Thoughtful Day

Tuesday was the anniversary of keeping the final promise.
It was also the anniversary of Max's funeral arrangements being made.

Two sad days; too close together.

Tammy turned 30 this year.
She has so much of you in her. Working and pushing through and getting things done and loving and driving and --- oh, so many ways.

Warren will be 5 soon. He's much more chatty these days and closer to where he should be verbally. But he reminds me of you, too. He has your eyes (only a different color) and your grin, and your mischief. He has your mechanical inclinations. I'm pretty sure in a few more years he'll look at a broken something and rattle off tool dimensions. He wont look at directions. He'll get frustrated and mess things up then put everything back.

Hailey is wearing Tammy's clothes now, at least sometimes. She's not yet 10. She's such a good kid. But I miss the little her, too.
Of course, I miss little Tammy and little Tracy, too.
Even little Jeanie.
That's life, I guess.

My health is pretty stable for now. I had a bad bad spell at the start of the month. Couldn't breathe, couldn't stay awake, couldn't even lie down. That was scary. I have to prop myself up when I first go to bed, and then sort of slip down into a flat or almost flat sleep position.
You probably know more about that than I did. It's really strange to not be able to rest by lying down.
To be suffocated by my own self.

That situation has gotten better, thanks to  a doctor who knows what he's doing. I'm basing that on the results for me. Not well, but much, much better.

(If anyone missed it and is wondering, I wrote about that here
( https://fittobefitforanything.blogspot.com/2018/03/not-quite-anything.htmlhttps://fittobefitforanything.blogspot.com/2018/03/not-quite-anything.html  )


I miss you more as winter lingers.
I wish you could see these kids.
I wish you could watch Warren build, grow, and play.
I wish you could see our girls both still becoming women; becoming the best of both of us.


I wish I could see you.

Big Hole

There's still such a big hole in me where you aren't.

I miss your presence, your look, your laugh.
I miss someone to (not) talk to, but there anyway.
I miss company.
I miss laughing together.
I miss plans.

I see you every day. In Tammy's work, and Warren's walk, and Hailey's big brown eyes. In every corner of my house, where you never were, but are somehow still there. (Such an add, otherly feeling) I hear you sometimes as I lay drowsing, or as I begin to rouse. (Rousing and drowsing -- where I find Rex.)

Warren makes me laugh, but its a different kind of laughter.

I try not to bother you where you are. You should be free from earthbound problems. You deserve enjoyment and freedom and all that stuff.
Sometimes I just need to talk.

Sometimes I just need to rest my eyes on you, but you are only a picture and a memory. (Well, pictures and memories.)

I don't know how to go on like this.
Not that I have much choice, since the days come and the nights go as they always have.

I miss you.

Warren

Let me tell you about our boy, Rex. I haven't for a while, and I want to. Good enough reasons? Good.

He has your eyes. Not the color, his are more grey than brown, bordering on blue. But the shape of them, the clarity, the way the soul looks out through them -- all very Rex.
He walks like you, he sits and thinks like you (the cogitation, not the actual thoughts. At least I hope not.)

It may be that he talks like you. I don't know how you developed verbally.
He is verbally closer to a two year old than a four year old, which he is closing in on fast.  His words are just now becoming clear, more often thsn not. One can have a conversation with him now. A limited conversation, but a conversation.
He still speaks a great deal of baby babble -- his own private language. But he Englishes more and more frequently.

And he has understood a lot more than he verbalizes for a very long time.

He's in the tantrum stage, which is fairly normal and fairly close to age appropriate. He's very very good at those, the little cutie stinker stubborn hardhead. He likes to bang his head and smack himself, which is somewhat alarming, but not unheard of.

He is so smart, when it comes to doing things. He stacks anything. You would laugh s hard, sometimes. When he comes to see me, he strips the bookshelf under the television. Not to make a mess, not because he can.
Where I see books and quiet escapes and all, he sees blocks.
Blocks to build with.
Blocks to stack.
Walls.
Ladders/steps.
Bridges.
Towers.

What a boy!

