Country Mouse Monday: endings, beginnings, sweetness

One week ago today, my youngest sister passed away after years of cancer and illness. She was a brilliant person who changed dramatically in the final years of her life, away from the person we knew into some other creature with a different family and a desire not to know us.

To say the last four years have been painful is an understatement.

And so her death, finally, was a relief in many ways -- relief that she no longer suffers, relief that her 6-year-old daughter no longer witnesses her wasting away, relief that my family at last grieves in earnest instead of wracking our brains for how to fix the broken.

For me, the Country Mouse, naturally on that day a week ago, I found solace in the dirt.

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Obituary: Carla Marcella Trélaün Tocci

Carla Marcella Trélaün Tocci

January 16, 1969 – April 22, 2013

Our beloved Carla rests with the angels. After a long battle with glioblastoma, she left this world peacefully, her devoted husband Sidino by her side.

A San Francisco native, Carla went to the French American Bilingual School, Everett Junior High, Lowell High School and San Francisco State University, where she earned her BFA in Painting and Ceramics. She delighted in her French heritage, working for many years as a server at La Folie, combining her love of language and fine food. Carlita was an artist through and through, whether it was her buche de noel covered with perfect little meringue mushrooms, marzipan animals,  and frosting swirled like bark, or baskets of delicately perfect Christmas cookies, or painting, or ceramics. She had the enviable ability to do everything well.

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Juice Cleanse, Day 2: observations

It's around noon on Day 2 of my three-day Urban Remedy juice cleanse, and I'm just drinking Juice 2 of the daily six, the juice called Boost. Which I really hope it will deliver because I am feeling w-e-i-r-d.

And by weird, I mean fuzzy and unable to do jack-shit.

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making choices because we can

pensive, on a juice cleanseIt's another day in our long, long death-watch.

The news this morning was the same as yesterday, that we're counting in hours now. My baby sister has hours left, at most a day.

But since Carla has defied all of the medical wisdom to date, has stubbornly and repeatedly illuminated at every turn the limits of our understanding of the miracle and mystery of the human body, who knows? We could be at this a long, long time.

But really, I doubt it. 

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system reboot

Man oh man, the last few months have just been such a bitch.  I know I'm not alone in this.  I was just talking to a friend last night, stumbling into tap class on a Thursday night; she was totally psyched to be there, naturally, but had just been trying to read in her car beforehand and repeatedly falling asleep. 

Sure, we're old, but not THAT old.

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