One More First Without You

Christmas was never your thing, except for the shopping. It was the one time of the year you would voluntarily go out into the stores. Last year you went and leaned on the cart  and rested a lot, and we didn't go far or for long. This year, had you gone, I would have Been pushing you in the wheelchair and you'd have been pushing the cart. Not for you those wheelchairs with baskets that the stores provide. You somehow saw those as an insult or a put down, and if you went, it would have been i n your own chair and under your own steam.

I missed our once a year shopping expedition, under whatever terms you would have dictated.

More than that, I missed talking with you as I wrapped the gifts for the babies. I never realized what a pleasant thing those chats were. Discussing the gifts, the possible reactions, what she would say and what he will do -- oh, those thousand hundred million little things that are everyday living.
Except that you are not living, and so we didn't have that this year.

I'd share pictures with you, but I don't have any yet. They haven't opened their gifts, for one thing. I didn't get to wrap them until Christmas Eve, after we took them home to Tam's and had Christmas dinner with them. Tam trying for a new tradition, I think.

We all missed you so.

But, this first Christmas without you has passed.
We survived.
I don't know that there is anything m,ore to say than that.

We love you.
We missed you.

Taking Care of Me

I didn't realize how much you actually did do to take care of me, in our day-to-day. I've made a couple of interesting discoveries there.

For one thing, yes, I will forget to eat, or put off eating until I am actually too weak to cook. Wish you were here to remind me, as you always did. I used to get so annoyed with you! "Do I look like I forget to eat?"
Guess what.
Not only do I really forget to eat, I still look the same. Haven't lost any weight from not eating. May have gained a pound or ten. (My weight is still bouncing between 260 and 270.) I know, it makes no sense to me either. And there's no sense in going to Dr. You know they will just say I must be wrong about that, because one only gains weight by eating too much and doing too little.

I miss you tying my shoes, too. After you helped me get my socks over my toes, which are so very far away from my hands. How did I never realize that you were helping me to dress myself? I feel so ashamed sometimes that I took that help for granted. I was under the delusion, I suppose, that I could do it for myself, it was just easier to ask you.
Not exactly a delusion. I can do these things for myself, but it takes a whole lotta work!

And this isn't exactly a taking care issue, but I thought you might like to hear me acknowledge that you were absolutely right when you said I could go for days without speaking to anyone. A recent bout of laryngitis proved that true. I went several days without talking to anyone.
The hardest part of laryngitis was not being able to shout out the answers on Jeopardy!

So, I miss you in a hundred little day-to-day ways. There's no surprise in that. We had so many hundreds of day to day days. Until you ran out of days, and mine continue on.

Until we meet again, sweetheart.

Tracy Going to School

You have a whistle now. Nice big gaudy loud one. Tracy got it tonight as part of her initiation package at Southern State. She brought it in to me and said "Look Mom, it's the whistle you wanted."

It made my insides curdle.

I said
I didn't  want a whistle, your daddy did." 

But she left it here for me anyway to see, to look at ; too little too late

and what good would it have done anyway?

Well, you might have had a few more breaths for saying please thank you and I love you, instead of wasting them for trying to shout when no one answered your bell. Would have come in handy about now, with Christmas bells on the commercials and stuff.

Yes, she finally got herself organized enough and is all enrolled in college, like you wanted her to do when she couldn't get work anywhere. She's doing better than I am, as far as that goes. I am failing at job interviews now.

I even had to miss one today. I am so sick with a cold, and it hurts to breathe, and I can't lay down without coughing or sit up without choking. My throat s full  of sand. I am taking your OTC meds, even the Alka Seltzers(TM), because I can barely stop coughing long enough to drive anywhere. 

I did drive her to school tonight, for her orientation. And then I sat there waiting for her for hours, but It couldn't be helped at the time. I'd have to go back after her and it saved gas to wait. Doesn't really matter much to me where I put my time in anymore, since no one wants me to work for them. And I couldn't right now anyway.

