Day 2 of working from bed. I’ve been taking extra Vitamin C, drinking orange juice twice a day, and just finished up the four glasses of different liquids (water, coffee, orange juice, and smoothie with bananas, blueberries, strawberries, and soy protein powder) that were on my nightstand. I think I’m going to give my old friends Dayquil and Nyquil a try. Hopefully they will help me make my way into the office tomorrow.
In addition to this horrible cold, I’ve been upset and worried about my parents. My dad called me on Monday night with terrible news. Their house burned down and they lost everything. Luckily, no one was hurt. My mother and my 90 year-old grandmother were in the house when it started, but my mom was able to get both of them and my dad’s beloved dog out of the house in time. Thank God it didn’t start when they were sleeping or when my grandmother was there alone. They were amazed at how fast it went down. I can’t imagine how scared my mom must have felt and how sad it would be to stand by and watch your home go up in flames.
Luckily, they have a good insurance policy and a place to live while their new house is being built. But they (and I) were upset because they lost so many sentimental items, like childhood mementos and photographs of me and my brothers, and some of Brian’s things that they had kept. Brian was the middle child, my brother who was three years younger than me. He died in a car accident in 1994 when he was 21. Thankfully, I have some of our childhood photos that I can copy for my parents, and our friends and family are going to look through their collections too.
My family has a lot of people who love them and so many people have been helping them through this, but I feel like they’ve had to go through enough already. My friend’s mother said it best, “Your mom is the strongest woman I’ve ever known, but no one should have to have that kind of strength.”
I do feel like my mom has probably been hit the hardest. She’s experienced a lot of loss in her life. My mother lost her younger sister and a grandmother before she was even born – my poor grandmother lost her daughter and mother on the same day, both of them run over by a car when they were crossing the street.
I was 7 when my grandfather (my dad’s father) died suddenly from a heart attack in his early 50s, so my young parents (probably in their late 20s) had to go through that. My mom’s younger brother was sick a lot, in and out of hospitals, and not too long after my grandfather passed away, he died in his 20s.
The next tragedy I remember is when my mother developed breast cancer in her 30s. She was so young, she had to have a double mastectomy, and I’m sure she was terrified. I was a selfish bratty teenage girl at that time, so I wasn’t there for her like I should have been.
Then there was a lull until we lost my brother Brian. My parents had been worried about him for a while because he had some problems with alcohol, then he started to clean up his life. Apparently, there is no reward system for that because he died in a car accident (sober) on his way to work the day after he attended his very first AA meeting.
Then my youngest brother “grew up” and brought more worries for my parents. Like Brian, Brandon had been diagnosed with epilepsy, and like Brian, Brandon decided it would be a great idea to drink or do drugs while taking his prescription meds. So my parents had to spend a few more years worrying if he would make it home alive. Luckily, he escaped those years relatively unscathed.
Sometime during the worrying about Brandon phase, my mother lost her father and started spending more time taking care of her mother. In 2003, my grandmother moved in with my parents and my mom has spent the last 8 or 9 years providing full-time care for her now 90-year-old mother.
Then 2 days ago their house burned down. It seems like a lot to me.