there) for it to really sink in. I had my safety shield up for 2 days so I could be the rational one to keep everyone on task & coordinated. But as soon as I relayed all the info to my cousin & was rushing to school so I could get online to buy his tickets, it all sunk in & I realized I’ll never see my aunt again.
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So the moral of this very long story is:
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If you don’t want to die a slow miserable death when you’re only 52 years old, don’t party for 4 solid decades & expect your vital parts to keep working. Don’t drink, snort, smoke, shoot up, or swallow everything that crosses your path. And stay home so your babies don’t grow up to be trash-with-feet-criminals & force your only good kid to grow up way before his time. The younger ones never had a chance & now their kids aren’t going to either. They’re at 4 between the 2 of them… it’s not going to get any better once their mom dies.
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