Tam says Bub's standing up on his own for minutes. Looks like he'll be walking by Christmas. I'll probably be crawling cross the floors by then -- what a switcheroo, huh? That's a joke, by the way. You know how damn miserable head colds make me before I get over them. Every day I feel bad is a day closer to feeling better.

I'm trying to do what I think you would tell me to, to get better and to fee better. I sure do miss you sitting in your recliner cheering me on in my attempts to return to health, though. Tracy nor Tammy, Jeanie nor Rita, while caring about my health, could ever care the way you would have.

Me, I just want to get well. 

And not be given a whistle for you that you no longer need.

Just Missing You

I've started talking to your empty chair. I know you aren't there, but you should be. If you were here, that's where you would be. I know you aren't there, but I need you to be.

Of course, some of the things I need you to be there for, I wouldn't need you if you were here, because they are problems caused by your absence.Money things, home insecurities, being sick.
That's another thing. If you were here, I'd have to stay away from you. I have a cold, a heavy cold, a horrible cold. coughing and sneezing and sore throat. I'd have to stay away from you, like I'd had to do the couple days before you went to hospital after we had that stomach flu.

God, how I regret those two days of not holding you and kissing you and sitting on or by your lap/leg. I was trying to keep you healthy, to keep you around. I hope you knew that. I think you did.

If we had known how little time, I think we'd have been together more closely those last few days at home.

I need you, Rex, and you aren't here. I don't know how to solve problems without bouncing them off you. I guess I have to learn a whole new way of doing, but I have so many things I'm having to re-do and re-organize everything else, how can I do so for the little things of day to day?

And yet I must.

You've pulled off a few miracles for us while you were here. I wish you were here for a couple of those now, or even just one small one. I don't know which one I'd pick, though. Maybe housing. I'd like to be in a more secure situation than I am in right now.
I don';t know how you could or would help with that were you still here. Although if you were still here there would be no need.

I don't know what to do or even where to start, Rex. I need to talk to you -- and listen to your input -- to even find a direction for me to go.

I wish you could be at peace, and how will that happen if I keep bothering you? I want you to be well and healthy and happy and not worried -- but I still want you here to worry with me.

I don't know what to do without you.
I don't know HOW to do without you.

Oh, God, Rex, what am I going to do?
And how?

Help me.
Help me.
Help me.

Another not-a-milestone

Turned the calendar page yesterday. One whole page of the calendar that you weren't here in your room, in your chair, living your life.
That's over and done with, and now there's that page gone and we're on to the next.

I had both the babies this weekend. First time I've had them both since you left us. The only reason I  tried was because Tracy had said that was what she wanted for her birthday, but once they were here she said she wanted them for me because they make me smile. Good to be thought of, but have a hard time with Tracy wanting something for someone else for HER special day doesn't ring true.

However, they were both here and it was not bad at all. Your little buddy boy had a cold -- Tam says it's not the same one, but that Hailey brings new ones home from school -- and he's having the ear-jaw-tooth pain that has plagued him for a while. (At least, that is what it appears to be. No one really knows but him, and he can't tell us yet.)
But, after a day, he chirked up and cheered up and the boy is happy now after getting home to "momomomomom." He'll be walking before speaking, and he'll be in school before he has teeth at this rate. Poor lil guy.

Hailey and I made a house from the kit I got. She had a blast, and was happy. Not sure if it was because we worked together (she said "Santa Claus will be so proud of us") or putting bananas on the roof. After it got all dry, she decided to put it in the living room, but brought it through to the front room. It is now framed in the window as Mammaw's decoration.
She decorated the tree, too. We have been waiting five years for that day, and you weren't here to enjoy it with me. Made me sad. But it was a delight to watch her so seriously consider and place and re-place the ornaments. You know how involved she gets with her projects!

Tracy is going to college. She thinks I should be all celebratory and throw a party or something, and all I can think of is how many times you tried to get her to do this exact thing and she had no time for it while you were here.  I suppose it's a reasonable alternative to getting a job, especially as she is still reasonably young. I don't know.
I had kind of played with the idea of going back to school,  one of the tech schools, maybe. But someone has to make a living and winter is hard enough with income. We can't neither one of us live off you in exchange for taking care of you  now, can we?

