July 24, 2024

Wednesday - Hot and muggy, rainy too


I woke up around 8 am to the news that I have been dreading.  My sister texted that our brother in Hawaii had died. He’s been fighting cancer since last year.  I sent F a text and let him know as he was at work already. He told me that he would take the day off to be with me. I was glad that he did that.


He came back to the house and I think he told his mother what happened. I was basically in bed and he came in the room and we talked and hugged. I fell asleep for a while. 


I woke up around noon and we talked about having lunch somewhere. We went out to the little restaurant in Kushibiki and were able to get a table. We both had variations of mapo-dofu. I had mine on yakisoba and F had a set of a mini-ramen and mapo-dofu and rice. He thought the lunch was a little salty, I think it was too, but it didn’t bother me that much. 


After lunch we went to Starbucks and had a drink there. F had his usual Frappuccino, I had a new hoji-cha drink but it was so sweet that I didn’t like it at all. 


We came back to the house and spent some time in the house.  We relaxed for a bit.  It had rained so the temperature was cooler. I watched the news at 4 pm and they featured a bit about Jasper being evacuated. That is terrible. F and I went to Jasper on our honeymoon. 


F asked me if I’d like to go to the temple with him. He hadn’t gone to his father’s grave in a while, so wanted to do that. He picked up some flowers at a grocery store and then we went to the shrine or temple, I can never remember which it is. We went over to the grave and F put the flowers out and then cleaned the grave. I told him I would have done it the other way around, but I don’t think it matters!


We went to a grocery store again and picked up something for F’s breakfast tomorrow. We also got dinner for K.  We brought the food back to the house and F gave it to his mother. 


A few minutes later, F and I went out for our dinner. I had suggested going to F’s favourite fish restaurant for dinner and he was okay with that! We were able to get in and to get a table and chairs. Yes! F had a donburi with some raw fish and sesame oil, I had a grilled sea bream set meal. It was very good, a lot of bones but it was okay. 


We came back to the house after dinner. I came upstairs and relaxed. I watched a lot of YouTube too. I went downstairs and took a shower after 10:30 and then came back to the room. I decided not to watch something on TV, so I turned to YouTube again. 


So, F will go back to work tomorrow as he has a driving assignment. I’ll stay here and try to catch up with the things I need to do to like laundry and cooking and possibly cleaning up!


I’m sad, but I know that my brother was tired of fighting. I wasn’t as close with him as I wish I could have been. He lived in Hawaii for many years so I wasn’t able to see him. We didn’t grow up together as he was from my father’s first marriage. He was the only one of my half-siblings that treated my mother well, the others were quite horrible to her. I will miss him. 


So, that’s it for me. Come back later if you like and hear all about my Thursday. Until tomorrow…. 


3 comments:

Rosa said...

I'm so sorry about your brother, Helen. It's hard to lose a sibling and I know you will miss him even if you weren't as close as you'd have liked to be. May his memory be a blessing.

Kelly said...

Sorry for your loss Helen x

Helen said...

Thank you both for your kind words. I know that he is at peace now, he'd been fighting for so long.