2:41 AM, 10th November, 2014

If you follow me on Twitter, you know that my sister-in-law passed away on November 10th.  She died peacefully - I saw her breathe her last breath, open her eyes, and then, just... never take another one, from the same exact chair I am sitting in to write this post, 12 days later.

She fought so diligently and so hard, for so long, even though she really only had a short time. Her cancer proved to be super-aggressive, and ... towards the end, there wasn't much we could do for her but keep her comfortable, and wait.

That last Sunday was horrible, with last rites, and a house full of family - hers and ours, and theirs - and her being unresponsive by dinnertime. 

That morning, early - like 4:30 in the morning, early - I smelled the sharp scent of urine, and had to feel to see if she'd wet the bed (mostly because, at this point, she was sweating through her clothes so much that she was almost always damp). It was her first bout of incontinence, and - although I knew it boded ill, I did not realize how quickly things would go downhill from there.  I had to wake my brother up to help me change the sheets, and then she took her pain meds and went back to sleep.

A few hours later, she'd woken up in extreme pain, couldn't seem to settle at all. Just kept shifting from one end of the bed to the next, every 5 minutes or so.  She took more pain meds, but was just super uncomfortable and couldn't find a spot that worked for her. She told me her pain was 10/10 and she was crying, almost incoherent.

I woke my brother up again - from the couch this time - and he called the hospice nurse. Who came and different meds were administered, and we - the nurse and I resettled her on the couch, to try to help her find a way to sit with less pain while she waited for the meds to kick in.

It was during this transition that she was last semi-lucid, at least in my presence, and as I sat her down on the couch after yet another 'I'm so uncomfortable, I just need to move' attempt on her part (wordless, though - that's just the impression I got), she leaned over and gave me a kiss on the forehead.

I don't know if she knew who I was then. I don't know if she meant that for me, and I feel guilty that I was the person who got her last kiss. I haven't told anyone in our family that she did it, I don't think (although ... things were pretty intense there for a while last week, so I may have told one of my sisters without thinking about it), but it felt like a "Thank you" and a blessing and - now, knowing it was her last, and she didn't get to give it to my brother or their kids, or even her sister who showed up moments later? Almost a torment.  I still feel gifted by it, always will, but it hurts my heart so much that she's not here to give out anymore.

Shortly after that, her sister came, a family friend who is an actual nurse and knows what the hell she is doing (as opposed to me, who just spent weeks caring for someone I loved and watching them slip away, AGAIN, but was just doing my best and making it up as I went along, and following directions) also arrived, and I moved into a much more peripheral role.

She continued to get worse and worse, becoming unresponsive to everything besides pain, relatively quickly (within a few hours). I let my brother and her sister, and the nurses, be in charge of what they could be in charge of, and I made sure the kids got fed and my parents & sisters got called, and that her sister knew she needed to call her parents and brothers as well. I learned all about the new, liquid meds from the hospice nurse, and gave doses of morphine and ativan and hyamax as the day wore on.

I called the priest, and the funeral home, and the priest again. (And we all know how much I hate making phone calls). We cried, and waited, and held hands, and helped the kids. Gave them a chance to say goodbye, then let the little one curl up into my lap and sob when she walked away. Watched her big brother comfort my big brother as they both sat in tears by my sister-in-law, SisterNc's side.

Watched as her nieces and nephews filtered in and out. Approved as my sister and her husband ordered a regiment's worth of pizzas and made sure everybody got fed. Comforted and cried, and just sat around rubbing smooth patterns into backs, and backs of hands, and anywhere I could reach, really.

Later, her parents and brothers, and my dad and sisters, all cleared out.  We were down to my mom, her sister, the family friend who is a nurse, my brother and I, and a friend who had known them both since the moment they met, some 16 years ago.  Around midnight, it seemed to get dramatically worse, and the med levels increased and the hospice nurse came out again and told us "a matter of hours."

About 2:30, my brother and her sister both decide to go upstairs to get some rest. The nurse-friend, the work-friend and I are sitting in the living room, my mom has snuck outside to get a cigarette.