I sure would like to have those days back.

I sure would like to have you back.
That would be more.
Although we are getting a bit old for "we have each other; who needs money?"
Ahh, but I remember those days. We had 'em.

Anyway, we passed a milestone with the turning of the Rexless calendar page.
And the new page has started with babies and a birthday and a new venture for both of us here. (I have a job interview I'm optimistic about, as well as filling out applications still)

So, my dear, we go on.

It's not like we have any choice,

Our Day, apart

I miss the Thanksgiving that used to be. The turkey and the sides and pies and beans and potatoes. You, my dear, are the only person I've ever known that put Macaroni & cheese on the Thanksgiving table.
Such an everyday food!
But, of course, one should be thankful for the everyday, shouldn't one?

The last few years, this day has been especially our own. A day spent watching TV in different rooms, etc. In some ways, our togetherness was slightly apart. Just -- not too far.
This day we are so apart.

This couple in the Swiffer commercials is how I saw us. Not because we were so focused on cleaning -- you were more into that than I have ever been or ever will be. But because the way those two fuss and work together and care about one another -- I saw us that way. Already that way, and growing more so in the time we would have left.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xw9Bp2AszNw

I wonder if I ever told you that.
I don't think I did, because you would have said something about wishing someone around here would clean like that, and I'd have replied with it being about the character and the love, and as a result I think I would have remembered if I ever had said it.

But then again, we spent so much time in this room with the TV on, it's possible that I could have said, "There we are" when the commercial came on.
Or you could have said it.
Because I think you felt the same way, if you ever thought about it at all.
Maybe you thought of it wistfully, because you knew you'd never get that old and doubted we'd ever have that chance.
I hope so, and I hope that, at least once, one or the other of us did make that smart aleck remark about that being us.

There are many things to be thankful for this year, and they are things that have your touch all over them. The most important is the roof over our head. If you hadn't been a conscientious tenant, we'd never have been allowed to stay to keep the house occupied through winter.
Yes, you.
Your money paid the rent.
You took care of things, from your cocoon in the recliner in one room of the house.

But I don't want to be thankful without you.
I want you to be thankful with -- even though you would be the doom and gloom and see all the shadows and because of you, I would be more aware of the good side of things.
We complemented one another that way.

We'll get this first sad holiday over (Halloween doesn't count), and I'll get back to Thanksliving.
But  I will NOT be thankful for your absence.
Never ever.

Breathe deep and breathe easy, or the equivalent, wherever you are. I'm glad you aren't sick and suffering.
Thankful, even.

Flowers from Rex

What is with the flowers right now?

Rex never sent me flowers. We couldn't afford it and had a mutual agreement that that was pretty low on our list of priorities.

He did buy me flowers, once. He bought long-stemmed red red roses from his nephew. (The nephew needed money and didn't want to  borrow.)


The roses were frozen. They (or it. I don't remember now how many. I think three.) were beautiful, they smelled good. Long stemmed.
But frozen. When I used a vase, the weight of the frozen bloom broke the stem. The outer petals turned black and flaked off while the center remained hard as an ice cube.
But it smelled good, all nice and rose-y.

I don't remember now how I acted at the time. I fussed a bit over the being frozen part, but I think -- I hope -- I went on and enjoyed them, the thought and the flowers. Because I did enjoy them. I do  wish I could remember expressing that, because I don't think I did. I may have even made a little joke about it every now and then. Good natured, of course.


Now, in the last few weeks, I have been gifted twice, inexplicitly, with flowers.

First, there was the yellow rosebud, coming to life on a brown cane in winter weather.

That bud is still there, hanging teardrop shaped, still a bud, still yellow, even though temperatures have dropped into the teens for the last few nights.

(And I am getting goosebumps. A frozen rose? Seems I might know something about that after all.)

Two days ago, I went out to my car.
On the ground, just below the front bumper, right outside the door, was a large spray of (dead) flowers. Something multi-petalled, like a hydrangea. No particular meaning to us connected with the hydrangea, although they had come up in a conversation with my sisters.
The petals are white and browned, and are crisp like autumn leaves.

