Tammy

I generally try to avoid using names in my blog and this one's gonna ramble.  But bear with me, please.

At the end of March, my niece was hospitalized.  Her thigh was swelling to the point of stretching the skin, maybe splitting the skin, I'm not sure.  Her recurring back pain was unbearable.  This is the last time any of the family saw her, because of COVID-19, excepting a brief visit her husband managed to talk them into allowing.  Tests were run and a diagnosis of cancer given, in the lymph nodes, a few internal organs, and her spine.  We don't have a specific prognosis.  We just have a woman in her early thirties, in hospice care.

Tammy has two children.  She has a mother, a sister, a husband, and friends coming out of the woodwork.  She has a huge extended family of aunts and uncles and cousins.  She isn't perfect, of course, being a mere human.  None of us are.

Tammy and her sister spent pretty much every weekend at my place, from the time they were in diapers until adulthood.   We rose on Saturday morning and took my grandmother to the grocery, where she would fuss over and spoil them as great-grandmothers do.  Often there was another cousin or two in our group.  Once we had Mamma back home and we failed to sneak out without her forcing gas money on us, we hit the public library and then to a cousin's house.  That was Saturday.  We aren't so close now as we were then.  As we each grew into the woman she is today, our interests diverged and we drifted apart as people do.

I'm not mad about the COVID-19 rules, even if I think they should be bent for Tammy's situation.  I understand all that "needs of the many" stuff.  I have friends and family of every stripe appealing to whatever higher power they believe in.  Barring an outright miracle, those prayers and vibes might only be giving us comfort, but I'll take it. 

Anything that can do this to a woman who just wants to feed her kids and play in the rain should not exist.  I'm so angry on her behalf and hurting on my own.  My Brown-Eyed Girl is slipping away and there's nothing I can do.  Except be there for the rest of us and that feels like so little.