Also pretty tangential...

I just got back to Austin about 3 hours ago. Over the weekend my aunt died, a stroke oddly enough.  This is not a sympathy post. We were by no means close, in fact we pretty much disagreed on everything with the exception that we love her 6 year daughter. I received a call on Sunday from her oldest son,seventeen years old, begging me to come help him because his mother had been rushed to the emergency room after collapsing at church. He had Olivia (the six year old) and he had no idea what to do. I promptly set out to Houston with a feeling of strange serenity.  The nature of surreal occurred to me as I entered the Methodist hospital and Olivia rushed to me and happily announced that "the doctors are doing all they can". Her inappropriate emotional response made me immediately think of Blue Velvet, which in itself was an inappropriate response to the situation. We waited in ICU until the kids got hungry and I took them home and made them egg sandwiches. I went outside to smoke a cigarette. Olivia caught me and lectured me on the dangers of smoking. I put her to bed at 9 after reading her a chapter of "The Last Unicorn".  I popped in Blue Velvet and let Andrew watch it with me. His review consisted of "That was fucked up.". 'How...appropriate.'  I thought.  I didn't really understand that "strangeness" that we spoke about fully until I was in the midst of it. All of the preceding activity to my aunts death was mundane and almost cheerful. Olivia played with plastic horses, Andrew tried to sneak cigarettes. Everything just seemed wrong in a sense.