A Barrage of Updates

Yesterday afternoon turned out to be a bit more intense than I expected. When I got home from work, Ry mentions that Mom called & wants to talk to me. A little time passes, Ry tells me again, that I really should call Mom. He then hineds that something is up with Grandpa O'Sullivan.

When I finally do call her, oh my gods, it was one hell of an update. Now before I proceed, I should point out that many of the details I'm a bit iffy on. My mind was quickly overwhelmed as Mom filled me in. Plus, Mom was a little out of it herself as she was fasting in anticipation of a colonoscopy today.

My Grandpa is in hospital right now. He had fallen a few times & there something is wrong with his lower back. They're waiting to hear back from the doctor about him, but it seems like he might be getting in his final years. He is also my last remaining grandparent as his wife died during my senior year at Reed and last year I lost my both my grandparents on my mother's side. Fuck.

My aunt Karen (who is married to my dad's eldest brother Tim), has only 3 months to live. She has been battling breast cancer for many years but appears to be losing that battle. She had been in remission for a few years but now the cancer is back and has spread throughout her body. This sadly is almost exactly what happened to my aunt Shirley (mother's side of the family), who died at the start of my sophomore year at Reed.

We had all hoped that Karen was going to make it through this recent reemergence. While I'm not particularly found of her husband, I've always really liked her. Tim, who I usually refer to as "that asshole born-again-christian uncle", once told Mom she was a bad mother because Ry & I weren't raised in any church. Though he didn't like the Catholic church, he said it would have been better than nothing at all. Can't help but wonder how he'd feel if he knew I was a bisexual borderline-atheist with pagan leanings, not to mention pro-choice socialist. Anyways, Karen is wonderful and one of the few family members on that side of the family I really like. Plus her & my mom are somewhat close. So yeah, fuck.

My uncle Rick's, another one of my dad's brothers, brain tumor has re-emerged. He had it removed many years ago, but its back. Can't recall how series this tumor is, but it's a brain tumor so once again, fuck.

Now for the bizarre part of these updates. Just a shy 2 hrs before Mom & Dad got the call about everything going on with the O'Sullivan family, my parents realized they had been robbed. All but 15 of their DVDs were taken. Not their laptop computers, which were sitting in the living room with the DVDs. Nor their digital camera, which is only a few years old. Nope, nothing in the house was taken. Just almost all of the box sets of series like Carnival, Lost, The Tudors, Sopranos. Not to mention my copy of Firefly I had lent to them. Another strange thing about robbery, for the most part all but the 1st season of these series was taken. They still have the 1st season of Lost & Sopranos (maybe others but thats all I can recall Mom mentioning).

We all feel like this had to be someone in the family, someone with a key to the house. While there are a few suspects, I do not feel comfortable posting that here. At least not until we have proof. But since nothing but the DVDs were taken, I think its clear that this has to be, as they say, "an inside job." My parents have since then replaced their locks and are currently trying to find the theif.

This concludes the barrage of updates I got from my mother yesterday. All yesterday evening my head was spinning with a million thoughts (& some worries about other thing I can't talk about here). I'm still "processing" a lot of this. The O'Sullivan side of the family isn't one that I'm very close to. This is mostly due to the fact that they are spread throughout the country. Still, they are family nonetheless & the news about Grandpa, Karen & Rick is upsetting.

So yeah, fuck, fuck, & fuck.