It's my boyfriend's 23rd birthday today.
We went to see his grandparents, which always makes me vaguely uneasy. His grandmother's very nice to me, but she just seems to *ooze* vague religious themed dissaproval from every pore. Asriel's grandfather was just sent an old photo album by his sister, the thing must've been at least a hundred years old, filled with old sepia-toned photos of people he mostly didn't know....he showed it to us, pointed out the pictures of his father and brother working a horse drawn plow... pointed out the pictures of his grandparents and mother, showed us a picture of his two younger brothers and told us how they were both currently dying of cancer. His voice shook. I wish I could've hugged him.
Old pictures are amazing things, I could've looked at that album for hours, imagining the history behind every photograph.
His grandparents are getting very old... they try so hard to keep it all together, but every time I see them, I know the effort that's put into making themselves and the house presentable for us, and I remember when they were both ill and in the hospital, much worse off than they should have been because they didn't ask for help. I remember his granddad collapsed and stuttering and trying to keep his dignity while they put a diaper on him, and I remember all of us being shocked by the news that his grandmother had had a hysterectomy and a mastectomy in the past, and that she'd been a ward of the state way back when, tossed from foster home to foster home and being hurt. Both said to me in the hospital, "I lost my daughter, I miss her"....but put on their brick wall faces once their medications wore off.
So I was thinking about all that, and Asriel's very sad because birthdays make him think of his mother... that daughter they lost. She died a few years ago, when he was still in his teenage "fuck off, mom, you're not cool" stage, and he feels unbelievably guilty for not being closer to her at the end.
Birthdays are 'supposed' to be a celebration of life and joy and growing wisdom and all that jazz,
but from what I know, and what I see, they're more of an excuse to yearn, to mourn, to feel guilty for what you haven't done before now, to feel hopeless about what you can accomplish in whatever amount of time you've got left...
We went to see his grandparents, which always makes me vaguely uneasy. His grandmother's very nice to me, but she just seems to *ooze* vague religious themed dissaproval from every pore. Asriel's grandfather was just sent an old photo album by his sister, the thing must've been at least a hundred years old, filled with old sepia-toned photos of people he mostly didn't know....he showed it to us, pointed out the pictures of his father and brother working a horse drawn plow... pointed out the pictures of his grandparents and mother, showed us a picture of his two younger brothers and told us how they were both currently dying of cancer. His voice shook. I wish I could've hugged him.
Old pictures are amazing things, I could've looked at that album for hours, imagining the history behind every photograph.
His grandparents are getting very old... they try so hard to keep it all together, but every time I see them, I know the effort that's put into making themselves and the house presentable for us, and I remember when they were both ill and in the hospital, much worse off than they should have been because they didn't ask for help. I remember his granddad collapsed and stuttering and trying to keep his dignity while they put a diaper on him, and I remember all of us being shocked by the news that his grandmother had had a hysterectomy and a mastectomy in the past, and that she'd been a ward of the state way back when, tossed from foster home to foster home and being hurt. Both said to me in the hospital, "I lost my daughter, I miss her"....but put on their brick wall faces once their medications wore off.
So I was thinking about all that, and Asriel's very sad because birthdays make him think of his mother... that daughter they lost. She died a few years ago, when he was still in his teenage "fuck off, mom, you're not cool" stage, and he feels unbelievably guilty for not being closer to her at the end.
Birthdays are 'supposed' to be a celebration of life and joy and growing wisdom and all that jazz,
but from what I know, and what I see, they're more of an excuse to yearn, to mourn, to feel guilty for what you haven't done before now, to feel hopeless about what you can accomplish in whatever amount of time you've got left...
Anna I miss you and I talked to tony today and i told him that I just wanted to be friends and I kept blowing him off like when he wanted to hug me every 5 seconds and shit so I'm hoping that he wont call me, but whatever and I saw sarah today I missed her, talk to you later P.S. are you back?