bironic

My grandma died last evening.

It was a long time coming. She'd had more health crises and hospitalizations in the last few years than we can count, but she just kept pulling through. Until this time. Not a surprise to any of us, but still sad and hard.

She would have been 99 in two weeks. We were all gunning for her, joking with her about taking her to a nightclub to mark the occasion. But 98 years and 11 and a half months is nothing to complain about.

My dad and aunt et al will be gathering with my grandpa today to talk about logistics. I guess it's good timing in a way that I was already here, although my sister is away on tour.

Now we focus on funeral plans, preparing the house for shiva visitors, and not beating ourselves up over not visiting the nursing home yesterday on the way back from the airport. I would also like my brain to stop going over and over last night's events at the hospital.

Here is my old LJ icon of the silly turkey pin my grandma gave me years ago and which I happened to be wearing yesterday:

Uh, so other than that, Thanksgiving was actually pretty good. The flight down was short, uneventful and scenic; my dad's fiancée made a sweet potato pie with marshmallows on top that we blowtorched and later had to scrape off because they melted into a charred, lumpy glaze; there were about nine hundred people at the stepfamily's annual Thanksgiving dinner, but my worst worries weren't realized: (1) no one talked politics* and (2) despite the absence of my sister, who usually serves as a conduit, I talked with many attendees and didn't need to hide in a quiet corner. Some of the older kids (high school and college-ish) even came up and started conversations.

*In fact, the total lack of politics talk slowly swung me from "whew" to contemplating the extended family's privilege and/or willful ignorance at not seeming worried by current events. It's possible they've been talking about it a lot not-at-Thanksgiving and took a break for the holiday?

In other news, that orig. fic vignette made it to 4,800 words before I left MA, I've been alternating between reading a dull book for work and acquaintances' shifter romance novels, and I still hope to see some fangirls on Saturday.