Camping for Halloween - Pismo Coast Village and Lunch with the Cousins

    I know! I know! I have not done the second part of my post regarding the funeral for my brother in law Sean. I will, because it was one of the most amazing and special funerals I've ever attended. 

    Since his passing on August 4th, I have been spending the nights with my sister. She has never been alone, from living with our parents she went to live with her husband and I knew it was going to be difficult for her to be alone, especially in the beginning. 

    So my routine since then has been that I wake up at her home around 5:45 a.m. and get dressed and head to my house which is probably four blocks away. I do my normal morning routine and since I work from home and have since Covid began, I put in my eight hours of work. After work I spend a bit of time with my mom and then head over to Lisa's house where we have dinner, talk about the day, on Monday's we go to Grief Share, a grief therapy group that meets for two hours, then we start the routine all over again the next morning.

    Lisa and Sean LOVED camping! It was their greatest passion, after their children and grandchildren. They own a beautiful 5th Wheel motor home which they store at the coast and when they want to go camping, they make a reservation and the RV park picks up their RV and moves it to the campsite they will be in, they set it all up and hook up the water, sewer and electricity, they just come in and organize the inside and relax. 

    They had an annual tradition of coming the week of Halloween as all the RV's are decorated for the holiday. Because of the popularity of the event it books up fast so they had made and paid for their reservations months ago. Lisa wanted to go ahead and come, I was not so sure. I felt it was too soon, but if she wanted to do it, then I was coming with her.

    We left on Friday morning and her son Sean Jr came by to see us off, he's such a great young man and I'm so proud of him. You can see by the smile on their faces how much they still hurt for their dad and husband.

    We always stop at TJ Maxx in Paso Robles to shop. Lisa doesn't really enjoy shopping and even less now that she is grieving, but she made the effort. We didn't buy much, but Lisa did buy me a beautiful coffee mug with Nutcrackers on it, I'll share that when I put up my Christmas decorations sometime in December.

    We headed to Pismo where we had lunch at The Sidewalk Cafe where we each had the most amazing Asian Salad. It was huge too, we actually had it that night for dinner and I still ended up throwing about 1/4 of it away. 

    We got to the campsite soon after and I was so worried that Lisa was going to be devastated seeing the RV and walking inside for the first time without Sean, but the people that were supposed to set up the sewer, water and electricity had done nothing and all the hoses and pipes were strewn about in the back of the RV! Lisa was LIVID!  I think it was a blessing in disguise, she was so focused on getting everything fixed that she didn't remember to pay attention to the fact that this was the first time she was back in the RV without Sean. Death sucks so much, this is such a hard time for her.

    After all that drama we decided to walk to the clubhouse and then to the small store next door where Lisa bought two beers and some pretzels and we headed to a small table where she and Sean used to go when they came together. We said a toast to Sean and sat there drinking our beer. We then realized that we are Arizona girls and we don't do beach weather well (it was cold) and we headed back to the RV.

Beer in a can in a brown paper bag. Sean's favorite beer would have been Bud Light but they were out of that so we had Michelob Ultra. It was a beautiful spot but way to cold to stay long with the wind blowing.

    We set everything up and organized ourselves and decided where we each were going to sleep and then we watched some TV and played some cards and finally decided to get some sleep as we had plans to go to lunch the next day with two cousins that live close by.

    The next morning we slept in for a bit and woke up and had coffee, we planned our day because we knew we were meeting our cousins Diana and Vera at 1pm for lunch. We ran a few errands and cleaned up some more and then met them for lunch at this lovely place, Marisol at the Cliffs Restaurant. You can see the ocean in the background in the picture below.

Enjoying a Jalapeno Melon Margarita with the cousins. My sister Lisa in front taking the photo. Left to Right is our cousin Diana, daughter to my dad's sister Leonor and Elvira aka Vera daughter to my dads brother Manuel, then me.

    We had such a great time, there was a lot of laughter, a few tears and many shared memories. 

    For dinner I had the Thai Chicken Lettuce Wraps, which were fabulous!

    Lisa had the bacon and eggs, the bacon looked really good, but she didn't share! 

Cousin Vera I believe had fish tacos with potatoes.

Cousin Vera deep in conversation.

    Cousin Diana had the nachos which she shared with us all and still had enough to take home!

Cousin Diana enjoying her nachos.

    Afterwards they wanted to come and see Lisa's motor home, so here's a picture of the four of us. We had such a great time and can't wait to get together again!

Great shot of the four us and Lisa's motor home. Left to right: Vera, Diana, me in the front and Lisa behind me.

    There is nothing like family. We never spent a lot of time with my dad's side of the family, but my mom and dad both used to say to us all the time that "blood calls" and it does. Even though we seldom see these cousins there is a bond that we can't break, our ancestors blood runs through our veins and calls for us to be family even though we are literally strangers.

    I'm not going to lie and say that this has been a great trip, Lisa is here in body, but not in spirit or in mind or heart. Her spirit, mind and heart is with her husband and she is going through an agony that is unimaginable. Earlier that day we were driving through a busy part of town that has a lot of little shops and I had a memory while passing a bead store of my sister in law Connie and I bringing mom right before Covid to Pismo and taking her to several bead shops and there is one we particularly enjoyed with her and as we drove by I remembered that day and how happy my mom was and how special she felt and I also realized that someday my mom is going to be gone and my heart clenched in pain and it was brief, maybe a few seconds, but I then knew exactly how Lisa is feeling, it's an incapacitating pain and you feel as though your heart will explode  and there is nothing that you can do....except to be brave like my poor, dear sister is being brave. 

    More to come as I'm writing this several days later. Dinner with the cousins was Sunday afternoon. I'm writing this on Wednesday afternoon, October 26th and this morning they invited us to get together again with them for dinner and drinks tonight.