Time changes, but cousins don't. We always pick up right where we left off

We did get to see Kim this afternoon.
Traffic wasn't terrible and her house was easier to find than expected.

She didn't live in an area we've been to before, although it looked awfully familiar.
Badger thinks it's close to where Peacock used to live in his apartments.
Cowboy insists it wasn't, so who knows.

Kim looks good, just the same as she always has, only a little older, and I saw grey in that redhead of hers.
Not full grey like me, though, just a few silver threads.

In her face I could see her mom, and even a little bit of Aunt GG.
Cowboy told me I was crazy, but no, they were there.
Oddly, seeing a little bit of GG in her face was comforting.
Now me?
The sperm donor's genes were too strong, and I don't have any maternal resemblance.
I wish I looked more like my mom's side of the family.

It was 2022, the last time I saw her.
She came up to my house.
That was the first time we'd seen each other since the 90s.
I think we ran into her at a race in Knoxville once, probably pre‑pandemic.

We weren't good at keeping up.
We both had our own lives.

She sent the friend away so we could visit in peace, which was rather a disappointment.
Badger and I really wanted to meet him.
I think she said they've been together sixteen years.
Badger thought she said since 2016.
I think I heard right.
They've been together a very long time.

She did all the talking.
Unfortunately for her, the three of us aren't all that great at making small talk.

I can't say I offered her any comfort.
I really, really suck at that, but I tried.
I think maybe this was our goodbye.

I know where she is now, though, and I'd like to get back down at least once more before the cold weather settles in.
Maybe around her birthday, October 22.

She's taking things as well as one can when given a terminal diagnosis.
She said she's scared, but who wouldn't be?
She said she knows that it's going to start hurting, and she's dreading that part.
She said that she looks at it as the minute we're born, it's written for us to die.
When and how is the only unknown, and now she has a rough idea of both.

She says that she wants to die on her own terms, where she chooses to die.
Outside, one with nature, the way she's always been.
Not in a hospital, not drugged up, not tied to tubes.

Kim has been a competitive athlete all her life.
She was participating in the Spartan races when we first got back together.
The last two years, with all the surgeries she's had, she hated being made to slow down, to not run, to not exercise.
When she found the skin cancer and everything went to hell, she was already making plans to do another Spartan race.

She had plans to go back to Florida, to go back to living in her tent in the swamp.

Life's a bitch, and I'm sorry for readers who don't like cursing, but what else can you say?
It's the truth.

As we were leaving, she said her friend isn't good at remembering things, so she told me about her chihuahuas, their special diet, and what to do with her remains to make sure they'd go to the Body Farm.
That freaks me out a bit.
I already have a dead uncle on my bookshelf.
I don't want to be responsible for Kim and the chihuahuas.
I'm sorry, I'm just a cousin.
Hippie Aunt is the one who should do all that.
And Hippie Aunt likes chihuahuas.
I have issues with them.

We'll file that under future problems.
Worst comes to worst, and I do apologize to Hippie Aunt, I'll just scream help in her direction.
She's in her 70s now and has a lot of health problems herself.
But she's got an older daughter.
She can deal with this.
I'm not the responsible one, really, I'm not.

Badger said I'm the only one who came out of that house "normal and sane."
Kim is a bit, well... she has some different beliefs.
She's a bit eccentric.

Yes, I did say in an earlier post that Kim and her brother were sent to foster care.
And yes, I've also said that my memories of childhood are very unreliable.

What I know to be true is that I was responsible for my grandmother, and that Kim and her brother were back home by the time Kim was in high school.
Beyond that, I'm not going to pretend I remember exactly how it all happened.

Kim was allowed to go on dates, to spend time at friends' houses, to go to dances, to football games, to join the flag corps, to learn to drive.
She went to college, she had jobs, she lived all over, she traveled.

I had a different mother and different rules.
I wasn't allowed to date, to have friends, to go to dances, to go to games, to learn to drive.

When I was in 8th grade, it became my job to make sure a terminally ill grandmother was taken care of before school and after school.
That meant making sure she had meals, her oxygen was OK, her medications were taken, and her bedside toilet was emptied.
I wasn't given a choice.
I was told to do it.
There wasn't anyone else to step up.
Everyone had a job, and we couldn't afford home health care.

I had to cook supper for my mom and uncle to have on the table when they got home from work.
I had to make sure Kim's brother was taken care of because Kim was already off to college.
She graduated in 1985, when I was heading into 10th grade, and was off to college that fall.
Of course it was my job when she was still there because she had a job, ran track at school, and was in the flag corps.

Then I met Cowboy when I was 19, married at 20, became a stepmom to a 7-year-old, then had my own baby when I was 21.
I never got the chance to be wild, to be free, to have no responsibilities, or to know what it was like to live for myself.
I went from the responsibilities of the home I grew up in to the responsibilities of being a wife and mother.
Then my babies came one after another.
When you have kids, it's no longer your life, it's their life.

So yeah, me and Kim are as different as night and day.
Kim never had kids, so she got to live a very different life than I did.
I wouldn't say I'm the responsible one, the sane one.
I'd say I was made to be responsible for things I was too young to be responsible for.

I think we had a good visit.
It could have been better, but Kim knows that I'm socially awkward.
We'll still text as often as possible, and again I hope to get back down to see her.
Me and her are hoping she'll kick ass and still be here next summer.

There's nothing to say about the rest of the day.
It was just another Sunday.
Cowboy came home and hit his recliner for a nap.
Me and Badger got dinner going.
There wasn't much to do there.
She'd already had most of it in the crock-pot.
We ate dinner, and Cowboy went to evening church service.
After he came home, it was just a TV night.

I'm on my tablet, so I can't say I'll head to bed.
I'm already there, but I'll put the tablet down and finish this show, and then head on to sleep.