Please Don't Ask Me About My Vacation

Weight: x + one zillion pounds... though I'm just guessing as could not locate scale.  The extra zillion is all compliments of necessary comfort foods.

Truly one of the worst vacations in the history of vacations.  I got off the first flight of my vacation to find out that my father-figure Jeff's mother was in the hospital and that he had arranged for my aunt and uncle to pick me up from the airport.  I asked to be dropped off at the hospital, and I found Jeff with his family.  Things weren't looking good.  I got home around 11pm that night and tried to sleep with limited to no real success.  (This would soon become the theme for the week.)

I spent the next day at the hospital until the family decided it was time to move her to the hospice.  Oh, did I mention it's the same hospice where my mom and grandfather died?  Yeah. 

So we went to the hospice.  That night, Jeff wanted to stay at my house, but when we got there, the power was out (thanks, storm), so we went to his mother's (creepy) house where I got to sleep in a room with some kind of strange discarded hospital bed that resembles a torture device, at least it certainly does when you wake up and are disoriented.

I dropped any idea of going to New York as I love the heck out of Jeff and would rather be miserable with him than worry about him from afar.  So, especially don't ask me about New York: I did not go.

Tuesday, I noticed my left eye turning pink, and I thought "wha?  pink eye?  really?"  I was scared to death that I was single-handedly going to be responsible for spreading pink-eye through the hospice - not a place for people with strong immune systems.  Not to mention Jeff's family!  How would that look at the funeral?  "Oh poor thing, have you been crying?"  "No, I just have pink-eye."  Jeff told me I was crazy for suspecting it was anything other than eye irritation, then he later changed his mind.  He apparently just didn't want me to leave him to go to the doctor's office.

Wednesday, I went to the doctor's office.  Sorry, Jeff, I'm not contaminating you knowingly!  I didn't have pink-eye.  (See references to being a wee bit of a hypochondriac.)

We spent the whole week in the hospice.  Those are places where every day just gets worse.  (Pray to die in your sleep, quietly and peacefully, at the ripe old age of 105.)  Each day, you realize that your nerves are progressively becoming completely shot, and the calm you manage to hold together in the room erupts when you get home, resulting in crying and screaming fits.  You pray that you will have the strength to just not contact people you care about so as not to fly off the handle over nothing and hurt the relationships.  It can be a very lonely time.

Today, I woke up at 5:45am, and I swear, whether anyone will ever know for sure or not, something in the cosmos woke me up.  When I arrived at the hospice, things had certainly gotten worse, and I just knew that I hadn't imagined the feeling that morning.  We all gathered around Jeff's mom, and her soul was released on her journey to heaven this afternoon.  A trip to the funeral home later, the funeral was set for Sunday afternoon. 

I leave Monday afternoon.  I plan on making the 24 hours between those two events the most wonderful vacation ever.  I have no idea how, but don't doubt me.  I will channel my inner Bridget, through which there's no time limit on fun.  I will do this.  For Bridget Jones!  (Cheers!)

Still, the moral of the story:  Please don't ask me about my vacation.