Friday, July 1

Today I am grateful for:

Happy Canada Day! I am sad about the recent events with finding the graves of all the children who died at residential schools. Canada's horrible treatment of the First Nations people is coming to a time of reckoning, and I'm both hopeful and concerned about how civilly we can deal with this as a nation. Of course we need to be open about the past and the deliberate harm caused. We can't and shouldn't hide from this truth. I truly hope we can navigate this trauma together, not as two separate groups that are still enemies. I feel that it does no good to move forward continuing the roles we all played in the past; we need new roles to play. It makes Canada Day a day with mixed messages this year.

We drove to see my husband's Uncle K, who is not doing well at all. He lives about an hour and a half away from us. Uncle K has been pretty ill for a while now, but Covid has meant we couldn't go see him.

On the way there we met with a woman who especially, pretty please wanted something I posted on Buy and Sell. I really don't want to get in the habit of doing meet ups like this, but she said it was something that reminded her of her grandmother, so I made the effort.

My sweetie's parents have been staying with Uncle K this week, so they were there. Most of the things that bothered me about them don't bother me if we're on neutral ground. I don't feel like his Mom is taking over my house because we aren't in my house. She also didn't act like she owned the place, so I'm wondering if it really IS something that she does more with our house than with someone else. I know that his mom has had some health issues too, and does it make me a bad person for saying that in some ways she's been nicer?

His dad also managed not to say something horrible and inappropriate. Maybe because it was a group of people, and his brother being sick it just doesn't seem like the right time to be raunchy.

Anyhow, I think the combination of it being on neutral ground, and in a different mix of people, and they were on their best behavior. I can deal with this, especially since it's for only a couple of hours, and not four or five days in my home.

My husband's cousin was there, and she's more or less our age. I was shocked at the change in her appearance since we'd last seen her only a few years ago. She's had a lot of mental health issues that have also become just plain health issues, and of course they're all tied together. She looked a lot heavier, a lot older, and she's having issues with memory loss from the drugs they've been giving her. She's still as sweet and kind as I remember, but it seems so unfair for her to be having these kind of challenges.

I'm grateful though that she was doing well enough to be with her dad right now, and be in a position to process what's going on and to spend time with him. She's been unwell on and off for a few years and was in a facility for a while.

I so hope that we can one day soon be able to help people with illness like this in a more effective way.

I'm really grateful that we had a good visit, that my own issues with social situations and his parents didn't get in the way of the true goal which was to have a good visit with his Uncle K.

We came home and didn't do that much. I read and my sweetie dorked around on the computer.