Road Trip

We made a trip up to Chesterfield, SC today to see Donna’s cousin and her husband. We were supposed to go up on Friday, but fate put a big dent in those plans for us Thursday evening.

Donna’s Aunt Mary was staying there in Chesterfield, probably for the rest of the winter. She had come down after Thanksgiving and had to be hospitalized because she was getting dizzy. After a couple of days in the hospital the doctors turned her loose, unsure what was wrong, but blaming it on her worsening emphysema. They put her on oxygen and told her it might be best if she didn’t return to NJ until the weather warmed up. When we last visited in early December she didn’t look like the same person that we had seen last July. She had lost weight and was having trouble walking because of the breathing issues.

Thursday when Laurie and her husband Ted returned from his dialysis they found her on the kitchen floor. She had fallen a couple hours earlier and she couldn’t get up because her hip was broken. She was rushed to a hospital in Rockingham, NC where she passed away a couple hours later from respiratory failure.

Mary and Donna’s mother were not only sister-in-laws, but they were best friends, having met in college long before they met the brothers they would end up marrying. Barbara was short and stocky and Mary was tall and thin. They were perfect travel companions because Barbara drove, but had no sense of direction while Mary was afraid to drive (living in Jersey like she did, who could blame her) but was a born navigator. The two of them visited each other a couple times a year and there was always a trip together in there somewhere. They earned the nicknames Thelma and Louise when they drove from Seattle to Aiken when Donna’s mom moved in with us. They even started signing their Christmas cards to each other that way.

So long Mary, we’ll miss you here on earth, but we know you are happy to be reunited with your traveling partner again.

I know someone who will never get a flu shot again. Tuesday before last Donna got a flu shot at work. Everyone told her it was a good idea because even though she is long finished with chemo and radiation, her immune system is probably in a weakened state. Nice theory, lousy execution.

The two days following the shot she felt pretty crappy and once that kind of cleared up she developed a cough. The cough is still hanging around 9 days later. Even with taking cough medicine the cough has been keeping her from getting a good night’s sleep. Without a good night’s sleep Donna has been feeling a little out of it. Not feeling up to spending 12 hours riding in the car on Saturday to get home, after lunch today we decided to head back to the hotel, pack our bags and get a few hours head start.

Our northward momentum petered out just south of Ocala, FL. When we unpacked the luggage tonight we realized that I was a couple pants shy a load (and a sweatshirt and some loungewear.) Ooops, Donna had packed the suitcases back in Stuart by emptying only the two top drawers of the dresser in our hotel room, not realizing that I had put some stuff in the bottom one too.

I called the hotel and explained the predicament to the clerk and she said she would leave a note for housekeeping to bring the clothes to the front desk. I then called my brother-in-law and begged him to go over to Stuart tomorrow and retrieve the baggage. I expressed the importance of getting these items back because one of them is my favorite Levi 501 jeans. These are the ones so are so broken in they are getting holes in places that make them almost unsuitable for public wearing, but the still have a long life ahead of them as “knock about the house” wear.