Animals by Frank O’Hara

Came home to find out that my grandmother had a stroke on Saturday. We are just finding out today from my step-grandfather per her wishes to not saying anything right away. Don’t have all the details yet  although it appears to have been just a minor episode and she is already home with just some slurred speech but no paralyzed limbs. I’m digging through layers family bullshit with my cousins, aunt, and uncle all fighting with each other and making it about themselves and my mother venting to me because she gets pulled in the middle of it and my dad doesn’t step in to handle anything even though it’s his mother. Gonna be a fun Thanksgiving now. Kind of strange that my grandfather had a stroke 6 years ago the week before Thanksgiving and died before Christmas that same year. My other grandmother also suffered a major stroke that she never recovered from, but it was almost six months later (and lots of rehab and hospital visits) before she died. And my other grandfather went into the final stages of heart failure, also dying in mid-December back in ‘95. Welp. I hope my grandmother is OK. Fear that she and her husband are not taking care of themselves like they should be, because they physically and financially can’t. He is on bi-weekly kidney dialysis; and they were hit pretty hard by Hurricane Harvey last year making a tough situation even worse.