Another Year Without You

And we need you more than ever. Tammy needs you, Tracy needs you, I need you, and I'm sure your brothers and sisters think of you from time to time, and then this whole awful terrible Rexless reality slaps them in the face that they need not wonder what or how you are doing because you just aren't. I know Bo thinks of you often, because he is helping me in many ways.

So hard, this time of year. Last year was Niagara Falls.
This year was work, and 80 degree weather in friggin' mid-October.

I just hate yuou being gone...

Moved In

Well, I am moved in, for the most part. Still settling in, but I am in. Thanks for my good friends, I have almost everything I need. The only "necessity" still needed is a refrigerator. I have a lovely bed, a working stove, a more-than-complete living room.

The funny thing is, I cam see you here.  You sit in the tan recliner over in the book nook, and you grin at me. Maybe wave, maybe nod, but always smiling. You look so happy and healthy.

What are you doing there, I wonder.

I have your recliner. Its in the bedroom, beside the bed. Its in bad shape, and can probably never be repaired, but it still holds some essence of you.
You would never sit where that tan recliner is. It's beside the TV, not across from it, And, of course, it;s nestled among tho books. No, that's not a Rex place. And yet, there you are, in my mind's eye.

You even watched Warren watching Ice Road Truckers, a-hollerin' "Look atthat! Look athat!" I believe he even made you laugh with his excitement.

Now, I've brought your afghan out and tossed it in that chair. If that's gonna be your place here, so be it. I'm glad you are here.

It's Your Month

It's your month, and I'm missing you as I move away from crowded quarters and lack of privacy.
It's your month as I sweat and swear and try to arrange life to my liking. (How can that happen without you?)
It's your month as we prepare for Hailey's birthday and back to school and the final fall festivals.

School starts on the 17th this year, almost a week before your birthday. Remember "celebrating" your birthday with Back to school?

Oscar and Veronica have been helping me with the move -- funny how  that has worked out. They were always right up there with help when we needed it, weren't they?

I have your chair, and its kind of been all over my house already. It will probably end up in the bedroom, but that will have to wait until the bed is moved in. It isn't a very big bedroom after all. Even after being in storage over a year, it still feels like you.

I want to go back three years.
I really want all this to have never happened; to be a bad dream. (That said, I'm tired of dreaming it's a dream and then waking up to find out it isn't. I hate waking up more than usual when that happens.)
I want it to not be; but I know that this is how it is.
I just wish it wasn't this way, that's all.

I miss you more these days, whether it's because August, or because of moving, or maybe just because. All I know is there's a hole in me where you aren't.

Numbers -- Always Frustrating

They say that "significant" numbers are a sign that our departed (dead) loved ones are around. The numbers can be anything or any combination -- some meaningful only to the two people involved in the relationship. Some can be more generic, like 11:11. Or same numbers repeated frequently. Or sequences. Or -- probably a couple hundred things I haven't thought of. Or times. Dates.

I work in  numbers, and have for many years, so I think I have a good feel for when there is something odd, unusual, and possibly meaningful about the numbers.

695 is one that recurs frequently some nights. As a total, as change, and once even as the amount of money handed to me (11.95 bill; wanted a five back.) 695 is the prefix for Winchester phone numbers; Winchester is where we last lived together.

More fun are sequential numbers. $12.13 or a total. A few customers later there will be a $13.14 bill, and even a $15.16. This pattern almost always goes up. I've never noticed it going the other way.


For a long time, I've enjoyed these numerical forays. I like the idea that they somehow symbolize your presence. (Maybe.)

But I am beginning to find them frustrating.
Numbers should mean something. Should have meaning. Beyond a presence, that is. They should be today's lottery, or how much my paycheck will be, or how many friends I have, or what time I'll wake up tomorrow. You get the idea.

So, if it is you making number magic -- and you were usually rather good at that -- please try to make the numbers have a magic beyond "hello."

Because I like numbers to have intent.

(on the other hand, don't stop saying hello because I'm being picky. Hello backatcha.)

getting worse

I don't know if it's winter, or the living in an open to-the-world-house , but I find I'm missing you more and more as the days go

I miss watching tv with you.
I miss sitting in the room with you while you watch tv and I write.

I miss talking to you, laughing with you, worrying with you, arguing (or debating) with you. I miss managing life and its turbulence with you.

