Playing Ketchup

Last month I went up to Green Bay, Wisconsin to console my boyfriend and his family after the death of his step-father, Terry, whom I've never met. By all accounts he was a nice guy. He'd had cancer of some sort that started to to away due to chemo treatments when it spread to other parts of his body and became untreatable. His final days were less than lucid and he endured pain, so most of the family experienced their grief with a bit of relief mixed in.

This was also the first time I was meeting the fam. John and I have only been dating a few months, but certainly long enough to due the family thing. Interestingly, John met my mother a couple weeks before she went in for surgery, so she was at a stage where she could barely walk. She likes to tell the story that she met John, introduced herself, and asked him to help her put on her shoes. So, similarly, I met John's mother where she said (without having been formally introduced), "Hi Brian, I'll meet you later but right now I need you to leave the room so we can be alone with Terry."

See, I had flown up to Green Bay last minute because Terry'd passed away unexpectantly, John drove up and I flew standby because we'd planned on going anyway. So, I had to fly up alone, take a cab to the funeral home in a city I'd never been, etc. Getting on the standby flight was a little nervewracking. John had bought my ticket, and I've heard stories that because of the heightened security, the credit card holder of the ticket needed to be present or whatever. So I called the morning of and tried to find out. United's phone system is totally automated and you have to say your requests instead of typing them so the voice recognition software wouldn't recognize my speech despite my trying 8 different inflections. Finally I hung up, tried the internet, and realized I didn't have my mileage plus number to log in (it's packed in a box somewhere, since I haven't been needing to travel so much lately).

I finally decide to just go to the airport, which was my initial idea anyway. I check in for my flight scheduled for like 9 pm (it's about 10:30 am) and get on standby for another one taking off in about forty five minutes. I get on that flight and my stress level is greatly lowered.

Strangely, the first sight I see as I walk out the doors of the comparatively tiny Green Bay airport is a muscular drag queen driving a huge pickup truck. It was very surreal. I almost wanted to go thank her for greeting me to this strange backwoods town.

I take a cab to the funeral home and literally get in during the last 30 seconds. Terry was in the armed services, so there was an honor guard in front and this naval woman dressed up in full regalia is presenting a folded American flag to John's mom and does this weird slow-motion salute that I figure must be the salute to the mourning because it's like less intense and somehow showing respect. After this, the funeral director announces where everyone's going to eat and I realize this must have been a moving service.

We go to this banquet hall type place called Charneski's and are served family style fried chicken, mashed taters, corn, stuffing, cole slaw, etc. John's family is having a feud, so there are three long tables and the two feuding sides sit seperately. There is a buzz because John is 34 years old and has never brought anyone to a family function and people are all coming up to me and saying hello and sort of talking to me knowingly and John comments later on how odd this is because he didn't tell anyone I was coming yet everyone seemed to know the situation.

Despite the sad circumstances, it was a nice visit to Green Bay and we just did things we'd normally do while visiting, like go shoe shopping at the mall (bought a nice pair of brown GBX boots for a paltry $20 - bargain shopper here!) and go to the movies (saw House of Wax, which was better than might've been expected with a surprisingly good performance by Paris Hilton).

After coming back from Green Bay, I then went and visited my mother in the hospital. The good news is that her spinal surgery has been considered a success. She will be able to walk again on her own. The bad news is that they screwed something up on the way out and now she can't swallow and has to ingest food and water through a tube and this will be happening for an indefinite time. And the "Good News" is that my mother found the lord again and is finding "his work" in all the mundane things of the world and hearing the devil whisper bad things about my sister in her ear and I don't know if it's the meds or what but it's pretty annoying and really bothering my sister. Hopefully as her physical health stabilizes so will her mental/spiritual health will stabilize, too. In the mean time, hopefully she won't totally alienate my sister, who has become the closest thing to primary caregiver.

Yesterday I took a certification exam for being an optician. Opticians design lenses to be put into glasses when optometrists prescribe them. They're the middle man between going to the optometrist and getting new glasses. All of my studying had to do with optics, light, curvature of lenses and index of refraction plus types of eye abnormalities and what they mean.

Anyway, now that the test is over, I can devote more time to writing and art. Yay. So, expect some new art and stuff soon.