The Meaning of Friendship

How do you define friendship? 

I think the answer to this is different for everyone.  And I think one person can have lots of different sorts of friendships that fall on different ends of a wide spectrum.  I know it is absolutely that way for me.

I have been blessed to have many different friends over the last 30 years.  Some I have been friends with for years, some I am just getting to know.  A lot of people of come in and out of my life.  Some I miss spending time with on a regular basis, others I don't miss at all. 

There is one special group of people though.  Its hard for me to explain, but there are some people who I meet and I just feel a very genuine, very deep connection to.  Soul mates if you will.  There are just some people who have such an impact on my heart that I couldn't ever forget them no matter what kind of time passes.  And sadly, sometimes these are the people who I don't get to keep in contact with the way I wish I could or I don't get to see them as often as others. 

I lost one of my soul mates this week.

Jessi and I met in middle school.  She was very nice and very quiet.  When we went to high school we had every single class together our freshman year.  And so began one of the best friendships of my life. 

Those 4 years of high school Jessi and I were pretty inseparable.  We lived kind of far apart and it was long distance for us to call each other.  I remember after some ridiculous phone bills her mom got a special long distance plan where they had free long distance on weekends.  Jess and I knew we could talk as much as we wanted starting at midnight on Friday.  We learned the hard way you had to MAKE THE CALL after midnight.  Apparently if you made the call at 11:30 and kept talking until the wee hours of the morning on Saturday it DID NOT automatically flip over to free calling.  Boy did we get in trouble for that one! 

That wasn't the only trouble we got in to.  Jess and I were boy crazy to say the least.  And that got us in to all kinds of trouble (but some of the best memories of my life)!  We caused a riot on the streets of West Alex one night.  A full out brawl over us!  We lied to our parents and got busted all because we wanted to spend the night with two boys that we liked.  Instead of passing notes back and forth at school we had notebooks that we would pass back and forth throughout the day.  I wish I still had those.  We just never ran out of things to talk about.  We could be together all weekend and still talk on the phone for 3 hours Sunday night.

We weren't always up to trouble though.  One year for her birthday her dad got her three tickets to the Nsync concert.  So she asked me to come with her and instead of asking a third friend, she invited my little sister to come with us.  Jessi was the youngest in her family and she knew how crazy my sister was about Nsync and she just knew exactly how awful it would feel to watch her older sister go without her.  So me, Jessi and Em went to Nsync.  Its one of my sisters favorite memories and just completely shows the wonderful kind of person Jessi was.

I think a favorite memory that Jess and I never stopped laughing about is we were driving down Route 40 one day in the pouring down rain.  All of a sudden my windshield wiper on the driver's side just flew off of my car!  There it lay shattered in the middle of the road.  Here we are two teenage girls, trying to see to drive the car, we had our heads out the windows.  Oh the whole sight was just hilarious.  We would randomly over the years just send each other a message - hey remember when our wiper fell off??? 

One of the things that most of the people we went to high school with didn't realize was that Jessi was sick.  And the hardest thing about her being sick is that it always seemed like nobody could explain what was wrong with her.  I remember her waking up some mornings and not being able to get out of bed because she couldn't feel her legs.  And she had all kinds of stomach problems.  She was eventually diagnosed with crohn's disease.  And she had arthritis.  It was hard on her.  She just wanted to be like all the other teenagers, but at times she just physically couldn't do it.  But she never let it get her down.  She would just push forward.  I remember one time she got rushed to Children's Hospital in an ambulance.  Her sister and I drove up to Pittsburgh to meet Jessi and her mom at the hospital.  Jessi's reaction to everything... how cool it was to ride in an ambulance! 

At our high school the senior class went on a trip to Florida every year.  Jessi wasn't going to go.  I begged and pleaded with her until final she agreed to go.  And I am so happy that she did.  We had so much fun! 

Graduation came and went and Jessi went off to college while I was still at home.  A couple years later I moved to Morgantown.  We always stayed in contact but we were living different lives.  This is where Facebook and Email came to the rescue.  We weren't ever as close as we were those years in high school but we were able to see each other's wedding pictures and pictures of our babies.  We didn't spend a lot of time together after high school, but we always knew that the other one was only a phone call or an email away.