A quick text from my brother asking me to bump the heat up because it's freezing upstairs, @ 2:37. As I settle back into my chair, I glance over at Nancy, see her breathing is very strange, but I check the book and it is nowhere near time for more meds. So I sit down, and the work friend says to me that she gets an inspirational text every day on her cell phone and starts to read it to me. It says something about "new pathways and being open to new challenges," And that's when I see SisterNc's eyes open, and I notice that she hasn't taken her next breath.

The nurse-friend has noticed too, and is getting up, checking on her, fussing with her. We both know - I can see she knows - that there is no reason to fuss.

It is 2:41 am, on Monday, November the 10th, 2014, and my only sister-in-law, the beloved wife of my brother and mother to two of my favorite people in the entire world, the only sister I ever made instead of came with, has died.

I send my brother a text that reads "you need to come back down, honey", and he must know. He wakes her sister up and doesn't bomb down the stairs. Takes each step, heavily, I can hear it even now. They are both crying as soon as they see us. As soon as they see her.

My mother comes in from the kitchen, seeing us, and begins crying too.

And that was her last day, her last actions, her last minutes, to the best of my recollection. I do not want that kind of thing to be forgotten, even if I am the only one who remembers it.

The past twelve days have been torturous for my brother, and difficult for his children, and so heartbreaking for all of us. I don't know how to help any more than I am, but I fear that it will not be enough.

I am - we all are - doing the best we can.

But it's hard to keep swimming with a broken heart, and hard to hold the pieces together while you wait for even the tiniest bit of it to heal.

In case you are not lucky enough

to have a 2 1/2 year old in your life, let me explain what it is like.

It is like having a tiny, constant narrator to your life/day. It doesn't matter what you are doing, it will need to be said:

"You are eating breakfast?"
"You will take your medicine?"
"You gonna go potty?" (and, of course, "I come in wit chu.")
"You come play wit me now?"
"We play Care Bears. You be Grumpy."
"I'm playing Playdoh!"

There's questions, statements, exclamations, and a million different attitudes and variations, but no matter what you are doing, it will need to be said.

Many, many times.

If you have just said "I'm going to get the cars," then she will feel compelled to repeat that statement in the form of a question: "You goina get da cars?"

If you ask a question, "What are we going to do with this mess?" It will need to be repeated before it can be answered: "Whats we goin to do wit dis mess? We has to clean it up, da mess we made."

There will be orders: "You don't look at me!" and inquiries "Whats dat? Whatz dis? Where's she goin? Why she's doin that?" and chit chat aplenty, and it's all developmentally normal, and wonderful for all sorts of excellent reasons (vocabulary building, skill building, curiosity factor as an element of learning and growth, blah de blah about educational philosophy and all that here), but sometimes? You'd just like to do some ordinary something (let's say... going to the bathroom), without all of the constant chatter.

Who wants to watch the director's commentary before they've had a chance to actually enjoy the movie? Who needs someone to point out to an entire store full of people that, yes, you did actually just trip over absolutely nothing and almost knock down a display?

Most days, the "yiddle" one's loquaciousness is charming, a part of her that I wouldn't change for anything. Today? I just wanted to pee in peace.

Me too.

Some days, Lil Girl and I seem to wear each other out more than normal: everything I say bounces around her as if it were no more important to her than the traffic report, her energy level is high to manic, and her chosen activities are randomly designed for maximum mess and noise, minimum actual enjoyment. Napping is for suckers, eating is for babies: of which she is NOT ONE!!, and clothes are made for changing in and out of. For my part, there are just days that are worse healthwise, energywise, pain wise. Unfortunately, we managed to combine a bunch of our issues together last week, and had a heck of a day. Lil Girl has learned to say "I hate..." (which I totally fell into the trap of paying attention to, and now have to work harder to ignore, because if I pay attention she just says it all the more, like a curse), and she spent a lot of the day grumbling about everything from books to baths (she couldn't find one, and didn't want the other). Both of us seemed to be losing the last vestiges of our patience, and so I decided, since it was still nice enough out and the sun was going down: "Let's talk a little walk."

Our walks are short and sweet: we head to the end of our block, cross the big street and head back towards the house. We stop in front of the church for some running around space, and because the kids like to climb the stairs or walk the balance beam (depending on which other adults are with us, obviously). Lil Girl took Grammy's hand, then let it go. She had us "freeze" on command and forgot to reciprocate. But the fresh air was doing us all good, it was relaxing and something different than being stuck in the house all day. This is the picture I managed to get before the little one decided she'd had enough and wanted to go play Care Bears (again).... I think it says a lot about how our day went.



