Coping and More Family Loss

Regardless of the turmoil in my heart surrounding my great aunt’s passing, I didn’t have much of a chance to grieve.

My brother-in law and sister-in-law were traveling to California from Missouri and they were to stay with us for the weekend. It was very nice to see them. We rarely get to see each other, since my husband refuses to travel in that direction of the country. As my brother-in-law now is retired, they now have a chance to visit family at their leisure. How lucky they are! Sigh! They were able to see all of three sons and the grandchildren too.
I think they enjoyed being here. We are a very quiet family and after visiting relatives with young children, I think they needed some quiet to rest and relax.

I was so thrilled to see my sister-in-law loves to crochet afghans. She asked my help to start a new pattern. Her afghan has inspired me to start one too. I looked through different patterns until I came across the Catherine’s wheel. It is a very intriguing pattern one can make solid or change colors in patterns anyway you want. I was intrigued and looked through my stash until I found some worsted colors that would go together perfectly. I am using a 3-ply variegated cotton and blue, grey and maroon color of Caron’s Simply Soft. I am making a twin size coverlet. So far it looks great…..take a look…..

When I get bored, I challenged myself to try to make a jester hat from an article in the Magazine “Knit It 2002”. The hat was designed by Linda Cyr called ZigZag Accessories. Of course, I tried looking it up in Ravelry first to see if anyone else had attempted it. There were very few and one made a comment that the directions were not very understandable . Her outcome was not the best.

Nevertheless, despite the warning I tried to made sense of the pattern. I doubled the worsted yarn since I didn’t have bulky in a color I liked. I restarted twice but finally did the top piece. I started the side and realized Linda left out an important part of the pattern. I even tried to look up errata from the publisher to no avail. I became so frustrated and impatient I quit. I realized that there had to be a better way to make this. Her directions called for sewing the bottom half of the diamond to the side of the hat, but I’m sure that doing this part in “intarsia “ would probably be much easier and perhaps better constructed. I gave up for now. Perhaps, I’ll come back to it when I’m feeling more experimental and patient.

I finally knit a furry hat instead with Patons Cha Cha that I had hanging around. I am being so good in trying to use my stash. I even gave some away to my sister –in-law. Isn't that great?! Now I have someone with whom I can unload my unused stash.

I guess the respite from overwhelming emotion was not to last. I just had some more bad news. My niece’s husband passed away very suddenly at age 44 from a pulmonary embolism. This indeed is tragic. He was just a good father, husband and all around good Christian person. I know the Lord has His reasons, but it is still a hard pill to swallow.

Tragic Circumstances

Twenty plus days have gone by and I have not blogged. I think I’m stuck, caught up in the mundane disappointments of life trying to understand how people can treat others they don’t know with unkindness and disrespect. How quickly people make bad judgments and almost certainly(I hope), if one has a conscience, regret the actions, when one takes time to think how an evil slanderous tongue can destroy much.

I mentioned a shadow hanging over our celebration in the previous entry. My mother’s 87 yr old aunt was invited to attend the celebration. She was not at the prearranged site to bring her to our celebration. She was a widow living with another person whom she rented a room in her home. She did not return our calls, and we worried. It was unlike her to forget an engagement, especially a family celebration. Later that week, we were informed she was in the hospital in a coma, having fallen down the stairs two days before the birthday dinner. It was worse than we thought. She had broken her neck at C2 spine and had been on life support for over a week without notification, and the doctor’s were considering termination of life support.

When a family grieves, one goes through the stages of grieving: shock, blaming, anger, bargaining, and finally acceptance. Things could have gone more smoothly and peacefully, but emotions cause some family to want to find blame for what happened. Many accusations, misspent anger and non-communication, failure to be objective and lack of level headedness has caused such pain all around.

I pray for peace and forgiveness all around. She was allowed to pass on Sunday, Oct 5, and we have yet to find closure in a funeral. There is to be an autopsy, although I see this as a worthless endeavor. Some are searching for the magic bullet, the piece that could validate supposed accusations of a relationship that none really understood and were not privy too.

I only see disappointment in unwise elders, who intend to think the worse of an accident they had no control over. I see the revelation and damage done from a wicked heart that is evidenced by a unrepenting slanderous tongue.

I pray for peace and forgivenss in my extended family.