Ok. Let's...let's just hope that things will calm down a little bit around here. Please? Ok?
I mean, I know it could be worse. It could be a lot worse. Things have been sad, and busy, and busy with sad stuff, but for right now, right this second, things are calm. Lots of people have it worse than what I've been going through, and I'm going to keep that in mind every time I start feeling overwhelmed.
Yesterday we buried a wonderful lady. Aunt Brenda, the lady that we always go and stay with on Thanksgiving, passed away Sunday morning after a sudden health issue no one knew about caused a problem. She and I were close. After my lovely mother-in-law passed away 12 years ago, Brenda became a de facto MIL to me. We talked a lot, and sent each other gifts, and it wasn't until she was gone that I realized how much of Aunt Brenda had been enmeshed my daily life.
It's like waking up and realizing a chair you sit in all of the time is missing, and you have to work around the knowledge that the chair isn't there anymore, and you keep walking to where that chair is supposed to be and it isn't there, and you have to think "well, shit, it isn't there anymore." and then you have to alter your course and find someplace else to sit that isn't as comfortable or convenient, and it throws you out of whack for a while.
She would probably hate that I'm comparing her to a chair, haha! You know what I mean, though.
We traveled to Georgia on Tuesday for her wake and stayed until Wednesday for her funeral. I'm very glad that she had a closed casket, because I want to remember her the way I saw her last, and not in a coffin. I sang at her funeral. It's one last thing I could do. Steve played his trumpet, which was nice.
Also, just for fun, I got some bad news about a close friend of mine and I can't help her at all with it.
I'm sorry if I'm framing it as being about me. None of this is ultimately about me and I know that, but people I love are hurting and I can't help them and it sucks. Sitting around knowing you can't help is bad.
However, up til this point, I've managed to stay relatively gangster. When other people hurt, you just have to stuff your feelings all down and be strong for them, and I think I've managed that so far. I don't think I've really had time to process all of the things that have happened in the past three weeks, but hopefully that will happen soon. I'm tired, and sick of being sad, and I would like to have some time where I don't have to think about all the bad things that have been going on, but that will have to wait because Christmas is here and we have to go and do a million things and if we didn't do those things we'd hurt people's feelings and there would be lots of questions and I just don't have the capacity to deal with that because the first moment someone questions why I don't want to do some big Christmas thing I think I'll snap and be rude out of sheer exhaustion and hurt someone's feelings and I really don't want to do that. It's not even that I want to isolate myself or anything like that, it's just that I'd like so much to not have to think about everything shitty that has been going on, you know?
But...for now, I'm fine. I'm just fine. I'm gangster. However, I have a feeling that if anyone looks at me wrong or hurts my feelings in any way, I'm going to very much crack apart.
via GIPHY
Not because I want to, but because there is just a lot of feelings in here that want to get out and I'm not letting that happen, damnit!
So, that's where I am right now. I'm OK. I'm just full of all of this and it needs to settle. I'll be fine, I promise. I think I'm just being selfish.
I hug you.
Tuesday, December 11, 2018
A FAMILY STORY -OR- THE (DAMN) YANKEES WANTED TO STEAL MY GREAT-GREAT-GREAT GRANDMOTHERS AND SELL THEM TO A SIDE SHOW
That is not just a catchy title, you guys.
I'll be honest, I don't know an awful lot about the history of my family. It's not that I'm not interested in knowing about it, but no one ever seemed to keep many records. We always heard stories about how we were related to this family or that (because we came from a small southern community that didn't see fit to marry outside of the county lines) and occasionally we'd hear a fifth-hand anecdote about how this cousin might have been buried alive, or that relative was sent to live in a mental asylum because they hit menopause and got a little emotional, but information is sparse as far as any real concrete history of our family goes.
While we were staying with my brother before he passed away, one of the things that we did to pass the time was look through boxes of old pictures and news clippings that my mom had stashed away in a closet. My sister found a newspaper clipping, from a 1993 edition of the formidable Athens News Courier with a story (a story which I thought would have been brought to my attention at the time, but was not) about two of my great grandmothers. This was a story that would have tickled me to death as a teenager, and honestly, it kind of tickles me to death now. It's so rare that I find out real stories about my ancestors and its a bizarre story to boot!
