03 May 2004
Patty
When Carrie was in the hospital, recovering, remarkably, from her scare last April, we (Brian, PJ, Kelly, Connor, and I) went to visit her while we were on our spring break. When we arrived, I was expecting to find her weak and exhausted, but instead found her bubbly and seemingly energetic. She had that awful, painful looking infection in her arm, which the kids wanted to look at, and she obliged graciously. We chatted for a bit about her inability to be able to stay on task, especially with movies or TV shows (the nurses and doctors interrupted her so frequently and stayed so long that she often lost the thread of the show or movie she was watching, and she had no remote, so she couldn’t pause a movie, even if she was so inclined). The talk turned to her ultimate reliance on her (RED!) cell phone, which she admitted was her lifeline, allowing her to take calls off-hours and have something to do virtually all of the time. She told me that she had been resistant to having one, but that MB had insisted, and that she was now grateful for it. PJ added that he felt he should have one. Carrie asked him pointedly why he felt he needed one, and he replied that “all his friends had them”. She said “you are sitting there lying to my face PJ, you are 12 years old. There is NO WAY your friends all have them, and if they do, they have strange, weird parents. Anyway, you have no reason to have one. I guess when you get a job and can pay for one yourself, then you can try again on that one.” Of course, PJ protested, meekly, but realized that the effort was futile, and gave up with a shrug and a laugh. After a bit more chatting and laughing, we got our things together and left, all of the kids getting a hug and a kiss from Carrie. So, even though Carrie had been discharged from ICU that day, and even though she was fighting for her life, she was just their cousin, nothing more, nothing less. She felt it her duty, her obligation, to give them a hard time and good cheer, as she had her whole life, and as they knew and loved her for. It’s no wonder that the kids, especially Connor, had difficulty understanding how very sick Carrie was. She wanted it that way, for everyone, right up to the end. We saw her just 3 days before she died, and she was laughing with us then, too. They loved her that day as they had loved her their whole lives….their older, but funny, and entirely approachable beautiful cousin Carrie.