2022 Life Logs, Day 87: Wonderful Day with My Sister Patsy
Date: Monday, March 28, 2022
Weather: Freezing Overnight, Sunny Day; High 65, Low 38 degrees F
Location: At Home with My Nephew Tommy’s Family, Huntersville, North Carolina
My sister Patsy is my only living sibling out of seven.
My parents first child was born in 1925 and died shortly after birth. The second child was born in 1926 and died at the age of three of whooping cough. The third child was my sister Margie born in 1928. She died in 2005 of Alzheimer’s. The fourth child was my brother Bennie who died in 1964 when he was only 33 years old. Then came my sister Patsy in 1933. She will be 89 in July and I am so thankful to still have her with me. The last of the seven children was my brother Dickie, the father of Tommy whose home I am in tonight. Dickie was born in 1935 and died in 2010 of a heart attack. Then there was me, the afterthought, born in 1947. Today I got to spend a few hours with my sister alone and it was a very special time. She is beginning to have memory issues and is very frail physically, but today she was ‘on’ and we truly enjoyed our time together. I laughed until I cried when I was asking her questions for a personal history project. The question was about her favorite movie of all time. She went way back to 1953 and came up with “Three Sailors and A Girl” starring Jane Powell and Gordon McCrae. She added to that “Two Girls and a Sailor” as her second favorite movie. I don’t know why I thought it was so funny, but I truly lost it!
I returned to my nephew Tommy’s tonight and will head to the airport at 6 am. It has been a special and unexpected treat to get to see all of Tommy and Marilou’s children while here, as well as Izzie, their dog and sixth child.
Tonight, when I came upstairs to write my log, Tommy and Marilou’s sixteen-year-old daughter Olivia came out of her bedroom to hug me and tell me how much she loves me and has missed seeing me. I was so impressed that a teenager would take the time to express such feelings. It was another truly special time today. Although at first I was a bit taken aback by my sister’s decline since I last saw her, I have enjoyed every minute of this visit. As I learned today, looks can be deceiving. She is actually doing better than I thought. Parting truly is such sorry, but I am ready to head home. Hopefully by 4 pm tomorrow I will be picking up Shadow and going to check-in with the Heather, Jed, Sam, Jonah, and Ollie. I have missed them so much.
