RowArk

^^yesterday

^^ today

Like, gotta love when the forecast is just "smoke"

Not partially sunny, not hazy, straight up smoke

This is the worst I've ever experienced it. It smells like a campfire outside 24/7 and it looks almost foggy outside.

We've apparently had the worst air quality in the world for the last few days. The sun is red, the sky is orange, and they're telling us to wear N95 masks outside

and i have no parents now because one is dead and the other one doesn't give a shit about me and has offered zero help

i have to deal with this entire estate by myself because my brother just seems to think that if we do nothing it will just settle itself, apparently

and i'm the only one going through everything in the house because why would anyone offer to help me? i'm just grieving the loss of my mother while trying to recover from a debilitating spinal cord injury, so why would anyone bother to even check in on me?

my aside from my brother and sister-in-law, none of my family even wants to come to the house because it makes them sad. like, that's great, but i fucking live here and i'm sad too and i'm just here by myself all the time

i swear, i'm so close to just giving up on everything because wtf is the point

Everything sucks all the time and it's wearing me down and I have no one to rely on by myself

It's been several hours and it's swollen, but not bruised. I can walk on it, but I'm limping and it hurts a lot and I can't move it in every direction

I'm debating whether I should go get x-rays but honestly, I just don't have the mental capacity to deal with this right now so currently I'm ignoring it and hoping it magically gets better on its own

We're halfway through the year already and I'm still waiting for a single good thing to happen in 2026

Like, my mom died unexpectedly, and when that happens, the coroner has to do a full investigation to rule out foul play and/or a medical mistake, because they don't just accept that a death is accidental. When we took my mom off life support, they had to leave everything in place, so they turned off the ventilator, but they couldn't take it out (which they normally would) because the coroner needed to be able to check to make sure it was done properly

The report took a month. The coroner had to do a full examination of the body, plus interview people and get medical history and such. I talked to him the day we took my mom off life support, because the investigation basically started right then and there, and he said with the information he already had, he was basically already 100% sure it was an accident, but the investigation is mandatory. He didn't do an autopsy, but I had consented to it if he felt it was necessary, which is noted in his report

The insurance company has the full report and they still want SO MUCH more information. Like, it's overwhelming, and I can't imagine having murdered someone and passing it off as an accident and then going through this intense scrutiny from the insurance company and not cracking under the pressure, tbh

And like, when I talked to the coroner, it was before I had even started the claim (obviously) and he had warned me that the insurance company would likely give us a hard time because it was an accidental death, and he said having the full investigation basically prevents them from being able to deny the claim, but it honestly feels like I'm being interrogated by them in a way

And I guess it makes sense that they are more intense about accidental deaths, because if someone dies of natural causes and it's expected, then it's less likely to be murder, but like, I don't know how people pull that off. Especially the ones who take out multiple policies, or take out policies like a month before someone dies, or having policies for huge amounts, and they still pull it off.

I was like "there's no situation in which I WANT to have this surgery... I'm only going to do it if you tell me I HAVE to."

They said they don't recommend it at this point, because I'm young enough that it should correct itself in time, and the surgery could cause other complications in the future, since it would involve fusing two of my vertebrae together and putting in a metal rod, which would reduce my range of motion and make me more susceptible to injuring my spine again in the future

They also said since the pain has resolved already through physiotherapy, there wouldn't be a noticeable benefit to having surgery. If I were still in pain, the surgery would alleviate it right away, but since I'm just dealing with nerve damage now, surgery won't immediately fix that, because it can take months after the compression lifts for the nerves to repair themselves... so basically I can let the disc heal naturally, which will alleviate the nerve compression and then wait for the nerves heal over time, or I can have surgerical decompression and then wait for the nerves to heal over time... it would just start the nerve healing process sooner, but the nerve damage wouldn't feel any different after surgery, and I'd also have to recover from surgery

My child had a child!

I couldn't get them both in focus, but the tree in the background is a maple tree I've been growing since I was a kid. I found it when it was a teeny tiny baby, with only 2 little leaves, and I've been growing it ever since.

It now looks like this:

I'm not 100% sure the baby tree I found in my garden actually came from my maple tree, but I'm choosing to believe it did.

I planted it in a bucket for now, and I told my nephew that growing it can be our summer project this year:

so, across the street from me, there are two houses, and in one there was an older couple, and then right next door to them (the house directly across from me), their adult daughter lived in. The day before my mom died, the wife of that couple (the mother of the daughter that lives right across from me), died

today would have been my mom's 71st birthday, so my whole family got together for it, and I was talking to my sister-in-law, and I was talking about my neighbour right across the street from me, and my aunt, who lives in a different city than my, turns to me and says "is her name [neighbour's name]?"

And I was like, "yeah, how did you know that?"

Turns out, my aunt's next door neighbour is best friends with my neighbour across the street

My aunt had been talking to her neighbour a couple weeks ago, and her neighbour had been telling her about her best friend whose mother had just passed away, and then mentioned how her best friend's neighbour had died the very next day, and she didn't know what had happened, she just knew it happed at Costco, and my aunt was like "I think you might be talking about my sister..."

