Thank you =moonfreak for the cool journal skin!!

I haven't updated my journal in a while, and in fact I've hardly been on at all for the past two months. I appologize for that. April & May were stressfull times - both good stress and bad. Guess I should go with the bad part first...My step-monster passed away May 01. If she had hung on for a few more wee hours, it would've been exactly 20 years since my Meme had passed away when I was 7. Strange. Both were alcoholics (or so my dad says, about my Meme...I never knew her that way), but whereas my Meme had some other things wrong with her and I'm not sure what eventually got the best of her, for my step-monster, it was definitely the drink. It actually started the end of March, when we were at lunch and she fell face first in the parking lot. She looked dead...laying sprawled out like that on the hot pavement. She never braced herself, and her rm was jutting out at an akward angle. She refused to go to the hospital, so I drove her home and sent her to bed...cleaning up all her scrapes and telling her she needed to drink water. Heh...she whined I was mothering her too much. It was so weird. We were never close, but we'd been talking the past two years or so, since she'd been sober (pretty much). She looked so pathetic though, so scared and sad and really...pathetic. I felt bad that her daughter wasn't helping. My step-sister's older than me, but she has three kids and she really didn't have the patience for her mom. My dad finally convinced her to go to the hospital, after her face swelled up to some ginormous proportions, and it hurt. Oh boy I could see that it hurt. After that, she stayed in her room for at least a week. Then they had her on some pain relievers that made her hallucinate about gypsies in the house - she almost called the cops on them! And that was amusing, but not healthy...so they got her off those. All this time though, she wouldn't eat. That was part of the reason why she'd falled was because she wasn't eating, and hardly drinking anything worthwhile. For a few weeks after that, she was just so...helpless. It was driving her daughter nuts, because it was like she was taking care of 4 kids now (they all live together). But I could tell there was just something that still wasn't right. "Brandy, did you notice your mom is...yellow?" It started pale, but she eventually looked like a standard #2 pencil. It was freaky. It was also upsetting, since I knew what it meant. That's not something you can easily come back from. Eventually, she volunteered to go back to the hospital...

It was late Sunday evening when my dad called me, asking if I could come visit her at the hospital Monday, to say goodbye to her. It wasn't looking good. "I know she's always been hard on you and your sister, but she was always jealous. She was jealous Brandy wasn't like you girls." I asked him if he was going to be alright...and he just started crying. I'd never heard my dad cry before. I didn't know what to do, what to say. Llew & I had been playing a game of Sorry...well, boy was I sorry now. I went by there right after work in the morning. I hate hospitals. Brandy came by for a little while, not long at all. I called my sister to let her know. "How's it look?" She drove down that night. So that was interesting...she my our dad again for the first time in 10 years. Yeah...our step-monster had sorta driven a wedge between us all. But she was trying to do better, and she'd appologized to me, "I always screw things up," looking up at me from the passenger seat of my car with those scared, sad, pathetic eyes...and a giant bruise forming under her skin. My sister hadn't had that chance at making amends though. She was thrown right back into the mix without a chance to surrender to the idea that...things weren't so bad. Our childhood wasn't so bad. Our step-monster wasn't so bad. But in the end, after about a week and a half...she was the one to hear her final breath. She was staying the night with my dad at the hospice center...I was in Oregon. I'd had my vacation planned for a while, and everyone told me to just go ahead and continue with it, "No use waiting for the dying to pass." And I had fun. I had a lot of fun. Even when my sister told me what happened, I didn't let that be my focus. I thought about it...it floated in teh back of my mind while riding through the mountains, trying not to get car sick again, but I kept it back. One night I cried in my friend's shower (shhhh...don't tell them Mama), mostly just because I was thinking of my sister hearing that death rattle. The funeral was almost right after my flight landed back at home. And then the next morning I flew back out again...to Texas this time. Sorry I missed you Rebeka! It was nice though. Very different from Oregon. I must say...I preffered the PNW. Texas was just too...dry, while still being extremely hot.

So there...I sort of combined the good & bad news together. I guess it's better that way anyway. And now...Someone to boast about.

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*FEATURE*
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Continuing my newly-started tradition of featuring my friend in chronological order, it's time for #2...~Gods-Jester A young writer with a lot to say. Haven't seen him in a while though...hope he's okay. So go give him your love, show some report, and read his poems. They're lovely Now go visit !




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*~*~* I =FlockingOwls!!!!! *~*~*

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SCRAPS!!!