Unprepared

Wednesday night I got a phone call I wasn't expecting. My aunt Christie had committed suicide. I am actually struggling with putting the details or not, she checked her self into a Motel on Tuesday, and took sleeping pills. She was found on Wednesday. Her story is very tragic but, I would have thought/hoped that the love and support of her two wonderful grown daughters would have been enough to keep her going. It wasn't.

Earlier in the year she lost her Husband and life partner. Life partner often sounds cliché but these two were inseparable, they worked together and lived together their whole lives. To the extent i wasn't really aware of until the memorial service for Greg her husband. He was diagnosed with small cell lung cancer late in the spring last year as they were getting ready to spend the summer on their boat sailing out of Martha's Vineyard. They had a place in Tortola all set up for their winters, they had enough of New England winters. He didn't make it a year. 23 years of pipe smoking and not taking care of yourself certainly contributed to the cancer and how quickly he succumbed to it.

During all this time Christie's mother, my grandmother, Elise Boulding, has been getting worse. I've mentioned her story here briefly. The Alzheimer's specifically. My grandmother was a solid strong healthy woman, her brain failed her and it was a long struggle until she finally moved on early this summer. Christie was the closest, at least by proximity, and maybe more than just that being the only daughter (she had four brothers who all will be gathering at the memorial service on the 2nd). She was there to help Grandma move from the apartment that Greg built for her at their house into the retirement community at North Hill. She was there to help transition her into the assisted living facility as the disease started to take more of her mental capacity away. But she had just begun to let go and move on when Greg got sick.

Early in the spring of this year Greg's condition was getting worse. Chemo and Radiation were not helping, the cancer was too extensive to do anything more. All of Greg's positive feelings and hope for being at the far end of the bell curve were sucked away by the disease. He checked into Hospice and moved on very quickly. Grandma was checked in to hospice not long after Greg. Maybe a month.

But Grandma's body was still strong. She had an infection, but her body fixed that. Only when her liver finally decided it had had enough, did she slip away weeks after checking in. I think that was the hardest for Christie. Having Greg go so suddenly and so quickly once in Hospice care only to watch her mother, who really wasn't much of her mother anymore, hang on so tenaciously.

All that tragedy so tightly packed for her was, well hard to put into words. I really can't quite imagine how she felt, much less how she dealt with it. She put on a solid New England face though. Stoic, strong. Like she was. Tall and healthy like her mother, physically she was going to be around for a long time if genetics were to be any indication. She had lots of friends, but family was spread across the country. Each of her siblings finding their own part of the USA to claim. IN, NC, CO, WA. And she was alone.

And she ripped everyone's hearts out in the most unexpected and tragic way possible. Personally I was prepared for Greg, and for Grandma to go. The loss of my aunt Christie, the circumstances... my mother had send some photos and a note earlier this month, and had received a thank you card in return, saying it was difficult but no indication of how difficult. Granted when someone like that says it is difficult, someone who never complains, that's maybe not the best sign, but sadly, it is also not unexpected.

The memorial service is going to be at the same Friends Meeting house that Greg's was. On the Second of October. The timing works out that I can still race and then pack up and leave right away and head to the service and make it at least for most of it. Of the few memorial services I've been to, I really think the best are the Friend's meeting ones. I really hope I don't have to go to any more any time soon after this one.

If you've made it this far - I should also say, as much of a shock as this is, I am doing okay at managing and dealing with the emotion, I'm sure post race on the 2nd it will be a different story.

Heddwch
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