We made lots of plans to get together over the years that just would not ever pan out for one reason or another.  Then one day last August I was sitting at my desk eating my lunch and decided to check Facebook.  Jessi had updated her status and it just rocked me to my core.  She had been diagnosed with liver cancer.  Now Jessi had always been sick.  One of her problems was a liver disease.  But now it was cancer.  Most people would get this diagnosis and be devastated, but not my Jessi Marie... oh no!  She was excited.  She was happy because this would allow her to get the liver transplant that she desperately needed but wasn't "sick enough" to get on the list until now. 

Things from August to now have been a complete roller coaster for her and her family.  A roller coaster that crashed on Saturday.  First her brother was supposed to donate part of his liver and that got canceled, they had her do an extreme round of chemo that landed her in the hospital, very very sick.  She finally got her transplant, went back in to the hospital with blood clots in her lungs.  Then she was home a couple weeks before going back to the hospital again and not ever getting to come back home. 

Nothing about this is right and nothing about it is fair.  My heart is shattered because I don't have her here anymore.  Not that we spent a lot of time together lately, but she was still there anytime I wanted to talk to her or her to me.  And there were still just certain things in our lives that she is truly the only one who I could talk to that I knew would understand.  She passed away on May 4th, her son's 8th birthday was the 6th, and she will be buried on her 30th birthday on the 9th.  I don't know how her son and her husband are going to move forward from losing her.  I don't know how her mom is going to go back to a normal life after not ever leaving her side through any of this.  I just don't have any answers. 

Jessi was a beautiful woman inside and out.  I'm so honored to say that in my life she is one of the friends that left a permanent mark on my heart.  She will not ever be replaced and I will always remember her as lovely and sweet as she always was.

This is a video that was shown at a 5K to raise money for her hospital bills. It was held the Sunday before she passed away.

Losing the Ones We Love

Its been a rough few days for some very important people in my life. 

My friend Stef's Grandma lost her battle with breast cancer.  My friend Erin's Pap passed away and Gary lost his Grandpa this morning. 

I think losing a grandpartent as an adult is harder than when you are younger.  Its wonderful because you have had the extra years with them, but at the same time you become so used to them being around.  I think at one point you sort of forget how old they are and just feel like they will always be there.

Dying is a part of life. But it doesn't make it any less sad or any easier for those of us who are left behind to start our next chapters without the ones we love.

I love these girls and their families like my own.  My heart aches for them right now.  They will get through this, they are strong.  But as Stef put it, things won't ever be the same ever again.

My Grandma's Legacy Will Always Live On

A year ago today, I lost my Grandma to Alzheimer's Disease. 

You can read my posts about how she was diagnosed as well as my favorite memories of her here:
 Its Going To Be A Long Week  and  More Grandma Memories

And this is the link to the team page for the Alzheimer's Walk I am doing in her honor:
Helen's Heroes Team Page

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I find it very interesting that the older you get, you begin to reflect on things that have happen in your life or people you have known and you can see everything in a different light.  It doesn't mean you saw it wrong the first time around, but as you get more mature you can appreciate things for different reasons.

My Grandma had a personality that was all her own.  She was very unique in my opinion.  And everyone loved her.  She always had lots of friends and would always be out and about doing something.  Whether it was card club or a party for someone or something with the church.  There was always SOMETHING to do.  You would never ever in a million years find her just sitting at home with nothing to do.  And she taught me to be just like her!   I often complain about not having any free time and that my calendar is booked up months in advance, but really, I wouldn't have it any other way.

I talk a lot about my Grandma, but I would also like to take a moment to remember my Pap.  Because I believe that together, they were unstoppable.  He was an amazing man.  He had so much love inside of him.  I never heard him say anything bad about anyone.  He was the world to me for the 13 years that I got to spend with him.  He was always calm.  He loved to sit in his recliner at their big picture window and watch birds all day long.  He put coffee on his cereal instead of milk.  He loved his cows.  He loved his farm.  He loved his kids and grandkids.  And he loved my Grandma.