I said to Tracy,"Look, is your daddy is sending me dead flowers?"
She said, "yes maybe."
We both laughed, and I took pictures of the flowers, one on the ground and one on the hood of the car.

In the pictures I took that day, the flowers look (dare I say it?) a  rosy pink color. Easily understood in the on the car shot, since the car is a  burgundy color. Not so easy to understand in the on-ground photo.

It just seemed so odd, I thought.

Because Rex never sent me flowers.
We couldn't afford it, and it was low on our list of priorities.

Food

Tam had Thanksgiving dinner for us tonight. It was because of her work schedule and her pay schedule and all the complicated stuff like that.
I think it was also to get something of this landmark day behind us. It's not the type of landmark anyone wants to remember and one that will never be forgotten.  Thanksgiving without Rex, without Dad, with no Pappaw.

Thanksgiving has a history for us, doesn't it, Rex? It's been THE family holiday since the girls have been grown. David cooking us up a feast, and you enjoying it, even if your plate would feed you for a week.When the girls grew up and left home, there we were, just you and I, with food we enjoyed and the company we most wanted most of the time. One of our private Thanksgiving days started me on my first blog. ( http://www.otherdissed.blogspot.com/2010/11/thanksgiving-day.html )
Recent years, you couldn't/wouldn't leave home and I might go to Tam's and bring you home a plate. I told Tam last night to not even offer me a plate to take home, because that was always for you. Last year, Tracy was the one who brought us plates.

You've always been picky about food, although you griped about that in the kids. I would run all over the place trying to find the things you would eat. Potted meat and Vienna sausage, only they had to be Armour, not Libby's, not store brands. You would eat Spam, but not Treet. Your chicken noodle soup had to be Campbell's, and it had to be the kind with skinny noodles and no vegetables.

I had the house full of food for you, Rex.
Food you wouldn't/couldn't eat.

How we begged you to eat!
How we tried to argue you into eating, until you had no breath for eating or arguing!

How you tried, when we pressed you.
You did try, more than we can know, I think. Because we have never had to choose, day after day, meal after meal, between eating and breathing.

I open the cabinets or the refrigerator, and there it is -- the food I bought for you. Eggs. Cottage Cheese. Hot sausage. Gatorade. I don't know what to do with the refrigerator stuff. Can't donate that. Tam has got most of it -- I made what was left of your eggs into your devilled eggs (well, Tam and Tracy put them together; I just cooked them.) for our Thanksgiving Dinner.
The other stuff has gone into donation boxes (that I haven't yet donated. Haven't seen any bins.) Your potted meat and teeny wienies have gone to school as Hailey's contribution to the food drive.
Someone will benefit from what couldn't benefit you.

Maybe I will soon be able to open the cabinets without being gut-punched.
And I will also lose one more connection to you and the used-to-be.

Good thing I can always buy a can of potted meat to remember you, huh?
As if I will ever need that!

Maybe I can remember to be thankful that you are not struggling for breath and dying before my eyes because you have finally accomplished that.
Maybe I can someday be grateful that you lasted as long as you did, all things considered.

But I would so much rather be being thankful with you.

Enough Already.

I'm tired of this alone crap. Where are you? Why did you go?
And don't blame it on me and say I told you to! Since when have you ever done everything I told you to? If you had listened to me and gone to the doctor, a week earlier, a month earlier, more often, -- if you had done what I told you, you might still be here! So don't tell me it's my fault, because I told you to go.

I wanted and needed you yesterday.
It was a horrible, horrible day without you.

First, I had to take Hailey home, and make the long drive back home with the knowledge that you weren't here for me to call. I stopped at Family Dollar, but you didn't need anything from me, did you? How could you?

I didn't need to let you know I was heading back home in the dark and shining downpours, with fields overflowing into ditches and ditches overflowing into roads.
You weren't waiting for me and worrying about me, were you?
You weren't here.

