bittersweet day
Dec. 5th, 2006 10:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
saffronhareTalked with my mother this evening, and received two bits of news that have me lighting candles for very different reasons tonight.
First, a dear friend of the family (and by this, I mean my grandmother and my parents) passed away today. Father Cunningham lived up the street from Grammy, and I think we visited him every time we visited her. (Mom's family was very closely intertwined with the local Dominicans and the faculty of Providence College, on which Fr. Cunningham served.) One night, during a thunderstorm that had five-year-old me terrified, he told me the thunder-god stories of dozens of different cultures...and he taught me how to pray to all of them in their own way. He always had an enormous black dog, and new dogs were always equally enormous and black and named the same...he had a very Irish joke about that, but I can't recall what it was, only that it made Gram snort whiskey out her nose when she first heard it. I know he was a role model for my father, and a fixture in my mother's life since her father was so very much older. I remember him as a very kind man, a fine example of a priest, and a thoroughly decent human being. I'm so glad I got to know him again once I was an adult and moved back to RI for a while. He'll be missed.
Then, to round out the double-whammy, I found out my baby cousin is having a c-section. I suppose Meggie can't be eight forever. I mean, really, she's about 33 now. But I always think of her as eight years old. But she's pregnant with her second baby (they lost the first in an early miscarriage) and her body is giving out on her. Kidney stones, even. And an ultrasound today showed the baby as being Seriously Breech. So. A genuinely medically necessary c-section is schedule for Thursday. She's livid...see, she was supposed to take her final exam for her CPA on Thursday, and hadn't planned to have the baby until next week at least. (sigh) I wish them all well.
Thursday = many candles. Jackie Cunningham's funeral, and the birth of Meggie's baby. I suspect I'll be drinking.
First, a dear friend of the family (and by this, I mean my grandmother and my parents) passed away today. Father Cunningham lived up the street from Grammy, and I think we visited him every time we visited her. (Mom's family was very closely intertwined with the local Dominicans and the faculty of Providence College, on which Fr. Cunningham served.) One night, during a thunderstorm that had five-year-old me terrified, he told me the thunder-god stories of dozens of different cultures...and he taught me how to pray to all of them in their own way. He always had an enormous black dog, and new dogs were always equally enormous and black and named the same...he had a very Irish joke about that, but I can't recall what it was, only that it made Gram snort whiskey out her nose when she first heard it. I know he was a role model for my father, and a fixture in my mother's life since her father was so very much older. I remember him as a very kind man, a fine example of a priest, and a thoroughly decent human being. I'm so glad I got to know him again once I was an adult and moved back to RI for a while. He'll be missed.
Then, to round out the double-whammy, I found out my baby cousin is having a c-section. I suppose Meggie can't be eight forever. I mean, really, she's about 33 now. But I always think of her as eight years old. But she's pregnant with her second baby (they lost the first in an early miscarriage) and her body is giving out on her. Kidney stones, even. And an ultrasound today showed the baby as being Seriously Breech. So. A genuinely medically necessary c-section is schedule for Thursday. She's livid...see, she was supposed to take her final exam for her CPA on Thursday, and hadn't planned to have the baby until next week at least. (sigh) I wish them all well.
Thursday = many candles. Jackie Cunningham's funeral, and the birth of Meggie's baby. I suspect I'll be drinking.