Until my Pap passed away whenever Em and I would go stay at my Grandparents house we always split, Em would go with Grandma because she was the baby and Pap and I would sneak off somewhere and basically, for lack of a better word, we would hide from them!  haha  We would go down in his tool shed and build something like a swing to hang in the tree.  Or we would go walk around the farm.  Whatever we could find to do to escape my Grandma harping at us! 

They were just so funny together!  And the longer Gary and I are married and the older I get and remember things about my Grandma and Pap together, Gary and I are a lot like they were.  And that makes me so happy.  My grandparents absolutely had a marriage that I looked up to.  They were really pretty different people and no, they didn't always agree or get along, but they were a team.  They took on the world together (while seeing as much of the world as they could!).  They took their marriage vows very seriously.  My Pap never took his wedding ring off from the day they got married.  NEVER TOOK IT OFF.  My mom wears it now.  I have their wedding picture framed in my living room.  Its really one of my most prized possessions.  They are such an inspiration to me.

Part of my wishes that my Pap hadn't died so young so that maybe once Grandma starting suffering the effects from Alzheimer's he could have helped somehow.  Maybe she could have lived at home longer.  Maybe just having him there would have slowed it down somehow.  Maybe it could have kept her grounded a little bit.   But part of me is thankful that he wasn't around to see how far she got from the woman he fell in love with.  I think it would have broke his heart when she couldn't remember who he was or all the memories that they had together - because she just no longer had those memories. 

That is what is just so baffling about this disease to me.  You forget your life.  Think about that for a minute.  You live your entire life.  Nobody knows your life better than you do.  And then you just don't know anymore.  But the weird part is that you don't even know that you don't know.  Maybe that's the silver lining of it all.  You aren't aware that there are things you don't know that you absolutely should.  Well I shouldn't really say that, I do think there is a time during the disease, before its full blown where you get frustrated.  You get frustrated because you should know things and you don't.  But after you get on the other side of that line, you are blissfully ignorant to the actuality of what is happening.

This has turned in to a complete ramble!  I really just wanted to mark the anniversary of my Grandma's passing with some reflection. 

Remember to let me know if you want to walk or donate to Helen's Heroes! 

Helen's Heroes - A Walk to End Alzheimer's

Team Website

I am captaining a team in honor of my Grandma - Helen Ely who passed away last September.

If anyone is interested in joining my team and walking with us, please let me know!  You can follow the link above to go to my team page and join my team.

If you don't want to or can't walk with us and want to make a donation in her honor, you can do that by following the above link also!

This is a cause very close to my heart.  People don't talk a lot about Alzheimer's Disease and its hard to really understand what its like until you have lived through it.  When you think about a family that loses a loved one to Cancer or another lengthy illness you think about how awful it was for the family to watch their loved one suffer for so long.  I feel like a lot of people forget that its the same drawn out, horrible experience when you lose a loved one to Alzheimer's.  Trust me, I'm not suggesting that one is worse or better than the other, lets face it - both are heartwrenching! 

When someone is dying of Alzheimer's its hard for the family because there isn't ever a time to say "goodbye".  The fact is you can live with Alzheimer's for years like my Grandma did.  But for the family, even though they are still "living" they are already gone and you are trying to cope with that while at the same time caring for the patient who is technically still "living".  It can really rip you apart when you hate to see them at the nursing home without visitors when at the same time if you do go they don't know who you are.  You have to decide if its better to try to tell them who you are or just let them believe you are a stranger that they have never met.  My Grandma got to the point where she didn't even know that she had ever had children.  Its shocking how your mind can just erase all your memories from your life like that.

I'm going to continue to do posts about my Grandma and about other people who I know that have been affected by this disease in the future, just look for the "Helen's Heroes" label!   And please visit my Team Page for the Walk to End Alzheimer's.

More Grandma Memories

I knew this would happen!  I can't promise this to be the last post either!

