I liked the fireflies in Kentucky but did not enjoy getting bit by a horse at the Derby museum
I got a text from my mother earlier today that my Aunt Sharon died. She was Phil's younger sister, so not a blood relative, but growing up I saw more of his sisters and their kids than I did my aunts and uncles and cousins on my biological father's side. I mean Dad had a younger brother that I only met like twice in my entire life, and I only remember one of those visits (the first time was when I was a toddler).
Sharon has not been well for a while; she's the aunt I wrote about a while back who had dementia and kept wiping her butt with a hand towel and then hanging it back on the rack, which the son who lived with her nearly used on his face more than once. So this is not entirely unexpected. I don't know what the official cause of death was, but Mom thinks she just willed herself to die because her quality of life was so low. The house, from what I hear, is something of a hoarded mess--not like Hoarders-level bad, but just too much stuff to keep clean, and she wouldn't let anyone do anything about it. She's been incontinent for a while but refused to wear adult diapers, with predictable results. She wouldn't eat anything besides peanut butter. It was just a bad scene all around.
I've had mixed feelings about Sharon for most of my adult life. As a kid she was the fun aunt who came every summer, took me to the mall and got whatever I asked for (within reason), and got my ears pierced. She only had sons, so she really enjoyed doing "girly stuff" with me and Jamie.
As an adult, I came realize she was super racist; funny that I have so much family from the south, a lot of whom didn't even graduate high school, and the most racist person in my family was the Jewish nurse from Illinois. She never showed that side to us as kids, I'm pretty sure because Mom told her she would roast her alive if she did, but it started to slip out once all the kids were grown up.
She also used to frequently tell Mom that she would disown any of her sons that didn't marry Jewish women, which always baffled me because my mother isn't Jewish and she's married to Sharon's brother. I never understood what she wanted from my mother when she said things like that. Did she expect Mom to agree with her?? I always thought it was so weird.
This makes Phil the last sibling left; he had an older sister but she died about 10 years ago of leukemia. The 'rents aren't going to Kentucky (Sharon and her family have lived in Louisville since before I was born) for the funeral, it's too difficult for them to fly, and Phil can't drive any more. That's like a 12 1/2 hour drive and Mom can't do that whole drive herself. I don't know if they're doing the whole sitting shiva rigmarole; Sharon and her husband were Orthodox but their kids are all more relaxed about religion--and none of them are currently married to Jewish women, Sharon was full of shit about disowning them--and they're probably going to be making the funeral arrangements, so it depends on what they want to do. They might do it to honor their mother, I guess.
I was close to those cousins when we were kids, but haven't really kept in touch. When the oldest one had children I made some really adorable cross stitch designs of scenes from the Old Testament--that wife was Jewish; in fact, they met through a matchmaker--for the nursery, and I never got so much as a thank you from him, or her. YES I'M STILL ANNOYED.
Sharon has not been well for a while; she's the aunt I wrote about a while back who had dementia and kept wiping her butt with a hand towel and then hanging it back on the rack, which the son who lived with her nearly used on his face more than once. So this is not entirely unexpected. I don't know what the official cause of death was, but Mom thinks she just willed herself to die because her quality of life was so low. The house, from what I hear, is something of a hoarded mess--not like Hoarders-level bad, but just too much stuff to keep clean, and she wouldn't let anyone do anything about it. She's been incontinent for a while but refused to wear adult diapers, with predictable results. She wouldn't eat anything besides peanut butter. It was just a bad scene all around.
I've had mixed feelings about Sharon for most of my adult life. As a kid she was the fun aunt who came every summer, took me to the mall and got whatever I asked for (within reason), and got my ears pierced. She only had sons, so she really enjoyed doing "girly stuff" with me and Jamie.
As an adult, I came realize she was super racist; funny that I have so much family from the south, a lot of whom didn't even graduate high school, and the most racist person in my family was the Jewish nurse from Illinois. She never showed that side to us as kids, I'm pretty sure because Mom told her she would roast her alive if she did, but it started to slip out once all the kids were grown up.
She also used to frequently tell Mom that she would disown any of her sons that didn't marry Jewish women, which always baffled me because my mother isn't Jewish and she's married to Sharon's brother. I never understood what she wanted from my mother when she said things like that. Did she expect Mom to agree with her?? I always thought it was so weird.
This makes Phil the last sibling left; he had an older sister but she died about 10 years ago of leukemia. The 'rents aren't going to Kentucky (Sharon and her family have lived in Louisville since before I was born) for the funeral, it's too difficult for them to fly, and Phil can't drive any more. That's like a 12 1/2 hour drive and Mom can't do that whole drive herself. I don't know if they're doing the whole sitting shiva rigmarole; Sharon and her husband were Orthodox but their kids are all more relaxed about religion--and none of them are currently married to Jewish women, Sharon was full of shit about disowning them--and they're probably going to be making the funeral arrangements, so it depends on what they want to do. They might do it to honor their mother, I guess.
I was close to those cousins when we were kids, but haven't really kept in touch. When the oldest one had children I made some really adorable cross stitch designs of scenes from the Old Testament--that wife was Jewish; in fact, they met through a matchmaker--for the nursery, and I never got so much as a thank you from him, or her. YES I'M STILL ANNOYED.