A Loss and a New Gig
I missed yesterday's post, unfortunately, but I'm going to keep going and attempt to blog for the rest of the month.
Back in February, my aunt passed away. She was diagnosed with lung cancer in November (she had never in her life smoked), and everything happened so unbelievably quickly after that. We thought she would go in for treatment, but the doctors kept finding that the cancer had spread, small spots of it in other places in her body. She was farther along than any of us had realized. Ultimately, the only thing we could do was hospice care to try to make her as comfortable as possible until she passed.
It's been difficult, to say the least. She was my mom's twin, and we were all so close to her. She was like a second mom to me. When I was a kid, I went over to my cousins' house almost every weekend, and she would make us a big breakfast on Saturday morning and scrub pine sap off of me at the end of days spent outside playing in the woods and climbing trees.
At her funeral, one of her co-workers told me that she was the reason they went into work every day, that she made the days there worthwhile. She was kind, selfless, and warm. Even after her death, I was quickly reminded that she was always thinking of me, as my cousin brought me a coffee kit that she had recently bought and intended to give to me. She was like that, always thinking about others and what she could give them. She spent a lot of her money on other people.
Her son, my cousin, lives only about five minutes away from my parents. His dad isn't really in the picture, so he spent a lot of time with my parents during and after my aunt's struggle with cancer. They were his biggest support, and my sister, my brother, and I have tried to be there for him as much as possible too. We eventually made the collective decision to have family dinner nights every Tuesday evening, where we all get together, somebody in the family cooks a meal or gets takeout, and we hang out and play board games. I think it's the best thing we've ever done as a family. I wish we had done it while my aunt was still alive, but I know she would be happy we're doing it now, that we're giving my cousin this lifeline. There's nothing like grief to bring people together.
Anyway, this was all to say that that's what I was doing yesterday and why I didn't manage to blog, but I guess the explanation has now become a blog entry of its own. I worked yesterday and then drove over to my parents' house for our family dinner, where my mom had meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and peas ready for us and we played a game called Fuzzy Logic. It was a good time, as always, and I wouldn't trade those evenings for the world.
I also have a small announcement to make, which is that I'm now writing for Adventure Game Hotspot! You can find my author page here and keep an eye on it for my upcoming articles. I've finished my first review, it just hasn't been posted yet.
I used to write for Adventure Gamers, but that site has unfortunately turned into a shell of what it once was. I still wanted to write about my favorite game genre, though, so I reached out to the Hotspot's editor, Jack, and he brought me onboard. I'm proud of my first review and can't wait for it to be posted! I'll update here and probably on my BlueSky once that happens. I've had such a positive experience with the Hotspot so far, and it really feels like where I want to be, so I'm glad things worked out this way.