Happier times

So on Monday night, I was at my mom's place, and I finally managed to get my old laptop up and running. Thanks to one of her neighbors ( amazingly, there are people who still run unsecured home networks ) I was able to log on briefly and waste some time on FaceBook. Heh.

I also took a quick look through the hard drive of the laptop, something which I apparently haven't done since Fall 2007!

One of the things I found was this photo from Christmas of 2004, where my brother-in-law, his siter, and HIS brother-in-law were goofing around and spontaneously hit the classic 3 monkeys pose. (My brother-in-law is Speak No Evil.) Luckily, I must've had my camera handy at that moment, because voila! A snapshot of a happier time, before our family ended their long streak of good health.

The photo makes me simultaneously happy (or perhaps more accurately, nostalgic) and sad, since my brother-in-law is now well advanced in his Alzheimer's. (His symptoms appear to fit Stage 6 and there are only 7 stages altogether.) My younger niece tells me that it may be that he is suffering concurrently from another disease which is accelerating his decline.

I will not go into the many details here, except to say that his symptoms have made my sister's life very difficult, so I am grateful that her two eldest children live nearby and can help her when she just is at the end of her rope. Since they each have their own families to take care of (between them, there are 3 children under the age of 4) these stopgap measures are still very stressful for everyone concerned.

Conversely, her grandchildren (whose photos I have proudly posted here in the past) bring joy and light into my sister's life every day, so that she is not constantly surrounded only by decay and disease. I understand more viscerally now why my mother insists that families need children. (I haven't told mom yet about The Change coming to visit me, although she can do the math and knows 5 years of tamoxifen mean I will never have any biological offspring. And no, that does not mean I am contemplating adoption either.)

Anyway, when I think of the psychological and emotional (but not legal or physical) widowhood that my sister endures every day, I understand why my mom yells at me to "not bother your sister with ANYthing!" since it is her only way of venting and being able to help my sister.

Between that, my stupid hormones, and all of the many other things that have been going on, I thought, "You know, it is really a shame that my sister and I were raised so that we never say I love you" (although my sweetie has broken me of that habit in his case). So as I sniffled my way through a phone call the other night, I told my sister that although I never SAY it aloud, I do love her very much.

It made me smile when she muttered, "Me too" since those were the only words I could bring myself to reply to my engineer on the phone at first. (He would then laugh affectionately at my embarrassment.) So I told him about it and that now I knew how he felt back then. HA! (And yes, more amusement from Le Engineer upon that newsflash.)

Okay, now that I have unburdened myself somewhat, and shared a HAPPY photo, it is definitely after lunch time for me.