Rest in Peace Mamaw Jerri, the sole family member left aside from me and sis on dad’s side

So overnight my grandmother (my dad’s mom) died. For a little backstory, check these prior posts out:

Post 1

Post 2

So, my dad’s side of the family at this point has been pretty much destroyed by death. My dad died when I was 10, his dad died when I was 11, his grandmas died when I was 10-11, great aunt and uncle died when I was around 18. My dad was an only child, and my grandma had only one sister (the aforementioned great aunt.) So aside from a couple of folks who are like, second cousins second removed, my sister, her daughter, and I are the only blood family left on this branch. I’m the only [insert true last name here] male left in the family, and that will die out with me (odds are.)

Mamaw has been pretty rough off. She has alzhiemers (which runs in the family – her sister died from it) and an encyclopedia of medical conditions. She’s been in sort of a half way house for a while now. I got a call last night from a Great Uncle (dad’s dad’s brother, Mamaw’s brother in law) who told me she hadn’t been taking her medication, the alzhiemers made her forget, and without the blood pressure there was a big fluid build up, and “she developed a condition where she might make it through the night, or might make it through a few ones. No one knows.” Well, a few hours after that he called back saying she, in fact, did not make it through the night. I know she’s at peace now, unlike her tumultuous life

Her caretaker Caroline was waiting to hear back when me and my sister could make it up to Indiana for the funeral before making the arrangements. We told her to make them and we would get there somehow. See, this next week I was supposed to travel to dallas and houston for work, something that I can’t do now. I have to be there – I’m the last blood family left. So work is figuring out what to do. I’ve got that voucher I got from my boss being f’ed up, and enough points for a ticker, but I have to wait till monday to book the flight for tuesday (hello stressful monday.)

My sister is crushed. She’s always been close to this side of the family whereas I’ve been close to mom’s side. She’s had such a terrible time the past two weeks, including but not limited to separating from fiance, having pretty much emergency surgery to remove a gigantic ovarian cyst (which caused a miscarriage, something I just found out this morning) and turned 30. It’s not like Mamaw’s death was surprising, just surprising that it happened last night. So I’m worried about my sister.

My mom’s all a flutter without having much of any idea what to do. This one is squarely in my lap, once again. Deaths always seem to go to me to deal with in the end. Mom keeps brining up why I was never close to that side of the family in the first place, and about the antiques in mamaw’s house (if I hear the word Victorla again I might scream at her.) As she said last night, “I don’t know what to tell you.”

I don’t have a lot of memories of Mamaw growing up other than seeing her occasionally for lunch when I would visit Indiana and coffee hour back at my maternal grandma’s house (when I refer to grandma, its my maternal one who I am *extremely* close to and call about 3 times a week and talk for half an hour. When she goes, I will be more crushed than ever before.) She was such a strong woman – she lost her only child, her husband, and her mother in less than a year. And she hung around much longer than any one would have thought.

So, this Wednesday, airtran willing, I’ll be up in Indiana at the family funeral home (oh Kercheval, I know thee well, I wonder if the bottle coke machine is still there) in Sheridan, Indiana. To bury the last part of my dad’s family, aside from my sister and I.

I’ll be sure to take a sunflower.

Brining UU to my world – YUUP – Young UU Professionals?

After another flurry of emails in my 20s/30s group about the large group of 40s, I’ve been thinking a lot lately on UU and my generation. We are busy – I’m really at the start of my generation, The Millennials, who start with those who graduated high school in 2000 which was my high school class, and continues for around 20 years. This suggests that have more I common with the kids in my youth group than their parents, which I’ve often thought. We’ve grown up on computers (we had a personal computer when I was 5) and the internet (which I had access to in the 4th grade – before the world wide web popped up for mainstream use. I got a computer and internet access through my school, who gave all of us fourth and fifth grades a computer and a modem with access to a chat service and a message board via Prodigy.) We’re accustomed to instant communication, either via the Internet or cell phones (I was among the last of my friends to get one, as a junior in high school in 1998.) We’re busy – we’ve had busy schedules planned out for us since birth. Even with my less than normal childhood, I still had the gambit of little league sports and scouts and once I hit high school I was involved with a dozen after school clubs.)

Now that we’re entering the workforce, we’re encountering a whole set of different kind of problems than what we’ve ever faced before. We’ve gone from having scripted lives to a less than stellar workforce where often our talents aren’t being utilized to our fullest potential…and that’s really the first time that’s happened to us. All our lives we’ve suffered from high expectations, either our own or our families’. And when we don’t live up to those expectations, we see it as a character flaw.

I know, I know. I can hear the eye rolling now. That happens to everyone at that age. Get over it.

We hear that a lot. Get over it. I’ve even heard it at church before. Maybe not those words specifically, but certainly the intent, and the eye rolling, has gotten across before, even in a small group setting which really set me off from the whole small group thing.

But it’s different. At least I think it is, but I’m hardly an objective observer.

I dealt with a lot of these issues a year or two ago, but they really just blindsided my best friend, and she’s having a really hard time coping with it all. Why is that we just can’t seem to be comforted by our faith?

We need to find a way to update Unitarian Universalism, to keep our faith alive and vibrant, not forgetting our past but not letting that past dictate where the future will go. I need a faith where I can practice without having to go on Sunday morning to get my fill. Where I can practice on a flight, going out drinking with friends, or even stuck in traffic. There has to be more ways of connecting with the universe without having to maintain an austere meditation schedule, or taking days off from work to go live in the woods (lord knows I want to, but I can’t take off days like that – I’m not at that point in my career yet.)

Another thing that’s on my mind is that the main crux of the former young adult planning was centered around conferences and retreats, where someone like me who doesn’t get a lot of time off work can go to, and from what I hear, are slightly more hippie than I’d like. I guess what I want is a UU group for Young Professionals, where we can learn to make sense of the workplace, without having to take a week off to discover ourselves. Maybe I should help start a group – YUUP – Young UU Professionals.