A welcome visit

Last weekend, we made the long trek south to the Atlanta suburbs to visit some of my family, most particularly my grandmother, who was recently diagnosed with cancer (again).

This is the fourth time she's had to fight this miserable fight (previously with skin, lung, and bladder cancer), she's getting older, she only has one kidney (which makes chemo basically out of the question), and the cancer could be pretty advanced (it's hard to say because most of the tests have been pretty inconclusive for a number of reasons), so things don't look great.

All of which is to say we have no idea how much longer she might have with us. When we moved to Missouri four years ago, we left our families behind, and it's so difficult not getting to see them very often, especially with a family that's as close as ours.

We knew we wanted to get to Atlanta as soon as possible, but it took a little while to get everyone's schedules aligned. It worked out really well that my sisters were also able to come (one from Italy and one from Texas), and my mom was already in town, as she's been helping my aunt with Grams for a few weeks.

 

So it turned out to be a little mini family reunion, which was wonderful. The only bad part was that it was just for the weekend. We stayed with my awesome cousin Catalina and her husband, and I think she enjoyed getting a little baby time. ;)

I'm so very thankful for the time we had together as a family. I adore my crazy family, and it's always fun when we get together. I also got to have some good conversations with Grams, and she got to spend time with us and B, which was really important to us.

Grams was in good spirits all weekend and seemed to be doing as well as one could hope. She definitely sounds like she still has some fight left in her, which was so good to see.

Most of the weekend was spent just relaxing together and talking ('cause boy do we talk when we get together). We also take Skip Bo very seriously in this family.

And B was so happy to see his Grandmozzie (and her new puppy, Sarge).

It was a really wonderful weekend with people I love beyond words, and I'm so glad we were able to make the trip.