'I got lei'd as soon as I got off the plane. It smelled like tacos.' by Kara
Thursday, July 29, 2010 at 10:47 AM

It has not been a good few days for my family. Not at all. The main thing? Another relative I will never get to meet has died. At least it was at home, and (as I understand it) peacefully. My mother was there the whole time. Things haven't been at all easy on her, and it's been tough on me because while I wanted to be there for her, I'm no good in emotional crises. Thus, sadly, I knew it would be best for me not to actually be there in person. That makes me feel bad enough, knowing that I can't be the kind of person that can help in those situations.

One thing I know I can do, though -- and likely that my readers know I can do -- is I can keep a ship running even in the middle of a crisis. I've left the country for days, weeks at a time, and I'm pretty sure you lot wouldn't have known if you didn't read my rants. I can manage this at work and just about anywhere else. So I made an offer to me mum to do the same for her; one doesn't want to come home to random crap to do, but having been pretty much isolated for a while, I figured maybe I could put that time to good use.

Naturally, as she is like me, she did not take me up on this offer, likely because she thought even accepting a standing offer would be asking too much of me.

So being alone enough to go stir-crazy while my mother sits by a dying woman's bedside, knowing there's nothing I can do and also knowing that a woman (my great-grandmother on my mother's side) has now outlived all her children ... well, I may well have become a little resentful about friends coming home from awesome trips. I'm doing my best to get over that ...

... I guess I want to know where my awesome weekend is.

In the meantime, I'm taking the advice of Co-Writer (which is to take the advice of Dave Lister), as well as that of the great Onezumi: 'Life is a knife fight. Bring an AK and never let them take you alive!'

If you have been, big one.