I understand exactly, sweetie. I'm soo there with you. Tomorrow will be better.

Don't forget to go on over to Mother May I for some more Best Shot Mondays.

My Best Shot Monday

On a Monday and everything!

So I tried to get the kiddos to pose for pictures before Youngest Nephew went back to school and stopped coming on a weekly basis (wah!), and it was... interesting. I was remembering fondly how easy it used to be to take pictures of the Lil Girl... back when she stayed where I put her. No such thing, now, and who can blame her. BUT, I did manage to get a few, and wanted to show you a then and now of my chicklets:

Here's the pair in August of 06, when Lil Girl was barely 3 months old and her big brother was six, and here they are two weeks ago, Youngest Nephew at 8, Lil Girl at 2.

(And yes, I do occasionally make my bed, if it just so happened that we were washing the sheets on both of these days, well, it just makes the comparisons easier, right?)

Iconic Shot (1)
Originally uploaded by bbackprple

Iconic Shot 2
Originally uploaded by bbackprple

One of the bright spots

It's nice that a new week is starting, so to get it off on the right foot, I'm going to put up a Best Shot, and then try to check out everybody else's.

Here's Lil Girl, 'asleeping'.



She hasn't quite figured out yet that I can tell she's not really asleep because she's grinning &/or laughing out loud, but that just makes it more fun all around.

The difference a year makes -

Here's the kiddos at our library trip last June -




and here they are this June -



(Contrary to the whole "I"m lounging around and falling asleep" vibe in this picture, we actually came home with about 10 books, and have read them all at least once in the past 3 weeks.)

So that's My Best Shot Monday for this week, I'm looking forward to checking out all of yours.

My Best Shot Monday

Happy Last Day of June (already?!) everybody. It's Monday again, and here's one of my best shots recently.

We've been talking a bit about how Lil Girl is certainly no longer a baby anymore, but a full fledged 2 year old. Her speech has blossomed in the last few months, so that our conversations are rich and often entertaining. (Even the 'why cuz' ones.) She's moving from scribbling to trying to make representational shapes, just in the past two weeks or so. She and her brother now don't just grab toys and grunt at each other, they can have real and meaningful arguments (If "Mine! Mine!" & "No, it's not!" are to be considered meaningful). She's coming out of that period where she didn't want to even look at anybody she didn't know really well, and her personality has exploded.

So here's the first picture I took of Lil Girl that made me gasp when I saw it: I immediately realized, Oh my goodness: She's growing up. Sometime in the space between the previous picture and this one, I had a little girl in my sights, not a baby.






It's so exciting!



(As for the promised wedding pictures, I've got posts upon posts still to deliver, I know: Come back Wednesday for the getting ready pictures!)

Rehearsal Dinner: Pass the wine!

So then, after the rehearsal, we all went out to dinner and had a pretty good time. Here are some of the Best Shots from our little get together. Honestly, at this point in the festivities, people were still trying to be on their best behavior. But the stress, of trying to get everything finished by Saturday (this was Thursday night)? Oh, it was pretty heavy.

But here's the happy couple, and they did a good job of putting aside most of the pressure in order to have a good time. SisterJ's anxiety got a good strong hold on her when we'd first arrived at the church - mostly because of an annoying coordinator lady who was pretty damn unhelpful - but she'd managed to calm down a lot by the time we got to the restaurant.


My two nephews are four years and usually quite a few miles apart, but they still manage to get along pretty well. Here, in response to my request that they do 'something fun,' the pose as 'Secret Agent Spies,' which they continued to be for the next two days. Once they got their tuxes on? It was look out evil, here we come.

Here's Big (no longer Only, as I now have a Brother-In-Law!) Brother and Oldest Sister/SisterS. These two were the least... caught up in the wedding- brouhaha, and all it involved, and while I guess that was good for them, it wound up being pretty hurtful, in some ways for SisterJ. SisterS not only left the bachelorette party about halfway through, she set herself apart at the reception, secluded with her boyfriend, and then left early, even after SisterJ had told her she'd be hurt if she did Ah, the drama. Mostly, I don't understand SisterS as much as I can my other sisters - she's lived with her mom, and therefore apart from most of us, for various times in her life. She's also at a point in her life where she thinks a lot of things are a waste of time, energy and resources - unfortunately, this included what she called the 'overreactions' of SisterJ about stuff (relating to the wedding) that 'isn't really important.' I'm not saying that there wasn't a certain amount of obsession on the bride's part, when it came to the wedding and the details and all of that, I'm just saying that SisterS, and her lack of tact didn't exactly help things. She just didn't handle things well. But here, at least, she's having a good time.



