Sunday, June 22, 2008

Nice & Relaxing

What a lovely weekend, we’ve had. Some could say it was boring, but I beg to differ! It was nice and relaxing. Saturday we woke up late, had a nice brunch just the two of us, after which we made our way to Granby. It was a nice day for a drive. It wasn’t really planned; it was more a spur of the moment kind of thing. Hubby’s uncle (his late mother’s brother) called to thank us for the birthday wishes (the week before) apologizing for not doing it sooner, but under the circumstances he wasn’t doing too well. His wife is dying, gallbladder cancer, supposedly a rare cancer to have. She’s young; she only turned 50 on May 7th. Because of the way he sounded, we decided to pay him a visit. We drove one hour to get to the hospital. The shock of seeing his wife like this broke my heart. She was the type of woman, who would always wear a little make up, had her hair done, always well dressed… What I saw, lying in that hospital bed was nothing like the woman I knew. I barely recognized her. She was skin and bones, and has reached a point where she doesn’t recognized people. Last time I had seen her was at my MIL’s funeral, less than a year ago, and she was “healthy”, or so we thought. Hubby’s uncle is visibly taking it all very hard. In the 14 years I’ve been with Hubby, I had never seen his uncle looking this dishevelled, this fragile. Even last year, when his sister (Hubby’s mom) died I saw him shaken up, but Saturday was a whole different feel. I felt for him. We spent a few hours with him, and then made our way back home. During our drive back we couldn’t help but talked about it and how precious life really is.

We had to be back before 7:30pm, because the City was closing all access to our area due to the yearly Fireworks Competition starting that night. We made it in time, and then decided to walk to Chinatown for a good Chinese dinner. We slowly made our way back home, on Notre-Dame and watched the fireworks. The amount of people and cars blocking our area was crazy. Glad we walked everywhere!

Sunday was also a smooth day. We did some errands, and had to go to the post office to pick up a parcel. It was a big box, which actually contained two chairs from our set. I’m hoping to get the rest on Monday, if not I’ll have to contact the seller! I’m happy with how they look and also they are not wobbly! Yay! We walked around Old Montreal, thinking that the festivities for the St-Jean-Baptiste (a Quebec Holiday, on Tuesday) were started, when it dawn on me that it was actually music (if you can call it that!) from the Heavy Montreal Weekend that we were hearing. I can only imagine how loud it must have been on site since we could hear it from across the river! Nutts! We had a nice ice cream cone from Bilboquet (they have a little stand in the Old Port), and we got ourselves some tickets to go see U2 3D at the Imax Theatre on Wednesday night. That should be interesting.

See, we didn’t do anything out of the ordinary, but it was a nice weekend, where I realised that we must enjoy life, everyday. We don’t know when our number will be up, so might as well enjoy it while we still can!

9 comments:

Unknown said...

Certainly a Dickensian weekend. The best of times, and the worst of times. I congratulate you on finding the silver lining.

Annake said...

Cancer is a real bitch and no doubt about it. But it really does sometimes take something like that to make us appreciate what we have.

lizgwiz said...

Well, that weekend sounds mostly delightful. Sorry about your uncle's wife...that's tough, I know. (Sounds like she's about where my friend is, sadly.) It does make you realize things about life, though, doesn't it

kara said...

i want to go to a fireworks competition. i can't even imagine what all that would entail. and how many limbs could be lost.

stinkypaw said...

marius: It's all about choices...

ananke: A good reminder and wake up call for sure!

lizgwiz: It sure does.

kara: You sounds like my FIL did last summer! He had never seen "real" fireworks, and was worried about the fire hasard, etc. LOL

Jason Stockl said...

If you haven't already, try the Bilboquet Coconut sorbet... Mmmmmmmm!

stinkypaw said...

jason67: Next visit I will, I debated about it, mixing coconut and pineapple!

Anonymous said...

I have never heard of gallbladder cancer before. How sad for he & his wife, gosh that's so sad. When you aren't around the sick person, the change is absolutely shocking.
I bet they are so glad the 2 of you visited.

stinkypaw said...

jane: It's a weird cancer, since we can easily live without it, but once it's cancerous, it's hard to detect and often too late to do anything about. I don't know about her, since she can't no longer recognize people, but uncle was happy we went.