L.A. Trip April 2010 part one

We have come out to Los Angeles to visit Pere's family and see Grandmere, who is suffering from terminal brain cancer and near the end of her life.

It all came about quite quickly. Last year, at this time, she was first diagnosed. She had brain surgery and chemo and a gamma knife and a new drug on a clinical trial and she was doing well, until about 2 months ago. Since then her health has gone down very quickly. We were planning to come to L.A. in June but the doctor said that might be too late.

I wasn't sure how Zoe was going to handle it. She has always been close with her Grandmere. Zoe was scared, for her Grandmere, at first. But soon she was helping feed Grandmere and give her water, and she read to her and talked to her, even though Grandmere can't talk back.

Grandmere sleeps most of the time and has a hospice caregiver that comes during the day. After the first couple of days it was boring for Zoe to be at the house all day so I took her to visit friends, and I visited their moms, who are my friends too.

We had blueberry muffins and tea with A.B. and E. The girls put on a magic show and made a song on Garage Band. A.B. and Pere and I talked about movies and sexism in Hollywood and private schools.

Then we visited L.T. and C. The girls played detective almost the whole time. We ate at our regular sushi place. L.T. and I talked about everything,(for four hours!) It was great, made me almost want to move back to L.A.. Then I looked at the housing prices and remembered why we moved away in the first place.

When we are at Pere's family home we eat, and play Uno, and sit with Grandmere and color and read. It is pretty quiet.

We celebrated the birthdays of Grandpere and Tante Juliet with chocolate cake and sushi. And that was nice, but I kept noticing how different things are without Grandmere. She is there, but it is not the same because she is so far gone.

It is very sad. Everyone keeps asking me how Pere is. I can't really say. Obviously he is really sad, and he has always been quiet. He still is.

I am trying not to cry too much myself because... I'm not sure why. I have been crying off and on for months now. The enormity of it is still there. The tragedy of it all hasn't gotten any easier to accept. I don't want to think about it because it makes me so angry and sad.

I have been struggling to defend my faith in God for a few years now. These days the idea that I keep coming back to is that if God did exist he/she is irrelevant. If there is a God, he/she has stopped involving him/herself in the affairs of man long ago. There is no one that hears our prayers. There is no greater being with a plan that makes all the tragedies make sense. He/she has abandoned us. Then I remember that I don't believe God exists. But either way, irrelevant.