Family Matters

Sunday, 26 December 2010

Today we spent decompressing. I awoke first and began brewing some tea. Jennifer and Isla got up next and Jennifer checked her emails while she ate breakfast. A tired Owen came hobbling into the living room about a half hour later. He declared that it was time to take the tree down, but I told him it still feels like the holidays to me, so we’d leave it up past New Year’s.

Soon after eating breakfast, Jennifer announced we would be cleaning the living room – at least to make the floor safe for Isla. We collapsed a few gift bags, and removed the packaging from some of Owen’s gifts. We started putting away some of his gifts, too; his new card game went in his room, the soap I won in the dice game went in my bathroom, the bag of nuts Jennifer won went in the pantry. Jennifer posted on Facebook that Christmas threw up in our living room. I quite agreed.

Jennifer’s parents came over this afternoon to take Owen for a couple of days. He’s off from school this coming week, too, and so it’s a great time for him to sleep over at his grandparents’ house. Once he left, I breathed a sigh of relief; ‘cause, man, he’s a lot of work. Jennifer and I sat down at around 3:30 this afternoon and, with Isla calmly nursing and then falling into a nap, we watched an episode of Little House on the Prairie. A really lame, boring episode titled “Chicago.” Yes, it is as bad as it sounds.

Monday, 27 December 2010

So, the first two hours I spent in that weird, dream-like state known as ‘consciousness’ were quite good. From about 8:30 to 10:30 I reveled in my first day of a weeklong furlough from work. I again brewed some tea, and Jennifer and I sat and read quietly. Then we got up to continue our cleaning – without Owen around we planned to get a lot done, and we were expecting company this evening, so I was looking forward to that.

But then Jennifer’s mom called and said we had to come and get Owen.

I was worried that something was wrong with Owen or that he had misbehaved so badly that my mother-in-law couldn’t stand another second with him. Well, the good news is, my son was not the problem. The bad news, though, was that my mother-in-law’s brother Mark had died unexpectedly several hours earlier.

I gotta admit, I didn’t know Mark very well. He made himself rather rare at family gatherings and, apart from briefly saying hello to him when the family convened in Hinckley for my wife’s grandma’s (Mark’s mom) birthday, I hadn’t seen him all year. In fact, now that I think about it, he never meet Isla. Still, I was very sad that someone so close to people that I do know and care about had passed away so abruptly (and young – he was in his mid-50s).

The news of Mark’s untimely passing sent me on an impromptu drive up to my in-laws’ home to pick up Owen. When I got there, Owen was with my wife’s two teenage cousins, who had been dropped off to care for Owen while my mother-in-law went to tell the terrible news to her mom. So the four of us piled into my car, and I dropped my wife’s cousins off at their house and then spent another half hour answering high-strung questions from a nervous and confused five year old.

Mark’s mom did not take the news very well (I suppose that goes without saying) and –long story short – she ended up in the hospital this afternoon after suffering a heart attack.

When I arrived back home, Jennifer wasn’t sure what to do regarding our plans for company this evening (I left it up to her) and we kept anticipating a phone call with more bad news.

Update: my wife’s grandma will be spending the night at the hospital, but it appears her heart is in good condition and will recovery physically, if not emotionally, from the rough day.

Now we wait to find out about news of funeral arrangements.