Post by Dabeagle on Aug 25, 2014 22:13:22 GMT -5
Some of you may know that I use real people or bits of them in stories. Grandpa in 'The Quantum' was imbued by my friend and mechanic, Howard. I inserted a joke about AMC (American Motors Corporation) into 'The Meaning of Living' for Luggie and Driver. Those of you that were here at the start know that the characters of Chris and his mother in 'Begin Anew' were based on real people - Chris, a young man I befriended while he was a child and I was his camp counselor and his mother, who grew to be a good friend and one of the first people I came out to.
Sandy wasn't described very well in the story (and as I recall, the twins were combined into a single daughter but I could be wrong. They were pretty dead on) as she wore mumuu's and seemed to let things happen to her. This wasn't really the Sandy I knew, and most of my stories about Sandy can't be shared in mixed company. For instance, one time I was picking on her and she flipped me off, asking 'Do you know what this is?' Dumbly I replied that I did. She waggled all her fingers at me and said, "Well here's a flock of them!' and then would burst out in her smokers cough, a grin on her face and you were laughing with her. She went through some very tough times with her twin daughters and one took more than six months to realize what her mother meant when she called her a 'C You Next Tuesday'.
Unfortunately her marriage was an unhappy one. I asked her many times why she stayed and she always said 'he wasn't always like this'. Her husband was good at making sure he came first, that there was beer in the fridge but not milk for breakfast for his kids. He reminds me a lot of the kind of people that like to talk about 'God and the Christian man' way of doing things, while then doing the most un-Christ-like things. There was the time I went out for a beer with him and we had to leave in a hurry because he spit in someone's drink. The time he was drunk and giving Sandy a hard time, pointing his finger in her face. She grabbed the finger and bent it back until he was kneeling on the floor, laughing. Then she went just a bit farther, hurt him and he was pissed, stalking off while she told him he wasn't a teenager anymore.
What Sandy really was, was a survivor. Two years ago she was diagnosed with Pancreatic Cancer. Over the course of a few months they shrank the tumor and felt they could remove it, and did. She looked good, like one of the few that survive. Then, this year, she suffered a collapsed lung. They found the cancer all over the lung and there was nothing they could do. She passed away last Wednesday after a long fight.
She was a funny lady who finally found happiness at the end of her life, but her enduring lesson is to laugh. Even her kids would say, from an early age, 'get her laughing and she'll forget' and she would wag her finger, laughing all the way and reply, 'You're still in trouble no matter how funny it is!'
Goodbye, Sandy.
Sandy wasn't described very well in the story (and as I recall, the twins were combined into a single daughter but I could be wrong. They were pretty dead on) as she wore mumuu's and seemed to let things happen to her. This wasn't really the Sandy I knew, and most of my stories about Sandy can't be shared in mixed company. For instance, one time I was picking on her and she flipped me off, asking 'Do you know what this is?' Dumbly I replied that I did. She waggled all her fingers at me and said, "Well here's a flock of them!' and then would burst out in her smokers cough, a grin on her face and you were laughing with her. She went through some very tough times with her twin daughters and one took more than six months to realize what her mother meant when she called her a 'C You Next Tuesday'.
Unfortunately her marriage was an unhappy one. I asked her many times why she stayed and she always said 'he wasn't always like this'. Her husband was good at making sure he came first, that there was beer in the fridge but not milk for breakfast for his kids. He reminds me a lot of the kind of people that like to talk about 'God and the Christian man' way of doing things, while then doing the most un-Christ-like things. There was the time I went out for a beer with him and we had to leave in a hurry because he spit in someone's drink. The time he was drunk and giving Sandy a hard time, pointing his finger in her face. She grabbed the finger and bent it back until he was kneeling on the floor, laughing. Then she went just a bit farther, hurt him and he was pissed, stalking off while she told him he wasn't a teenager anymore.
What Sandy really was, was a survivor. Two years ago she was diagnosed with Pancreatic Cancer. Over the course of a few months they shrank the tumor and felt they could remove it, and did. She looked good, like one of the few that survive. Then, this year, she suffered a collapsed lung. They found the cancer all over the lung and there was nothing they could do. She passed away last Wednesday after a long fight.
She was a funny lady who finally found happiness at the end of her life, but her enduring lesson is to laugh. Even her kids would say, from an early age, 'get her laughing and she'll forget' and she would wag her finger, laughing all the way and reply, 'You're still in trouble no matter how funny it is!'
Goodbye, Sandy.