Here's Dad, my new Brother-in-law, and his uncle, about 1 and a half bottles of wine into the night. Deep discussions, and at least 5 more bottles of wine and a bottle of lemoncello followed.




Obviously:


Now, neither Lil Girl or I were drinking, but we still had a good time ;)




Here's Big Brother and Sister K being sweet too (although I won't swear to how sober either of them may be)



SisterJ and her bosses, who had nothing but nice things to say about her. It's so weird, sometimes to see your younger sisters as adults. (Yes, I realize that's an odd thing to be saying when I'm talking about her wedding, but that's a whole 'nother issue.) I was so proud that these people, who'd stood by her during this really trying year, were able to see just what a great person she really is, issues aside.


And another great shot of the bride and groom, as the evening wrapped up.



Oh, there's tons more --> you can click on my flickr account if you're impatient, but I think I'll be getting around to them as time moves on, if you've got it in you to wait.

Up next, a few finishing touches & the getting ready craziness!

Oh, the moods I've been in

It's been a long tiring week, while my body does it's vicious dance with the germs that want to take up residence permanently. Aside from a fever that just wouldn't quit, my brain just couldn't stay connected to reality for more than, let's say 7 minutes at a time. If this week had had a theme it would've been something akin to "ugh."

So, I'm glad that it's over. I've declared that it's over, and my body is just going to follow along cuz I told it to (hahahahaha). Either way, I'm sick of thinking about it. So, how about some of the pictures I promised you instead?

I'm going to start with some really cool shots of the rehearsal dinner, b/c I'm organized like that. :D

This is our very gorgeous church: I honestly can't imagine getting married anywhere but here. In addition to being our childhood church, it's just really picturesque, so we kinda lucked out there.





Here's Dad, Lil Girl, Oldest Nephew, SisterS and SisterJ - The Bride on their way to get things started:


SisterJ & Dad practice their walk down the aisle (no tears for faux-wedding days!)


Here's the 3 loves of my heart: Oldest Nephew, Youngest Nephew & Lil Girl, all on their bestest behavior!


And the Happy Couple stops to pose on their way out of church.



The rehearsal at the church went quickly, we had kind of an annoying lady running us through it (she kept saying how in charge she was, but she really wasn't). SisterJ was feeling a little bit of anxiety, b/c the church people had screwed up some of the paperwork, but it went pretty well.

I'm going to stop by again later and show you all the rehearsal dinner highlights, keep my mind busy on something else for a while.

Hello My Lovelies!

Laptop is still being uncooperative, but I managed to get back here again, so I thought I'd check in.

I wanted to tell you how the shower went last Saturday, in case you were waiting with baited breath.

Honestly? It went rather well... my co-hostesses were a bit lax in the whole "you have to introduce yourself to people" arena, but other than that, and a mini-post crash, I think things went awesome.

SisterJ and her fiance seemed a little bit surprised (although I'm not entirely sure they were), and most importantly, everybody had fun. So that's good.

How about some photographic proof of said fun? I thought you might like that...

Here we are in the car... I'm taking pictures because we're running late. AGAIN. And I'm trying not to go crazy. (I am an early bird, in a family of never-on-time-s.) That's Sister Y, Oldest Nephew, & Sister Ch...



Lil Girl, hiding for the chance to say 'surprise;'

Here are the soon to be Mr. & Mrs. playing a who knows who best game:

Can you guess who's winning?




Then there were some presents:





We did cake smooshing, because Sister J is VERY MUCH OPPOSED to doing it at the wedding...




Which turns out to be a good thing.


There's a few more still to come, but overall, I thought it went really well! (Note to self, however: if you're planning on playing games, bring pencils. Don't leave them on your desk.)

(You can click on over to my Flickr Stream to see more: if we're not friends, let's be!)