First off, I suppose I need to explain why I keep saying "my grandmothers" in plural. My family tree kind of joins back together in a certain spot. My great-great-great grandmothers on both my mother's side and my father's side were sisters. Actually, they were part of a set of triplets, born in 1862, and thought to be the first set of triplets born in the state of Alabama. Their names were Melissa, Artimisa, and Narcisa Smith and they were the youngest of 21 (gulp) kids born to Roland and Elizabeth Smith on a plantation close to Cherokee, Alabama in Colbert County.
First off, I had no idea that any of my relatives ever lived on a plantation. So...yikes. Until reading this story, I was under the impression that all of the people in my family had once been po' white sharecroppers and Native Americans, with some randos from other places thrown in for good measure. However, apparently this branch of my family tree had some money, and a plantation, and triplet daughters that were a very unusual occurrence at the time.
As you know, during the Civil War northern troops came down and burned and pillaged a lot of the plantations and farms of the people who lived in the south. They were not stand up guys, obviously, and when they got wind that there were triplets in one of the homesteads, it got back to the Smiths that soldiers intended to kidnap their daughters, probably to sell them to a circus as a side show act. Roland Smith then took the time to build a false wall in their house where the hid the girls whenever the Union soldiers were nearby. The fact that representatives from a county fair had also been after the family to allow them to display the girls in their own side show made the family aware that the threat of the Yankee soldiers very real, so according to the article "Fearing for the triplet's safety, the family left their plantation home and moved to Madison County, just over the Limestone County Line. They fled in the night, crossing the Tennessee river on a ferry, and traveled on to Madison County by horses and wagons."
Neato.
The Smiths then settled on a farm in Madison County, where the girls lived altogether until they were 21 and unfortunately Artimisia died of Pneumonia. The other two girls, Melissa and Narcisa, went on to marry and have babies and those babies grew up and met and some of them got married and somehow I am a result of that craziness.
That is really all I know about the family, but I'd love to learn more. Also, knowing that the family had 21 children probably explains my very complex, very interconnected list of cousins around these parts. The only other things of note that I found out was that Melissa (my maternal GGG Grandmother) had really thick ankles, so I guess I know where I got those from now. The more you know!
I'll be honest, I don't know an awful lot about the history of my family. It's not that I'm not interested in knowing about it, but no one ever seemed to keep many records. We always heard stories about how we were related to this family or that (because we came from a small southern community that didn't see fit to marry outside of the county lines) and occasionally we'd hear a fifth-hand anecdote about how this cousin might have been buried alive, or that relative was sent to live in a mental asylum because they hit menopause and got a little emotional, but information is sparse as far as any real concrete history of our family goes.
While we were staying with my brother before he passed away, one of the things that we did to pass the time was look through boxes of old pictures and news clippings that my mom had stashed away in a closet. My sister found a newspaper clipping, from a 1993 edition of the formidable Athens News Courier with a story (a story which I thought would have been brought to my attention at the time, but was not) about two of my great grandmothers. This was a story that would have tickled me to death as a teenager, and honestly, it kind of tickles me to death now. It's so rare that I find out real stories about my ancestors and its a bizarre story to boot!
First off, I suppose I need to explain why I keep saying "my grandmothers" in plural. My family tree kind of joins back together in a certain spot. My great-great-great grandmothers on both my mother's side and my father's side were sisters. Actually, they were part of a set of triplets, born in 1862, and thought to be the first set of triplets born in the state of Alabama. Their names were Melissa, Artimisa, and Narcisa Smith and they were the youngest of 21 (gulp) kids born to Roland and Elizabeth Smith on a plantation close to Cherokee, Alabama in Colbert County.
First off, I had no idea that any of my relatives ever lived on a plantation. So...yikes. Until reading this story, I was under the impression that all of the people in my family had once been po' white sharecroppers and Native Americans, with some randos from other places thrown in for good measure. However, apparently this branch of my family tree had some money, and a plantation, and triplet daughters that were a very unusual occurrence at the time.