I found a couple of clips from Fox News on Facebook, and I couldn't share them with you and argue the details out until we were both laughing at ourselves getting so worked up. When it comes to arguing Fox news, there's no substitute for you, babe.

Not that there is in any other area, but some things; some times it is easier to "accept substitutes".

Lastly, Rex, last night there were big scary storms and I was bigly scared. You know how I hate storms. No lightning with these, lots of wind, lots of tornadoes before they got here, lots of rain and fear pouring down.Blowing past Tammy and the babies' trailer before it could start to our -- MY -- place. No us. No our house.

If you were here, I would have been going out on the porch and reporting back to you: how it looked; how it felt; how bad it was or wasn't.
And because I had you to share with, I wouldn't have been so nearly insane with my ownly lonely crazy fears.

I needed you and you weren't here!

You will never be here!

Ever!

Again!

And what in hell (or heaven's name) am I supposed to do for love and fear and company?

One Month Without You

And it seems like forever.

It seems like it has already been forever, and there is still forever before me.

How can I stand it?

You'd be so disappointed in me if I don't.
I don't know what to do or where to turn.
You were my something to do.
You were my someone to turn to.

5 weeks since you went to the hospital, and I was so pleased that you were doing so while you could be treated -- and treated locally, too.
5 weeks from the Day of Doom that has haunted me, but been relatively inoffensive, for 30 years.
5 weeks.

4 weeks and 1 day since you left us. It won't, technically, be a month until Saturday. But it's been 4 weeks and 1 day.

That long since I held your hand, cupped your strong but hairy chin, felt your strong heart beating.
That long since your strong heart beat.

Oh, Rex; oh Rex; oh Rex.

I must remember you as you were in the dream. Upright, smiling, laughing as you were on your way to Tammy's, walking. You wanted to surprise her with how well you were doing. You asked me wouldn't she be surprised.

She says she has dreamed of you, frequently.

But she's never told me whether or not she was surprised.
I'll bet she was.

I'll bet you were.

I keep the picture we used on the refrigerator.
It reminds me of the time when you were reasonably healthy and you could do things and would laugh and joke with all of us.
It reminds me of the man who, in many ways, passed long ago.

I wanted us to grow old together, but I remind myself that I didn't want to see you suffer more.
I wanted you to heal, to be cured, to be young again, and that will happen for none of us.

So I comfort myself with your return to not-sick, not-weak, not-suffering.
Someday, I hope to comfort myself with a return to you.

And the Pain Sets In

Everything is done -- except living on.

Only once did I forget, that day coming home from arranging your funeral, when I stopped for gas and reached for the cell phone to call and tell you that I was on my way. That is the only rime that I have forgotten you are no longer here.

I haven't turned to look at your chair and tell you about the silliness of the news story. I haven't made your morning coffee and tried to bring it to you. I haven't wondered if I could get you to sip some soup today.
I know you are not here.
I know you will never be here.

But I have been working for you, busy for you.
And now it is done, save one task; which has to wait.

And in the long dreary days; through the long dark nights; you are NOT and you never will be again, and it hurts.
It hurts, Rex.
A real aching agonizing physical hurt that is bored into my bones and oozes from my pores.

When I wake early and you haven't taken your medicine.
When I go to the store and it no longer matters what you might like, or eat.
When it's time to come home from the library or the gas station , and there is no one to call and say I'm coming home.
When I come home, and there's no one waiting and watching for my return.
When I sit alone in your front room.
When I close the door and turn out the lights to that same room.
When I go to bed and know that tomorrow will be yet another day of No you.
It hurts.

In a way, I am glad to feel the pain. It should hurt when going-on-thirty years isn't going to make it.
It should hurt when someone isn't there and never will be again.
It should hurt when no one loves you like that Other Person did.

I was getting worried that it wasn't hurting. I was wondering if I truly loved you the way I thought I did. I was wondering if you were a habit. Or something less complete and less important.

Now I know.
I did love you.
I DO love you.
There may be habit in the way we were together, but it was the doing that was the habit; not you.

Never you.

So, the pain begins.
It will dull, or I will get used to it.
It will change, because life's about changes.
But it will never go away.