My Transparent Niece

I know everybody's going to have their Easter pix up today, but my camera is in another room, and the card with the pictures on it is in it. (Imagine that!) I'll try to get a few of those up later in the week. I hope everybody had a wonderful weekend, no matter how they spent it.

In the meantime, take a gander at this one:

My Transparent Niece
Originally uploaded by bbackprple

I promise you that this is straight out of the camera. I have no idea how it happened: I was playing with F-stops and exposures and .. well, everything, but I was quite surprised to see the resulting photo. Any of you photographically inclined people got any ideas on how this happened? Anyways, it's My Best Shot Monday!

MBS -- Tuesday?

Just because I really, really, really need some cheering up, let's see what the first Christmas picture to come up in my slideshow shuffle is... no matter what, I'll post that one.



ooh... it's a good one.

This is Older/Only Brother, Christmas Eve 1988, lighting the candles on the altar. This is one of his signature poses, the over the shoulder glance... For his scrapbook this year, I've got a page just of him doing it. (I'll try to take a picture today, but one of the reasons I need the aforementioned cheering up is that my stupid printer is not working. At all: it takes a piece of paper, immediately tilts it, then proceeds to tell me there's a paper jam. You think?? It's cuz you're eating it crooked! :Sigh:) Anyways, he was an altar boy for a number of years. Back before our Catholic churches allowed 'altar servers,' and there weren't that many boys in our neighborhood. Between that, and the fact that we live directly across the street from the church, he served at a lot of masses, got the pick of assignments. This is right before the children's Christmas Eve Mass, 1988, he's 12, I was 9 and in the pagaent as... probably a non-speaking angel that year.

He's a cutie, and I gotta say that Lil Girl and her big brother do have so many of his mannerisms, it's kind of amazing.

Alright, that kinda worked... I'm going to go curse at electrical equipment in my room. And hopefully take a shower, cuz we've got Lil Girl tomorrow, and I know it ain't gonna happen then.

Off I go...

She loves to see the babies...

... and I can't pass them up either. Besides, it helps me to be not obsessing.



So, there we go.

Ok... did I ever think I would have to say

that you don't blow your nose with your pancake and that you don't eat your tissue?

No, no I did not.

How to cheer me up...

I feel like everybody else is as behind in reading blogs as I am, and so I'm not going to feel guilty about it. If you're getting a comment from me on a weeks-old post, I'm sure you won't mind.

As for other things, can I just say that having your 7-yr-old nephew sleep over is a cure-all for many things? It really gave me no time at all to sit and obsess about some of the things that have been happening, and I'm kind of grateful for that.
My aunt is staying in the hospital till at least Tuesday - they still don't know what caused her to pass out, or why she's so anemic (I still vote for the whole, you have to eat food to get nutrients thing, but I'm not doctor). My dad is still on vacation, and I have only wanted to kill him 3 or 4 times. I'm still trying to do battle with this last flare, hopefully in time to get ready for the next, post-Thanksgiving flare. (I have, in fact, missed out on Thanksgiving before - twice - and so, won't do so again unless absolutely necessary. Let me explain to you how much I love gravy...)

But back to the sleepover.

Except for the fact that baby talk and whining are apparently Youngest Nephew's newest favored forms of communication (and the fact that Auntie NTE does not hear either of those things, which confused him a lot), we had a fabulous time.

We played computer games; he showed me his Webkinz' house & let me feed them (woo hoo); We played Clue Jr about 7 times.

He ate cold pizza for lunch and had dinner at 8:30 (I told you Dad was home - he was obviously in charge of dinner as well).

He got up at 7:30 this morning, came into my (freezing - where was the HEAT??) room, snuggled under the covers and we played Would you rather... He'd rather learn to scuba dive than learn to climb a mountain, btw, and I'd rather have him build me a house than try to build a house out of Legos.

He made scrapbook pages for his Mum & Dad, while I tried to do some but kept getting distracted by the glitter. And the scraps of paper that were flying in the air. And the mess.

We listened to the Animaniacs and Schoolhouse Rock.

He watched his first Looney Tunes cartoon with my dad - and laughed.

He told me he loved me about a million times and left a message on my dry erase board that reads:

To A. NTE:

Hihooowaaaaaaaaaahya? This is from a book we both love, The Wicked Big Toddlah.

