Why Mid December is Sad

    Grandma started it all.

    On Monday, December 11th in 1989, in the late afternoon, my maternal grandmother, Bernice Eloise Trimble Hopkins, born April 17, 1911, took her final breath on this earth. She had heart disease brought on by being a lifelong smoker. She smoked until she could no longer breathe. Her brand of choice was Chesterfield, unfiltered cigarettes that I believe are no longer manufactured. Interestingly enough, she also referred to a couch or sofa as a Chesterfield. As kids we thought she just loved her cigarettes. I think it was just what sofas were called in the 19 aughts and on.

    We always thought grandma was fun. She was goofy sometimes. At Grandpa's wake, she flipped off Grandpa's kin at our Aunt Beth's house in San Mateo. In the summer of 1976, she took my little sister (Maureen was actually smaller then me then as she hadn't hit puberty) and I to "The River". We'd been to The River before; mom and dad used to take us all on vacation there. The River referred to the Russian River and the town of Guervneville. Grandma always called it GERN vill, while mom referred to it as GERN EE vill. SO if you hear me pronounce the second way, you'll know why. The first day, as we always did, Maureen and I went into the dry creek to pick wild blackberries. Grandma would then make blackberry jam, blackberry pie, blackberry cobbler and anything else she could use the blackberries for. (I was spoiled and didn't even know it!) Then Maureen and I had the rest of the week to ourselves. We were swimming in the pool that had a sign up, saying "Welcome to our ool. Notice there is no P in it. Please keep it that way". But we were kids, so...

    She had her rosary in the city where she last lived alone in Woodland. The next day, we followed the white van carrying her coffin down to her cemetery plot in Colma, where grandpa is buried. After the graveside burial in the Catholic cemetery, we had a drink at the bar across the street. Okay, maybe more as we ARE Irish!

    In the fall of 1993, mom became sick and asked me to take her to the doctor in Woodland. She lived in the house we grew up in in Davis. I took her and the doctor said she was okay except it looked like her kidneys weren't working at full speed. Like grandma, mom smoked like a chimney, but her favorite cigarettes were Marlboro 100's. mom had type 2 diabetes, but because she didn't feel any differently, she refused to treat it. She had spent most of the 4 years since grandma died, on the couch, only getting up to use the commode that was placed right in front of the TV, so she didn't miss a thing. 

    One day in early November, she didn't feel well and called for an ambulance. She was in the hospital for a few days because she had a heart attack. As the doctor was getting ready to release her, she had a major stroke. She was only 60 years old, born August 16, 1933 in San Francisco. She was in the hospital for a few days until dad could find a nursing home for her, where she could smoke. We had Thanksgiving in a restaurant for the first time. Mom was moved into the nursing home the next day. My older sister, Debra, had flown in from Columbus, OH to be with us. Debra, Maureen and I were in her room while dad was signing the paperwork. Debra, who had worked in the back offices of healthcare her entire life, read mom's chart. It stated that mom was in end stage mycardial infarction. Maureen and I had no idea what that was. Debra explained to us that mom was dying from heart disease.

    On Friday, December 17, 1993 around 9pm, mom took her final breath as Maureen walked int the door of her room. Maureen called me and I headed up to Woodland from my then home in Siusun City. She also called our half brother who came with his girlfriend from Sacramento. We watched as mom's body, which looked so small without her soul in it, yellowed. I hated to remember my mother that way, but dad said it was important that we saw her. I called both Debra in OH (she had flown back for work) and mom's only sister, Judy, who lived in Maine. I realized later that night that mom outlived her mom by one week! Seems they were always in conflict with each other, and mom won. Of course it was only 4 years later and mom was 60 while grandma was 78, but details...

    The funeral was a few days later. Mom's longtime friend, Angie, took care of those arrangements while Dad and Maureen took care of the burial arrangements. Judy said the eulogy and even put in my suggestion that God needed a 4th for a hand of Bridge, as all of mom's bridge buddies were there. The graveside service was cold, very cold. Which prompted one of mom's bridge buddies to say, "You had to pick the coldest day of the year for your funeral, didn't you, Myra!" Mom was always overheated and used to freeze her bridge buddies out when they played.Then the body of Myra Eloise Van Horne McMahan, was lowered into the ground. Dad fell on her casket because even though they couldn't live together, he was as in love with her on that cold day in December 1993 as he was when he laid eyes on her at a party in 1949.

    In December of 2011, things were finally looking up for me. Although I had been homeless for over a year, I had FINALLY landed a job in October as a store manager of an H&R Block in Vallejo. I was still going through training, learning the H&R Block way, though I never learned how to do their taxes. I was just learning how to run one of their stores. It was tough though because at the 1st of December, the homeless house I was in, had moved. And the movers had damaged my CPAP machine, so I wasn't getting the deep sleep I so craved. You know how it is when you go through life without getting the necessary amount of sleep. Everything is intensified. Your emotions, especially. That's why, when I got up to use the restroom, during training on Monday, December 11, 2011 and I checked my phone, I found out my maternal aunt had passed away at the age of 66.

    Judith Rose Hopkins Marcus was a baby boomer, born June 22, 1945. She was one of those people who had slid into Heaven, much the way a base runner slides into 2nd base. She lived her life on her own terms from the get go. She was stood up AT THE ALTAR by her longtime boyfriend, Bob. She went into the Convent in 1975 only to leave a year or so later because Mother Superior wouldn't let her keep cans of beer cold in the back of the toilet tank. She eventually met Uncle Sheryl, as we called her, and they had a long relationship by today's standards. At my sister's wedding, we were busted by my sister for smoking cannabis. (This WAS 1982, after all!) Later that year I got high with a gay priest and many other assorted individuals who were friends of hers. When I was a kid, we were playing Canasta after a big meal and I got up to make an ice cream cone. As I lifted it to my face, she smashed it into my face. Have you ever breathed through ice cream? It's not possible! She is the aunt I spoke of in my last post about having a one night stand with the man I brought to Thanksgiving.

