Three of my grandparents were gone by the time I was 12. The fourth ended up bouncing from nursing home to nursing home for about 5 years before he finally passed of Alzheimer's (or not, depending on which doctor you ask) in 1995.
My dad (actually, my first stepfather) passed back in '96, of mouth and throat cancer which had spread, and that was hard enough. My mom got remarried a couple years later, and my (second) stepdad was a really good guy, who I knew from previously being my uncle (yes, my mom married my dad's brother).
Then my mom was diagnosed with lung cancer in her birthday in 2005, and subsequently passed 3 months after her next birthday. That nearly killed me...I'm an only child, and so was my mom. My dad's family was pretty fractious, and my uncle/second-stepdad was the only one I knew that was still around. I have no cousins, uncles, aunts, siblings...my closest living relatives are a great-aunt and a second-cousin halfway across the country who I haven't seen much in 20 years.
Three weeks later, my stepdad was drinking a lot of wine and got his dosing times on his anti-anxiety and sleeping medications mixed up, and took too much too fast. His neighbor found him the next day and called the cops. I literally almost fainted when I heard this, still recovering from the blow of my mom's passing.
My stepbrother and his wife (my stepdad's son & daughter-in-law) have been awesome, and are far more family to me than the one I call my "brother" (my dad's son, the multi-druggy screw-up thief). They pretty much picked me up, dusted me off, and were the only reason I was able to get through any of the carnage that made me glad 2006 finally ended.
Yeah...my table has a lot of empty chairs. Oh yeah, and smoking sucks (took both my parents). |