I slout you. He is not, contrary to Mum's opinion, calling me a slut. He salutes me... aw..
And I love you.

Love, ? Secret messages are verrry popular in our family.

(Relly, it's from Youngest Nephew) That says "really," andd he signed it in cursive! He's getting so big.

You just can't beat that, if you ask me.

Yay! NaBloPoMo Day #1

I'm still up, and it's after midnight, so I figured I'd get an early start on things.

Hi, everybody!

How was your Halloween? We got about 10 Trick or Treaters, total. And more than half of those were 12 year olds in wigs, with pillowcases. And eggs. But, whatever. My two favorite Trick or Treaters showed up, even though I was beginning to doubt that they would make it, and that was enough for me.

Here's what made my heart happy tonight... it's a good thing to start the month off right, that's for sure. (even if I didn't get the red eye out yet... you know they're not really demons, right? )

Things that keep me busy

- an essay in pictures:

On GOOD days










On BAD days

Big Kisses - My Best Shot Monday

I made the background black & white, but the rest of this picture is unedited. Here's lil Girl sharing her Tigger-iffic love (she loves Elmo more, but that picture came out pretty crappy). Hope everybody's day is going well! I'm off to visit more Best Shot Monday's over at Picture This

My Best Shot Monday

Welcome to another week!




MBSM-ers: I've changed a lot of my Flickr photos from Public to Private, in response to what seems to be an overwhelming number of posts about pictures being stolen and re-purposed. I'm still not happy about having to do that, for a few reasons:

1) My blog gets very little traffic, and this may be a huge overreaction on my part ... to which I respond to myself, well, 'if you can't be overprotective of the children in your life, who are you going to be overprotective of?' Plus, Flickr is a lot more public than my blog, so that's where I've made the changes.

2)Sharing my photos - here and on Flickr - & sharing in other people's photos, has really been inspiring to me. It helps me feel creative and gives me joy, and I think it's really horrible that something like this would interfere with that.

3)It feels sort of like giving into bullying, even when I know it's more just being proactive. I just hate that I have to take this step because a bunch of people are ridiculous and don't understand boundaries. At which point myself responds with 'but you know there are some sickos out there, which is part of why this blog is anonymous in the first place, so just shut up and do it anyways.'

Well, I obviously listened to the little voice, but am still feeling petulant about it. Petulant is better than regretful or frightened though - which is what I would be if any of my pictures of the kiddos wound up somewhere else (even if that place were 'harmless.'

So, the point of all that is - If you have Flickr, please click through my sidebar shots, and add me, so that we can be friends! Or leave your Flickr URL and I'll add you as my contact... I definitely want to be able to share photos with all of you.

Even though I've taken those steps, I still am going to post pictures of the kiddos here. That feels like a pretty reasonable thing to do, since I am not willing to just stop doing something I love. I'm interested in hearing what reactions you all - all my creative, photography minded friends - have had to this, and what, if any, steps have you taken...

Now let's get to the program here and I'll show you My Best Shot Monday.

I wasn't quite feeling up to a practice run this weekend, so I decided to watch Youngest Nephew and Lil Girl while everybody else went out and partied. We had a sleepover! Which was exhausting! But, also, these kids are amazingly awesome. Youngest Nephew added "Drive Auntie NTE nuts" to his checklist and then put three empty squares next to it, so he would "remember to do it a bunch of times." Lil Girl sang the Blue's Clues song when it came on the radio (I didn't know she watched Blue's Clues!) and has decided that my name is either 'bay' or 'me' - At least 'me' makes sense, since when she points to a picture with me in it, I say, "Yup, that's Auntie NTE, that's me." But 'bay'??? Trust me when I say that is nowhere near my name. And they got along, mostly. And behaved, mostly. And slept till almost 8 in the morning, which, their parents assure me, is a kind of a miracle.






Also, it gave me something to do all night long, such as take a million pictures and try to figure out F-stops. (Which I still have not).

Lil Girl (Youngest/Only Niece) --- Eatin her first cherry tomato, fresh from the garden

Originally uploaded by bbackprple

Or, rather, popping it into her mouth, sucking on it until it was soft, and then spitting it out when all the juices got in her mouth.

That's my favorite shot today, and my Best Shot Monday post... head on over to Tracey at Picture This, to check out some more wonderful pictures!