And of course the spine surgery clinic is in the same fucking hospital that my mom died in, so that'll be fun

My best friend's mom is going with me. Usually I go to appointments alone, unless it's something I can't drive back from, but this one I think I'll appreciate having company

I always hate when something is called a celebration of life, but when you go, it's actually just a funeral, but two years ago, my mom and I went to a celebration of life that actually lived up to the name. It was a celebration. My brother and sister-in-law were also there, as well as my sister-in-law's parents and her sister (it was for my sister-in-law's sister's mother-in-law lol... but it's a small city and I've known my SIL's sister's husband longer than she has, so obviously I went too)

Anyway, my mom said that's what she would want, so that's what we did. We rented a banquet hall, put up hundreds of photos of her, from baby photos all the way up to pictures taken two weeks before she died, and brought in some of her photo albums and scrapbooks, and some things she made (she liked to knit, crochet and sew), and we had old home movies playing on a projector (without sound) and we made a playlist of all her favourite music and played that the whole time

There was no eulogy, but I got up to speak, and so did my brother, sister-in-law, nephew and niece (I think my niece made everyone in the room cry because she's 4 years old and my brother carried her up to the microphone and she said "I miss my grandma and my grandma misses me")

But other than that part, it was more like a party than a funeral. We had tons of food, and we decorated everything in orange (my mom's favourite colour) and penguins (because my mom loved penguins), and we had put in the obituary for people to wear orange if they had it, and lots did

I learned that apparently Dutch people like orange?? Every time someone came in wearing orange I would say something about it, because not many people actually have orange clothes, and more than once I got the response of "of course I have orange clothes, I'm Dutch!"

All in all, it went great. About 200 people showed up, and we were expecting about 150.

But, of course, some members of my family can't not cause drama, and my oldest cousin, who is 3 years older than me and has always made everything a competition between us and also never liked my mom, had an issue with the way we did it. I didn't find out until after (because she barely spoke to me the entire day), but apparently she was telling everyone that having a party instead of a funeral was disrespectful, which she even said to my brother, and he said "this is exactly what my mom wanted" and she said "well, I guess you and your sister just grieve differently than everyone else", because apparently we are not grieving to her standards, or something.

She also said she didn't wear orange because that would be disrespectful, because you're supposed to wear dark colours to a funeral because it's not supposed to be about having fun (we never ONCE used the word "funeral" when describing this event, by the way)

She didn't say this to me, though, because she was already mad at me. She offered to show up an hour early and help us set up, and when she got there, she asked what to do, and I listed off everything that needed to be done, but I didn't assign her a specific task, so she felt like she didn't even need to be there and I should have told her not to come early if I didn't have anything for her do to... meanwhile, a couple of my friends showed up about 20 minutes early and saw that there was still things that needed to be done, and asked how they could help, and I listed off what was left and they just started doing it... so she sat there doing nothing while other people helped. And then was mad at me about it... because she's 45 and can't take any initiative, apparently.

She brought napkins, paper plates and plastic cutlery as her contribution (it ended up being a potluck. We didn't originally plan it that way, but right away a bunch of people offered to bring food so that's what we did). My aunt (her mom) actually bought the plates and napkins, and my sister-in-law sent her a listing on Amazon for the plastic cutlery, which she ordered, and then my brother opened all the packages and put all the stuff she brought out, because she just dropped it on a table and walked away.

But it's my fault she had nothing to do... like, I can't

I have never gotten along with her and I'm not really surprised she acted like this, because this is how she always acts, but she's lucky she didn't say any of that to my face yesterday because it wouldn't have ended well.

I also had brought some decks of cards, because my mom always loved playing cards, and she thought that was a bad idea, which she actually did tell me, because she said no one would want to play cards. And then when people DID start playing cards, she got annoyed because she didn't think it was appropriate... until her dad started playing cards, and then it was fine, apparently.

This woman is going to be in for a harsh reality check one day though. She's literally never had anything bad happen to her in her life. She's 45, her parents are still happily married, and they're not rich but they are pretty well-off, so any time she gets into any financial trouble, they just hand her all the money she needs to get out of it (including once paying off $30k of debt for her and not making her pay them back for it), and she's never really had anyone she's close to die before... our grandpa died 18 years ago, but she wasn't close to him at all, and it didn't have a huge impact on her

But one day, it will be one of her parents that dies, and she's not going to be able to handle it, and she's going to want support from the rest of the family, after shitting on all of us for years. Her sister and I are close, and I would be there for her sister, but my older cousin? I will offer her as much support as she's offered me this past month, which is none.

The only thing she's even texted me for this past month is to try to gossip about our youngest cousin, whose mother died of a brain tumour in 2018. She doesn't speak to that cousin at all, but I still do, and my older cousin just assumed that our younger cousin would not be helpful or supportive at all, but she has been, and my older cousin's response was "well I guess she's been through the same thing, technically." Like, technically? Her mom also died... that's not technically the same thing. It's the same thing. But she (and several other members of my family) don't think that my cousin handled her mother's death appropriately, so they decided she just didn't care. So naturally, my older cousin expected this to be a perfect opportunity to bash my younger cousin again.