Every day, even here with Tammy and the babies, it seems to me more and more that you are just NOT HERE.

NEVER HERE.

Never again.

How can that even be real?

How can it be two and a half years later and I'm still struggling daily with facing the knowledge and lack of presence ? Shouldn't I be "used to it" by now?
Shouldn't I at least know that this is how it is?

Why is it still so hard?
Why are you still so gone?

Our Car is dead. Like You.

It's been horrible. First it broke (got sick), then it got fixed (got better), and then it went out and up and died on us, too many miles away, five days before payday. (too far from home; too soon.)

Actually it isn't as dead as you are. It's motor will still run, just like your big ol' loving heart kept going, even when every other part of you was giving up.

But to me, it is. I'm done with it. What  good is a heart with no body or soul?

And that grieves me.

It's one more, one last thing that was mutually ours (outside of furniture and children).
One more shared-with-you that has Gone from my life.
One more step into Life Without You.

And I don't like it.

I don't like this life without you, and I sure as hell don't like the loss of things we shared.
I don't like things that seem to take me a step farther or further away from you.
I just don't like it.

And if I should cry for our car, I hope someone will know that it isn't the car.
It's still you I'm grieving for.

Thinking of You

Haven't posted lately, but it doesn't mean I don't think of you.
I think of you at random times.
I think of you in random ways.

I think of you, and Clyde, and Little Bit.

I think of you and Charlie and Cecil.

I see you in Warren's eyes . They are a grey blue in color, but the shine and the shape of the eyes and the sweep of the lashes are you.

Today I thought I would finally take the time to put my pictures of you into a new album  -- only to find the pictures aren't with the other picture. I must have put them away somewhere more special -- but I have no idea where that could be.
 I still try to tell you things that have happened at work.
Things the kids have said or done.
Our problem child and our children's problems.

And then I realize that you aren't there.

Sometimes I tell you anyway.
I wish I knew if you heard or care, but there are some things you have to take on faith, I guess.

Is That You?

Last week, I had a spate of losing things and then finding them exactly where they were supposed to be. Freaky to say the least. Most of the stuff was relatively minor -- my new pay card, my wallet, some cash, bank papers; things of that ilk. (The pay card was minor because it had not yet been activated.) The big thing was my teeth.

Through it all, I could hear you nagging, fussing, cussing -- just giving me hell for not keeping better track of my things.
Heck, you (and your mouth and opinion of me) were the reason I made myself learn to be so otganizes. A place for everything and everything in its place.

But what do you do when you've put everything in its place and it disappears then reappears exactly there?

I then had the misfortune -- or maybe good fortune -- to read a list of signs that a loved one could be letting you know they are near. The number one item was the disappearance and reappearance of significant items.

Except that I can't really see you doing that, especially not with my teeth. I even had to work all night one night without them. Just doesn't seem like something you'd do. (Charlie might, but he can go haunt someone else. You can tell him I said so.)

I have mixed feelings about that. I wish you were here; I like the idea if you being near; but I would so much rather think of you being off somewhere, just being. No work, no worries, love and joy and peace -- all that good stuff.
Yeah, I want you to help me with all my little problems but don't want you to kn ow about any of them. Especially not the ones I keep talking over with you.

Yeah,

Well, anyway, if it's you, send me flowers, okay? Like you did when you were first  gone. Please don't hide things from me.
It's hard enough living every day without your help.
Without you.

On My Mind; In My Heart

I've had you on my mind a lot lately. Actively, awfully, achingly on my mind. I suppose it's the weather. The horrible hot humidity that was always so hard on you. (And it's just now the middle of June!)

And having to work and no one to decompress with afterward. Work has been really tough the last three weeks or so. I'm trying to do three people's work -- which is my usual job -- but now I'm having to be at all three parts of the job at exactly the same time! And stay on them. It's just too hard. And I can't do it, but then I go on and do it anyway.

You know.

No luck finding my own place. Who knew it would be so hard. Part of that problem is the working, and the third shift working. I'm not "in place" to get the new newspapers every week, or to make the phone calls bright and early in the business day.
I have lots of family and friends who are trying to help, but they can't help much with the timing thing. That one is all on me.