• She always had to sleep on a satin pillow because she would get her hair done once a week and the satin pillow "protected it".
• She always had to have her lipstick on.  ALWAYS!
• She would always guess what her Christmas or Birthday presents were right before opening them.  It always really stunk when she would guess right.... haha
• She ate cornflakes for breakfast EVERY morning.
• She never let us waste things.  If you opened up a can of pop and didn't finish it she would just put it back in the fridge and pull out for you at the next meal.  Or the next weekend when you were there.  She didn't care if it was flat - you were going to finish that can of pop!
• Whenever we got strawberries instead of just cutting the top part with the stem off she would give us each a straw.  And we had to take the straw and push it up through the bottom of the strawberry and pop the top off.  It was so weird and to this day I dont' know why she made us do it that way!  But as a kid it was a lot of fun!
• She loved to travel.  Her and Pap got to take a trip to the Grand Canyon before he died, I'm so glad they got to take that trip! 
• She tried not to curse around the kids.  So we heard lots of "Oh Shit - Oh Shinny"  "Hells Bells"

Its going to be a long week...

Its going to be a long week, full of lots of joy and lots of sorrow.  My little sister gets married this coming Saturday and my Grandma passed away yesterday.  Yesterday, today, tomorrow and Thursday will be the sorrow and the pain and the mourning of an amazing lady.  Friday, Saturday and Sunday will be the joy of seeing my little sister become a wife and start her own family!  And the joy of welcoming my new "brother" Gerald to our family.  Where there is a void it will be filled with more love.

For anyone who doesn't know what we have gone through with my grandma in the last 15 years, let me bring you up to speed.  15 years ago, on my 13th birthday, my pap passed away.  It was a horrible time for our family.  He was a wonderful man who is truly missed every day by all of us and his passing really tore us all apart.  When he died that left my Grandma all alone living in a big farm house taking care of a farm.  Of course we all helped her out, but it was still a lot for her to be there by herself.  So after a couple of years we moved her in to an apartment in a senior living complex.  She had her own kitchen, living room, bathroom and bedroom.  She was living on her own but there was help there if she ever needed it.  And one day she did.  Seven years ago she fell, so she pulled one of the ropes for help.  When they took her to the hospital she coded and I believe with every part of my being she should have died that day.  That was how the story should have ended, but it didn't.  With medical intervention they brought her back and she was never the same again.  She had the beginnings of Alzheimer's and couldn't go back to the apartment to live on her own anymore.  So she went to live in the assisted living - nursing home part of the building.  Year after year her Alzheimer's disease got worse and worse.  I was lucky enough that she was able to come to my bridal shower and my wedding, but she wasn't herself.  And as time went on she didn't know who any of us were, couldn't even remember that she had been married or had children - let alone her grandchildren.  So my Grandma has been "dying" for the last seven years, so no, this was not an "unexpected" death, but yes, the timing really stinks with Em's wedding this week.  And for the record, just because a death is expected that doesn't make it hurt any less.  Its funny all this time I felt like I was completely prepared for when she passed away, I mean we really haven't had her around for such a long time.  But I'm not.  I'm not prepared to go to the funeral home tomorrow night and see her laying in a coffin.  Even when she had no idea what was going on, you could still go visit her and she would talk to you and laugh with you - then ask you the same three questions for the next hour.... haha

This is a link to her obituary.

And now for some happy memories of my Grandma!  I might have to add a few new blog entries as I think of more but Em and I were having a lot of fun remembering things last night and I just wanted to share some of it!

