Been A Minute…

Man, it’s been a whirlwind of a few days.

From early last week’s series of surprise anxiety attacks, to finding out my grandma passed away Saturday, to an arctic blast of sub-zero temps.

If there’s one thing I can say is that it’s not been a boring few days.

Friday morning my brother had an appointment with his urologist to find out what they’d found out regarding the biopsy of the mass on one of his kidneys. What they told him is that it was cancer. A cancer that is isolated to the kidney only, so it would at least not spread anywhere else. They made an appt for him to see the oncologist at 1:15 that afternoon to see if they agreed with the diagnosis. He texted me to let me know what was happening and that the prognosis was very good, but it was still fucking cancer.

Fast forward to later that afternoon. My brother texts me to let me know that the oncologist said that he didn’t think it was cancer after all, but a very rare disease called Oncocytoma. It’s a benign tumor that appears as cancer. He’s going to IU Med Center to meet with another doc to discuss removing them.

So that was some good news.

Saturday my mom called me to tell me that my grandma Gloria died. She was 91 and apparently ready to go. Gloria is my maternal grandpa’s second wife, after he and my grandma broke up in the late 60s. In a weird twist of fate, Gloria’s first husband is who my grandma got together with which is what broke up my grandparent’s marriage. So they essentially switched spouses. Crazy, I know.

Gloria treated me well. I never really had any problems with her, but she wasn’t the easiest to get along with. She carried a lot of grief and animosity with her. But she and my grandpa made a life together, for nearly 40 years. I’d see her smile a lot, but the smile was always just shy of a grimace. It never reached her eyes, and in most photos of her she just looked kind of mad.

I was happy to go to the funeral for my mom, more so than me. It had been since November 2012, at my grandpa’s funeral, that I’d seen her. My mom and aunt would go visit her at her daughter’s home where she’d been living since she moved back from Florida, which was where her and my grandpa had lived since the early 2000s.

My grandpa had a stroke in 2001 or 2002, and it was suggested the warmer climate would be better for him than another northeast Indiana winter. So he thrived down there for a good decade, getting into mischief and shenanigans in his golf cart. Getting into verbal disputes with a couple of the other grey-haired rebel rousers.

He was diagnosed with kidney cancer and refused to do dialysis. He was 84, so I guess he had that right to do so.

Gloria was laid to rest at Union Side East Cemetery, outside of Nappanee, Indiana, Monday morning. The wind was whipping and the temp felt like -10. It was mercifully a short graveside service.

My mom and dad bought us lunch on the way home, and I’ve been home since Monday on bereavement.

It’s been a lot to comprehend and process; from my brother’s brush with the big “C” to the death of a grandparent I have very conflicting emotions about to the isolation of a good old winter storm, then all of those feelings and fears popping up in the form of panic and anxiety. I went to get groceries this morning and was going to avoid Meijer, because that’s where I had a panic attack last Tuesday and feared it would come back. I decided the hell with it, I need to go there because nothing is going to happen to me. And you know what? Nothing did.

I’ll occasionally have isolated anxiety attacks but I know how to manage them. But once in a while it takes a few days to get out of that headspace and that anxiety lingers. For me it’s this little pang in my gut, like I’m constantly worrying about something. I guess you could say I fixate. Yesterday was the first time in a week where I wasn’t fixating. And today was even better, despite having the trepidation about going back to the scene of the crime, if you will.

I have Friday and two days next week then I’m off again until January 5th. I think this time off at the end of the year will do me some real good. My head and heart could us a good recalibrating, and what better way than putting on the old hermit hat and laying low?