When do 3 days = one week?

When my mom and my brother visit my sister, that's when. They were supposed to leave last Saturday to visit Lori, John and Ava for a week. They would have arrived home today.

I must say that all of them were really looking forward to this visit with a lot of trepidation. I was getting daily phone calls from all of them. My mom was afraid to fly alone, then when my brother said he would go with her, she was afraid to fly at all. My brother was upset that he hadn't even gotten there yet and my sister was being too "controlling" because she wanted to pick the week that they would be invited. My sister was worried about my brother snooping in all her stuff (a valid concern) and about my mom almost acting like she was only coming out of a sense of obligation.

And on...and on...and on...every day it was something else. By the time the day for the trip finally arrived, I was the one who was ready to pull my hair out.

They left here on Saturday, and I didn't hear anything from anybody for three days. I figured all must be going well. How wrong I was! I got a call from my daughter Stacy on Tuesday inviting me over for dinner. I said I couldn't go because I was going out with Fred (my stepdad). She says, "Oh, you haven't talked to Grandpa, have you?". Uh-oh...

So, I call him, and he tells me that Mom 'wasn't feeling well in Seattle' and she and my brother were on a flight home this very minute and he was going to the airport to pick them up. I said "WHAT????", and he says that he told me too much already, and I'd better call Lori, because he wasn't supposed to say anything until I spoke to her. Oh, hell, what now?

I call Lori, and she says the visit just didn't work out. My brother smoked in the house, my mom was homesick, my brother made messes and just expected people to clean up after him, my mom kept asking prying and uncomfortable questions, and a whole litany of things ending up in several arguments until they all just decided it was best if the visit was cut short.

She also said she felt her own health going downhill with the stress of it all, so she was kind of relieved that they left. Really quite a shame, as it may be the last time either one of them sees her in such (relatively)"good" shape.

Cat

Post-script...Kind of a creepy thing... Ava has these "sidewalk chalks" and she was playing with them with my brother, so he knew she had them. After he left, Lori found written on the sidewalk in front of the house, I LOVE YOU with the chalks. That isn't creepy, maybe my brother felt like he couldn't tell her that himself. But then, she was in her rock garden, and on one of the rocks was written, DIE IN PEAC, but the last E was left off, like maybe someone walked out while he was writing it and he had to stop real quick. That is creepy, and he could have been the only person who would write something like that. I got the chills when she was telling me about it.