• My Grandma was crazy about word search books!  She would keep lists of which ones she had already bought and done.  And I always thought it was funny how she wouldn't circle the words, she would draw a line straight through it.  Even when she was sick, mom would still get her word search books and she would write notes in the margins.  I doubt she ever pulled the books out and read the notes after she wrote them, but they were there.
• Em would always bake pumpkin pies with her.  And Em always laughed about how Grandma would measure every ingredient down to the grain of sugar.  hahaha  What makes that whole thing even funnier is how much I am like my Grandma.  She rarely cooked and we all know I don't cook!  But she did bake on occasion and when she did she was such a perfectionist just like I am! 
• There were always lots of birds around my grandparents house.  My pap always put up bird feeders and liked to watch them out of this huge picture window they had.  Every time a bird would tweet Grandma would always say listen, its saying "pretty pretty pretty"!  Em and I think about that every time we hear birds to this day! 
• She hated to sit at home.  Another way we are so much alike.  We used to make all kinds of excuses to have to go to town.  And she LOVED Walmart!  She used to say we had to go to Walmart so that the people there wouldn't miss her and think that something happen to her.
• She loved to talk on the phone.  I remember as a young teenager hanging out at her house and wanting to go upstairs and have a private conversation on the phone in her bedroom.  She would ask probably 10 times - you know how to use the call waiting right.  Make sure you answer it if somebody calls!
• She genuinely cared about people.  She was a nurse all her life.  A traveling nurse.  She would go to houses that were in the middle of the ghetto to take care of people and she wouldn't even bat an eye at the thugs on the corner.  Usually they knew her name and would tell her hello!  That's just the impact that she had on people.  When she retired her and my pap delivered meals for Meals On Wheels.  Em and I used to go with them when we were off from school.  She would just make those peoples whole day/week I think! 
• Every year on Thanksgiving my cousin Amber and I used to go with my grandparents to deliver Thanksgiving dinners to less fortunate families for the church.  That was always a really happy memory of mine.  We would go in to all their houses and everyone would always be watching the parade on tv and they were always so happy to see us.  A lot of them wouldn't get to spend the day with family so we were the only ones they got to see.
• She used to write with her toes!  hahahahaha  Only my family will understand this I think!  She would take her shoes and socks off and put a pen between her toes and try to write with it.  Its one of those you had to be there moments, but hysterical all the same!
• Along the same lines, she used to balance a spoon on her nose!  haha

I'm done for now, but lets all just smile and remember Grandma like she was when she was healthy!

My Tribute to Grandma June

The world lost a wonderful woman Tuesday morning and I just wanted to write a little bit about how much I love and how much I will miss Grandma June.

I guess I should start by explaining for anyone who doesn't know the relationship, she technically isn't my grandma and if you get really technical we aren't even truly related.  June's daughter Linda is married to Fred.  Fred is my grandma, Miriam's little brother.  So Grandma June is my Great Aunt's Mom.  Regardless, I grew up down the street from my Aunt Linda and spent a lot of time at her house and therefore a lot of time with Grandma June.  And she will always be GRANDMA June to me, related or not.

Grandma June wasn't a big fan of having her picture taken, so I don't have many pictures, but I do have the one above that I took this past Thanksgiving of her and Lyla.  I think it does show how much she loved babies and kids and they all always flocked to her.

I feel lucky that I actually got to see her this past Saturday at my cousin Lynnlee's graduation party.  She was her normal funny, happy self!  She was asking me all about our new house and how many stories it was and if we were all moved in.  And she said to me "I told Linda I'm not going to the zoo to see that baby, Katie needs to bring her down to see me!"  She just always made me laugh, and I told her, well I brought her down! 

I remember when I started dating Gary and Grandma June finally got to meet him.  I think she fell in love with him as quickly as I did!  She would always tell me, he is so handsome!  You better hold on to him!  And the two of them loved to talk about Steelers football.  Grandma June would get so in to it!

When we had my baby shower when I was pregnant with Lyla one of the games we played was everyone picked a day on the calendar for when they thought I would have the baby and after I had the baby my sister would send a prize to whoever picked that day.  Well nobody picked June 3rd, but that just so happen to be Grandma June's birthday so we decided she won by default!

I am going to miss seeing Grandma June at Aunt Linda's house every holiday.  I will miss watching her play scrabble.  I rarely joined in the games, mainly because they seemed to go on for hours and I usually didn't stay that long!  But I loved watching her play!  She took it very seriously and was always sure that my cousin Richie was trying to cheat!  She would yell at him and make him get out the dictionary and look up words to prove they were real words!  It was so funny to watch! 

I always made it a point to send Grandma June a Christmas card every year and she always sent us one too.  It was the card I always looked forward to the most every year.  I'm going to really miss that card this year.

Grandma June was a fantastic lady!  I feel so honored that I got to know her as well as I did!  She truly LIVED to 89 years old.  She was still driving, still knew what was going on, still LIVING and that doesn't happen for a lot of people.  I think the fact that we all had her here with us for so long is just going to make us all miss her that much more.  But I will always cherish my memories with her and think of her during every Steelers & Scrabble game!  Rest in peace Grandma June.

Obit