As you know, during the Civil War northern troops came down and burned and pillaged a lot of the plantations and farms of the people who lived in the south. They were not stand up guys, obviously, and when they got wind that there were triplets in one of the homesteads, it got back to the Smiths that soldiers intended to kidnap their daughters, probably to sell them to a circus as a side show act. Roland Smith then took the time to build a false wall in their house where the hid the girls whenever the Union soldiers were nearby. The fact that representatives from a county fair had also been after the family to allow them to display the girls in their own side show made the family aware that the threat of the Yankee soldiers very real, so according to the article "Fearing for the triplet's safety, the family left their plantation home and moved to Madison County, just over the Limestone County Line. They fled in the night, crossing the Tennessee river on a ferry, and traveled on to Madison County by horses and wagons."
Neato.
The Smiths then settled on a farm in Madison County, where the girls lived altogether until they were 21 and unfortunately Artimisia died of Pneumonia. The other two girls, Melissa and Narcisa, went on to marry and have babies and those babies grew up and met and some of them got married and somehow I am a result of that craziness.
That is really all I know about the family, but I'd love to learn more. Also, knowing that the family had 21 children probably explains my very complex, very interconnected list of cousins around these parts. The only other things of note that I found out was that Melissa (my maternal GGG Grandmother) had really thick ankles, so I guess I know where I got those from now. The more you know!
Tuesday, December 04, 2018
SIGH
Do you ever feel like life is just taking the piss?
Yesterday morning we received word that the husband of our cousin, one of the ones we visit every year in Georgia, passed away after a fairly short illness. He was only 45, has two teenage kids, and was doing fine until he got sick in October.
I can't even imagine how our cousin is feeling right now. How do you suddenly have to live without your partner of 19 years, the father of your kids, all unexpectedly? My brain won't even wrap around it. It makes me feel sick for her.
So it looks like this will be a two funeral week for us. We started out the week with one, and we'll be traveling to another one in Georgia for a couple of days at the end of this week.
I'm so, so, so tired of being sad.
Yesterday morning we received word that the husband of our cousin, one of the ones we visit every year in Georgia, passed away after a fairly short illness. He was only 45, has two teenage kids, and was doing fine until he got sick in October.
I can't even imagine how our cousin is feeling right now. How do you suddenly have to live without your partner of 19 years, the father of your kids, all unexpectedly? My brain won't even wrap around it. It makes me feel sick for her.
So it looks like this will be a two funeral week for us. We started out the week with one, and we'll be traveling to another one in Georgia for a couple of days at the end of this week.
I'm so, so, so tired of being sad.
Sunday, December 02, 2018
LAST UPDATE
For those of you who have been keeping up with the story of my brother and his illness, I wanted to let you know that he passed away Friday night, just before 9:00 PM.
It was peaceful and everyone in our family was there with him when he passed.
I wish I could be poetic, and write some wonderful, elegantly worded essay about him, but I can't do that. At least, I can't do it right now. It's still too new and it still stings too much.
I told a friend of mine that I have a lot of feelings that I don't understand about all of this, and that is true. I haven't understood any of this situation from the very beginning. I don't believe it is meant for me to understand and right now I'm ok with that. My brother was the person who least deserved to suffer, but for some reason he did. The universe is a weird place.
His memorial service will be tomorrow and I already wish it was over. Not because I don't want to remember him, but I need time to remember him on my own terms; without the music and the preachers and the people telling me "He's in a better place" or "He's healthy now" or any of those platitudes that well-meaning people say at funerals.
He was my brother. He was good and happy and the weight of the world and all of its problems never touched him. He had the purest soul of anyone that I ever met. I loved him so much.
And that's all I've got to say about that.
At least for now.
Thank you.
It was peaceful and everyone in our family was there with him when he passed.
I wish I could be poetic, and write some wonderful, elegantly worded essay about him, but I can't do that. At least, I can't do it right now. It's still too new and it still stings too much.
I told a friend of mine that I have a lot of feelings that I don't understand about all of this, and that is true. I haven't understood any of this situation from the very beginning. I don't believe it is meant for me to understand and right now I'm ok with that. My brother was the person who least deserved to suffer, but for some reason he did. The universe is a weird place.
His memorial service will be tomorrow and I already wish it was over. Not because I don't want to remember him, but I need time to remember him on my own terms; without the music and the preachers and the people telling me "He's in a better place" or "He's healthy now" or any of those platitudes that well-meaning people say at funerals.
He was my brother. He was good and happy and the weight of the world and all of its problems never touched him. He had the purest soul of anyone that I ever met. I loved him so much.
And that's all I've got to say about that.
At least for now.
Thank you.
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