What do you post?

I'm still here, I promise. I have been embarrassingly bad at posting lately. The office move took up every free second I was there last week. Then Grandmom had a heart attack. A really big one. Like a, "it's the end" one.

(See, that's been my problem the past few days. How do I write this? How do I tell you about the heart attack? It's not going to come out right. The fear, the sadness, the coping that involves the humor and the drinking and the sarcasm! So if you don't like my tone in this post, then you don't know me and you might as well stop reading.)

I was scheduled to go to Chicago on Thursday afternoon until Wednesday (two days from now). I drove up to Philly on Wednesday night, arrived at Aunt Jo's convent at 11:30 p.m. Fast asleep, up at 5 a.m. to go to the hospital. The doctors said there was nothing more to do but hospice care. We were ready for that. We moved her from the hospital back to the Villa (the retirement home). We called the rest of the siblings (Patricia was up for Thursday), and Tim and Terry jumped on a plane with Elizabeth and Francis and arrived around 6 p.m.

We laughed, we cried, we kept vigil. With Tim and Terry in town until noon on Friday and Frank expected that afternoon, I flew up to Chicago Friday a.m., and came back on a 6 p.m. flight that night.

It was a really hard decision to make because there were so many "what if's" while I was gone. But I knew my other siblings were there, and, quite honestly, at this point we aren't here for Grandmom, we're here for the aunts.

So I landed around 9:30 p.m. Friday night, back to the Villa Saturday morning. And all day Sunday. And now all day Monday.

This is one stubborn lady.

(See, there's the part that if you don't know me, you'd best go away now.)

I'm the only of my siblings here, and I have a great job that is allowing me to do this. I was supposed to be out of the office any way this week, in Chicago and then Austin. So the DC girls were set to be without me (That sounds obnoxious, and is only relevant because of the new space headaches. In the old office, I wouldn't think twice about being gone for a week.). It's a really big "bonding" thing I'm missing in Chicago with new biz partners, but not the end of the world for me to miss.

And, heck, I missed all the OTHER tax seminars that I love and planned and so hated missing, that why don't we make it even and I'll miss ALL of them this year and not make it to Austin!

Back to me being here. It's important. It's for the aunts. They're at their wits end, just suffering through this, and trying their best to stay calm, and to plan, but not to plan too much, and OY. They did this for me, it's the least I can do for them.

So that's why I haven't been writing. The days are simultaneously excruciatingly slow and yet fly by without getting anything done. Aunt Jo and I left the Villa pretty early tonight and are doing those "normal" things you can put off for a few days but need to get back to -- laundry, e-mail, gathering dry cleaning, blogging!

I hope you'll understand, and keep checking back here. I do promise to write more, and I want to write more!

And please also say a prayer. Grandmom has wanted this for a long time now, and we just want her to stop suffering. We need all the strength we can get.

P.S. You really do need to be following me on Twitter. If you aren't, you've missed some good convent living Tweets.