    My half brother, Douglas Andrew Van Horne was born January 8, 1956 in Kalamazoo, Michigan to my mother and her first husband, David Van Horne. Mom had met David while he was in the Air Force and she was at a dance with active members. They moved from San Francisco to Kalamazoo, got married and had Doug. When Doug was about 18 months old, mom saw him in his stroller, with his dad David pushing him and another woman hanging off of David's shoulder. Mom and Doug were on a plane back to San Francisco within a week. A few months later, David died in a car crash. 

    Mom somehow caught up with my dad and they were married on January 17, 1960. Mom wanted a father for Doug, but it turned out not so well. Because Doug had David's curly hair and many other features, every time she looked at him, my mother thought of her deceased husband and missed him. Because Doug was spoiled, he never had a happy life. He was raised to believe that he knew everything and that he was the tops. He was a botanist without a degree. He cross bred cannabis plants to get the most THC out of them. When he was busted the first time in 1995 in Eugene, OR and lost the 10 acres and everything else he had saved his entire life for, the DEA agents were impressed with the strains he was growing. After serving his jail time and being put on probation, he moved back to Sacramento to live with his girlfriend. They got into a big fight one early morning and a neighbor called the police. They soon found out Doug was on probation and searched the house, which was full of cannabis plants and a scale. He was found in violation of his probation and did another 2 months in jail, this time in Sacramento County. He was then again put on probation and he was not allowed to grow, sell or ingest cannabis. 

    It had been less than a year that I had once again become a person with a home. I was learning to become myself again, as I had to change in order to fit my circumstances. My brother texted me and I ignored it. He was a toxic person because he was spoiled and high most of the time. He could be like a little chihuahua, biting at your feet because he wanted attention. When he texted again, I ignored it. Then he called me. I answered with an exasperated "what?" He told me that the DEA was in his house arresting him on FEDERAL charges of growing, selling and ingesting cannabis. Although he had a Medical Marijuana card, he was growing more than the dispensaries could ever sell. And he had a scale. That proved he was selling. He never sold to kids to my knowledge, but he was selling and not paying taxes on it, kind of like the charges Al Capone was busted on. He was booked on a NO BAIL warrant in Sacramento County jail. I set up a pay plan where he could call me and I could accept. Because all I had was a cell phone, it had to be that way. He'd call me every night and complain to me. He said if he paid a couple thousand dollars, one of the guys in the jail promised to get him out. I had worked as a clerk at Yolo County Superior Court in 1999-2000, writing many NO BAIL warrants on behalf of judges and they are what they say - NO BAIL. END OF STORY. I explained he was was being hustled, but because he was brought up to believe he knew EVERYTHING, he didn't believe me. Each night he was becoming more unhinged because although the state said he needed cannabis for pain, he was being held on a FEDERAL warrant, where Cannabis is still considered a Schedule 1 Narcotic, meaning it had no medicinal purpose whatsoever. I was up for 4 days after one particular night's call and my doctor put me on a night mental health medication to help me sleep. I realized that MY HEALTH was more important to me than listening to my half brother bitch at me every night, so I stopped answering his calls. I called my sister, who lives in Sacramento and told her I couldn't handle it anymore. I was the last family member that would have anything to do with him because of his behavior. I had always believed that blood was thicker than water. But my health is more important to me. She took over his care. Within a year, he had been diagnosed with cancer. He had lost over 100lbs the year before he was arrested but couldn't figure out why. Turns out, he had a cancer that had been thwarted by cannabis. Once he stopped using cannabis, the cancer cells went crazy. They finally released him, on compassionate release, dropping all charges because  expected him to die. He was sent to UC Davis Medical Center where he had radiation on his spine, which the cancer had taken over. He did survive, but because he was released to a federal government facility, he wasn't allowed to smoke his cannabis. The cancer came back. He fought it off again. This time when he was released from the hospital, he got into non federal government housing and resumed smoking cannabis. He ended up renting a room from a guy in a 2 bedroom apartment. In October of 2019, he was kicked out. By this time, he had lost his foot to infection and was in a wheelchair full time. The only place his worker could find for him was a nursing home in Elk Grove, just south of Sacramento. He was finally learning to walk there as they were doing physical therapy. But a week after that last session, he was in the hospital with pneumonia. As I had been estranged from him since May 2013, I asked God if I should go to Sacramento and say goodbye. Doug had been trying to reach me after he conquered cancer twice, but I didn't want to have anything to do with him. God said NO. An emphatic NO. This was mid December 2019, when China was denying a virus was killing people and long before the shutdowns in the USA. The hospital kept doing protocols for pneumonia, but Doug wasn't getting any better. On December 17, 2019, 26 years to the DAY our mother had passed, Douglas Andrew Van Horne passed. The hospital kept his body for almost a month because they had no idea what he died from. Finally they released the body with the following on his death certificate: Acute Hypoxic Respiratory Failure, Severe Sepsis, Aspiration Pneumonia and Possible Influenza, unknown type. My sister became terribly ill after his passing and even had to have breathing treatments. After SARS-CoV-2 (COVID 19) became news, we realized that out half brother had been one of the first deaths of this virus and that our sister had it. Because she has Rheumatoid Arthritis, she was on a drug that helped her get through COVID. Because I'm obese, have asthma and Type 2 diabetes, I would've also died or at least become seriously ill had I said goodbye.

    And that's why Mid December is so sad for me. 

    Grandma started it all.