Big weekend

I stayed up late Friday night and got up Saturday morning trying to clean house. We got a very late start for Ohio Saturday afternoon and I made calls for church during the drive. We stopped belatedly at Stephanie’s grandmother’s off of 161 in North Columbus, picked her up, and then dropped Frisco by a doggie day care place near the airport (pictured above top). Then the three of us went to Stephanie’s mother’s, where Nancy was feeling somewhat better but still getting tired quickly. With a new haircut and still some bloating from surgery, she was brave to take on guests. Bob fed us pizza recently ordered and we heard about the diagnosis, surgery, upcoming chemotherapy, and prognosis (which is not great). But Nancy has a great attitude and she and Bob are committed to fighting the cancer with all that they’ve got, even though doctors warn that it’s unlikely she’ll get rid of all of it. We went home late (with Frisco, having just barely picked him up on time, somewhat earlier), staying at Grandma’s for the first time ever. Sunday morning Grandma Mary cooked us a big breakfast (though nothing we’re supposed to eat) and then I got - late - to Stephanie’s church, which had a decent-sized crowd with lots of people who know her and me, because there was a potluck and congregational meeting scheduled after church. There they were to vote on whether to accept an offer from a neighboring church to merge and vacate their building and move into the other church’s building. (Stephanie grew up at Washington Avenue United Methodist Church, in the Columbus South End, attended there with her paternal grandparents, and served on the administrative board when she was a teenager, before Vincent was born. Before she and Vincent moved to Florida, we began attending there again and I stayed active there after they had gone, even gaining some aid and materials for my Central Ohio dissertation research.) I got to say hi to lots of people during the potluck – and lots of people asked about Vincent, Stephanie, and her mother (for whom I asked prayers). I left before the big meeting (next time we’re back, we may need to go to Thurman Avenue United Methodist, instead of Washington Avenue – the two share a pastor right now). (We know how tough things are in this part of town – with suburbanization, foreclosures, and the closing of old factories and retail stores in this area – from Stephanie’s father, who owns several rental properties in this area.) Then, I went back to Grandma’s (where Stephanie and Grandma had gotten to visit with each other during the morning), picked up Stephanie and the dog, and went to find the house where Vincent’s father has lived with his parents for the past year, on the far southeast side of Columbus, closer to Stephanie’s mother’s. We visited a little with Vincent’s paternal grandparents – we hadn’t seen his grandmother since she had a series of strokes a year and a half ago. As usual, Vincent had spent most of the night before staying up playing video games (with a visiting cousin – he even got to see his putative half-sibling earlier during the spring break visitation half-week), and he then slept almost the entire time we visited with Nancy and Bob (partly instead of interviewing Bob about his World War II memories, as we had planned). Nancy seemed to be feeling even better today. She slept through the night, she was able to take a shower and wash her hair, and she went for the second day only taking pain medication at night. Her swelling is going down slowly, and she seemed ready to steel herself for whatever cancer treatment has to offer. Nancy seems convinced that a strong will is a cancer’s patients most important asset, and she would seem to be the one to prove that is the case. We stayed for another couple of hours and then, having finally secured and kept a phone number for Granny, Vincent’s paternal great-grandmother (who used to care for Vincent when Stephanie was taking Ohio State classes and Vincent was an infant), went out to visit Granny south of Columbus just over the county line in Pickaway County, in a giant new subdivision extending the line of metro Columbus sprawl. The last time we saw Granny she was living with other extended family members in Reynoldsburg, on Christmas Day more than a year ago. Since then she has fallen and broken her hip and, then, like her daughter (Vincent’s grandmother), suffered a series of strokes. In the middle of that, she moved in with another daughter and her husband, in Pickaway County. We stayed away from Central Ohio at Christmas (for a variety of reasons), and didn’t get to visit her in the hospital, after the main stroke, although apparently Vincent did get to visit her with his father. With the move, we did not have an address for Granny, and so I’ve been stacking up cards, notes, and Vincent memorabilia for her (although she got our Christmas letter and some materials forwarded from her old place). It was nice to catch up with her. Although she is still undergoing physical therapy at home, she has lost the use of most of her left side and her mind isn’t always 100 percent. When we first got there, she was eating and seemed a little listless and I wasn’t even sure she recognized us, but she perked up and laughed with us and George and Candy, who seem to be taking very good care of her. She was in a wheelchair part of the time. She got along especially well with Frisco (who we finally let into Nancy and Bob’s house today, with no doggie day care), although Frisco didn’t reciprocate with her cat. (It’s a long story how we originally got reconnected with Granny, after all the animosity between Vincent’s father and Stephanie, but it involved Stephanie and Vincent having been especially close with Granny before and then Granny (and also both sets of family members Granny has lived with sort of siding with us in a court battle between Vincent’s two parents, a court battle which involved some members of Vincent’s father’s extended family essentially testifying against him – we alluded vaguely to the ensuing trial in an earlier blog entry when we talked about being about next week to paying off the legal debts from the trial.) There are a number of older/not well people we’d been meaning to catch up with, and this weekend we caught up with people at church, Stephanie’s grandmother, especially Nancy and Bob, a tiny bit with Vincent’s grandparents, and Granny. Still on the list are Aunt Velma in West Virginia and my grandfather, Grandpa Beck, in Marysville, Ohio. I did get to talk with two of my aunts who live in Central Ohio. The occasion was the death of Grandpa’s brother-in-law, the retired pastor married to Grandpa’s only sister, who lives in Mt. Vernon. He died the night before we arrived in Ohio, and two services which I will probably miss will take place this coming Saturday. Aunt Sandy reported on Grandpa’s overall health (OK but declining) and declining eyesight. Aunt June reported on her two housemates, my Aunt Barb and June’s son Dustin, who’s recently returned to living with her after a conflict with June sent him away to Lancaster and more recently got him some help. We saw many of these folks at my family’s Christmas party (but Dustin was not there). It’s always hard to go to Ohio because there are so many people to see and especially on these short weekends very little time. I had talked with Stephanie’s father by phone earlier in the week, and on the way from Candy, George, and Granny’s, we drove just a few blocks away past the cemetery where Stephanie wants us to be buried. We checked out the graves there of Stephanie’s grandparents and many others, including a great aunt whose finished tombstone we had not yet seen (although we went to her viewing – as we had for one woman at church who died last year). Stephanie’s cousin for whom Stephanie’s father took some responsibility still has no headstone after more than a year. A couple of years ago we went to Columbus six times in six weeks (including for Aunt Catharine’s viewing) – but, given the price of gas, all we have going on (including at church), and all we want to get done on the house and on other projects – we just don’t feel like we can drive up there every few weekends. It was nice especially to visit with Stephanie’s mother, who’s already been through so much. The whole thing seems especially unfair for two reasons. First, it seems unfair because Stephanie’s mother already went through that very serious accident seven years ago, when a car crossed over into her lane and hit her car – the two going in opposite directions, both at almost 50 miles per hour – and her foot was seriously injured (partly permanently). It also seems unfair because Stephanie already went through the loss of another female parental figure – her grandmother with whom she lived early in her teenage years, who died on Christmas Day when Stephanie was 14.