Some things have to hurt -- surgery to cure is better than peritonitis; childbirth.
Some things have to hurt, and some things just do hurt.


I miss you so.

Forgiveness

I know that you forgive me, but will I forgive myself?

It's a thought, you know, for when I awaken in the night, or early morning, from not hearing the nebulizer at the proper time. (At least, I suppose that is what is awakening me ae those times; there's no other reason.)

What is this big issue for me?
That I let you down.
That I did not say to the demanding doctors "Let him go." (Go meaning let him die. Him meaning you.)
That I could not say it.

Neither could I say "Do the surgery." I knew you didn't want that. We had already discussed that enough that we both knew being tethered to a respirator in a bed in a nursing home was not for you. You didn't want it, and you wouldn't want us to remember you that way.
We knew that.

We were waiting for the girls to arrive to tell them, so you could tell them. They needed to know this was your choice. Our choice, together, but also yours.

But before they could get there -- and they were just minutes away -- you went into a crisis. The doctors were there, the nurses, everyone, and the doctor was asking me and asking me, and I didn't know what to say, because we were waiting for the girls.

They put the mask on you, and your poor lungs fought with it, but it was keeping you alive until they could come.
And the doctor kept asking me about surgery or letting go, and I couldn't answer.

When my sisters and the girls came in, I couldn't face it anymore. Not the doctors,not the girls, not you. I turned my back on you all and cried in my sisters' arms. I remember telling them "I can't. They want me to say, and I can't."
How could I possibly say to let you die?
How could I say to make you stay?
How could I make you have to make that same awful horrible choice?
How could I let you down that way?

The girls tell me that you did make the choice.
They say that you gestured the mask away and took their hands.
Tammy speaks of those moments with awe and authority.
I don't know. I was crying and trying to hide from the reality.

The next thing I remember is the nurses and doctor explaining that morphine  would make you not struggle so hard to breathe, because it would somehow fool your brain into thinking you were breathing well, or well enough.

No panic, no pain.
No more time for good-bye, and we had never really got around to that in all our discussions.
I wanted to beg you to get better, be stronger, stay.
But you had been doing that for so long, so very long. Every breath a torture, even without being permanently attached to a machine.
How could I be so selfish?
I had already been selfish enough that day, that hour.

I know that you would know that, in the end, it would be your decision to live or die, whatever mechanical means were available.
I know that you would know how hard the decision.

But I so wanted to be strong for you, to keep on running your life for you so that you would be comfortable and have a measure of peace. But I couldn't do that if you were dead, could I? And you would have been upset with me if I'd chosen to keep you even though I couldn't keep you close.
With the machine you'd never be able to speak to me again.

Your eyes spoke volumes, heart-to-heart, even though they were mostly closed.
You held my hand as I held yours.
You didn't have to hear me say "Let him die."
I talked to you for hours, and you never heard me say that.

You never heard me say that.

You did hear me say that "I can't."

You did hear me crying and grieving.

That comforts me.

And, I know you understand and forgive.
But, oh, Rex, I am so, so, so sorry that I made you have to do that on your own.
I wish I could have done that for you.

Someday my aching heart will know what my mind already accepts -- no matter what I had said, to live or to die was the decision of your soul; your spirit.

But in the dark hours, when I waken because I haven't heard you take your medicine, I wonder.

I wonder.

Lighting Up the Night

Well, I went and got Warren for a couple days. He's been in  fussy baby mode, and Tam is in tired Mommy mode, so an intervention seemed like a good idea. Not to mention Mammaw here just needs the sparkle a baby can add to an abode.

You know how the babies always seem to make our house come alive.

He's got a cold. He's had this cold for a while -- since before you got sick and went away. Tam's had him to the doctor  a couple of times, she says Tylenol for fever and discomfort, and he's too small for anything else. Not too sure I agree about that -- don't they make saline nasal drops or something for babies? I used to make my own, but don't remember how any more. Something for his throat. I'd be taking him back once a week, since he's still being Cranky Baby, but that's one of those things it's easier for an outsider to say. I don't really know if Cranky Baby at home is the same as Cranky Baby at Mammaw's. The change of scenery could have amped up the fussiness. No fever, but the poor little guy is having an awful time breathing he's so stopped up.

I have to tell you, though, he's not talking much. Not sure if that's the cold, or if he's going to be a quiet person. Can't imagine where he would get that from, can you? I've brought the toys and everything into your front room, and I carefully cleaned everything off the floor so he can play. And he does, but mostly silently, which seems so odd.
He works his way around the room; toy boxes; dollhouse; busy box on wheels thing, and he plays with them all very intensely. Especially Hailey's doll house and her talking table that she has outgrown but isn't ready to let go of.
But when he gets to your chair, he sits down at the corner and he starts babbling away. It's the only time and place he has talked consistently for the two days he has been here. I wonder if it is because the chair is soft, or if he has some memory of you being in that chair, laughing and playing with and at him. You would always talk to him.
Maybe you are even there for him. I don't know.
I do know it is a marvel to me that that is where he goes to sit and to talk.

Last night it saddened me when I put him to bed, because we ended up letting him have Hailey's butterfly. Her Dream-lites butterfly, that makes the  stars on the wall and ceiling.
It made me remember that you wanted to get him his own Dream-Lites critter. You didn't want to wait for Christmas. (Did you know somewhere deep that there would be no Christmas with the kiddos for you this year?)
You wanted me to get it with the next check.
You wanted his Pappaw to give him his stars and the moon.

But the next check isn't coming, dear, and I don't see anyway to get him a dragon (or is it a turtle?) that we could name Pappaw for him.
I can see no way to do it, babe.

I know you understand that. I know you probably wish I/we had gone ahead and bought it instead of waiting for the next check. I know I do, even though that would have meant less for the necessary expenses.
Me, I understand little, since I had to let you go.

I know you understand, but it is one of my regrets that I didn't get that for you to give him.
It is one of my regrets that I see no way now to get it.

He can enjoy Hailey's for now, and when I get a job -- and I will get a job (somehow somewhere) he'll get his Rex-Dragon. (Or turtle) I promise you that.

I just don't know when.

We miss you here.
I miss you. I need someone to bitch to, and you and I could get our grouchy on in a way that would show Warren how to do it, couldn't we?
Cranky Baby, this is how it's done!

I love you.

Did I lie?

Dear Rex,

I feel like I lied to you when I told you to go, that I would be all right.
I told you it would be okay, that I will manage. Remember, I said that ?
I added, too, that of course I will manage; it's what I do.

Did you believe me?
I hope so, but I wonder. I saw the look, but I know that you knew you would have to take my word for it.
And so you did.

I told you there's always Tammy. You know Tam -- and David -- will not see us homeless. Not if they can help it. They learned early the difference a roof can make overhead.
And there's Rita, always magnanimous when it comes to helping out.

Not what either of us would want for us (me and Tracy), but then, it stopped being a choice what we would want when you took that last bad turn.

The only choice for any of us was to make the best of a bad situation, and to let you go away from us.
Away from pain. Away from hypoxia and pain and anxiety.
We had to let go, and so did you..

I didn't want you to worry about us then, and I don't want you to worry now -- if you even can. I think somehow there's a worry dampener in the life after life.

But, oh, how I wish you were here to talk over my options with! You didn't understand how things worked, but talking things over with you has always been able to help me clarify things. Things to do, places to call, ways to phrase things, questions to ask.

I'm all at sea here.
I'm floundering.
I need your naive sanity.

But, I'll figure it out.
I will manage.
It's what I do.

Remembering

This blog will be for me, for my girls, and for the grandbabies.

Hailey may forget, for a while, and Warren will have no other way of knowing how much their Pappaw loved thim. Those babies, in his twilight years, in his sickness, they were the lights in his life. The pictures will help memory, and invite stories as time goes by.

Rex was proud of all his daughters.

Rex adored his grandchildren, those he saw, and grieved for the ones he didn't see.

But, oh, how he enjoyed the ones he did see!

Tammy, thank you so much for being so generous with your children.