I think of you when I have a hard time breathing every time I open the drive thru window.
I think of you when I wake up gasping for air because the room is so hot.
I think of you when I have to choose breathing or sleeping. (Or standing, or sweeping, or moving.)
I think of you when I hurt, because I think that you would be unhappy to see me this way.

And then I am glad you are not here to see it, because you deserve your hard won peace.

I thought of you Memorial Day, but I may have been the only person in the entire store who worked all four days of that holiday weekend. I want to take Hailey to your resting place. She has asked about you/it. Just haven't made it  yet.

Rex, I wish you could know how grateful I am that I had you for so long. And for the way you let me be me, even when you couldn't understand where that me-ness was coming from. (I hardly know myself, sometimes.)

It's such a horrible aching loss not having you. Not having that.

I can only hope -- since I can't change anything now -- that I let you be you in the same way. And I hope you know how much love there was for that you.

I miss you.

I Want You Back

I want you back.
You've been away long enough.
I need you.
I miss you.

Come back.

I know you can't, but do it anyway.
It wouldn't be the first time you've done the impossible, now would it?
You were told once you'd never walk again, right?

Some days I still think I may wake to find this is all a convoluted dream.

I sure wish I could believe that on these lost other days.

18 Months Gone.

It happened the other day.
I didn't consciously know it, but some inner part of my mind or soul has been counting and keeping track.
Some part of me knew it, without my knowing I knew.

I was mean and hateful and bitter for two days -- April 15 and 16. Sometime Late on the 16th, I realized it was the 16th of the month.

And then I knew.

18 months without you.

18 months alone in the loneliest way.

18 months, just -- 18 months.

Is it only 18 months already, or is it finally 18 months?

I don't know.
Don't suppose it matters.
18 months is just a fact; a word; a number.
An anniversary.
The kind that needs acknowledged but is nothing to celebrate.

People sometimes wonder what I miss the most about you.
What a silly question,.
I miss the you-ness of you, not just your parts.

But I think of you not having to draw breath, not having to choose between eating or breathing.
Those are the thoughts I cling to and try to find unselfish comfort in.

But I still miss your presence in my life.

And I surely truly wish I could take or find or have new pictures of you to share. The old ones are so old.

2

Warren is 2 years old today.

Seems incredible.

And how can you have been gone for so very many months?

You were here when he came into this world.
You were here to enjoy him, to laugh at him, to teach him to laugh.
You were here to be his pappaw -- his a-a; his ya-ya -- before he was even old enough to know there was anyone beyond himself and his parents.
You were here.

And then you were not.
You didn't see him crawl or walk or run or climb.
I'm not sure you if you saw him sit up on his own.

But you saw him laugh.
You made him laugh.
You made him happy.

And you slipped away before his first birthday, and here it is his second birthday already.

It isn't right that you aren't here.
Wasn't right then; isn't right now.
It will never be right.

Wish you could see what a little man he is. You would have great fun arguing nonsense with him. He can give as good as it gets, that's for sure.

Warren is a happy healthy two years living and you are going on two years dead. And I know you would still adore him, as he would you.

A Second Winter

Well, it finally became winter this year. We got about a foot of snow and the temperature keeps going lower.
Reminds me of our first winter in the trailer, when it was 25 below and the walls frosted on the inside of the bedrooms.

I've been missing you a lot recently, I don't know if it's because of my birthday. Or maybe Valentine's. Or maybe it's just winter.

I miss you.
Last night and the night before, I couldn't  sleep because  every time I tried, I could feel your absence. I can't  explain it better than that. I couldn't go to sleep without you around, and you aren't around. Except in my heart, soul, and memory.

This old house is extra empty without you these cold dark days. I want out of here so badly. It's like a toothache living here without you, day after day.
When I was debating coming home the other night, before the big storm started, all I could think was that if you were here there'd be no question what to do -- I'd be coming home to you.
We'd weather out the weather together.

Oh, God, Rex, how can I keep doing this?
How?
And Why?

I'm Scared

Well, Hallelujah, Rex, they have finally found something wrong with my heart.
We were only trying to convince them of that for a year and a half before you died, but they kept diagnosing my symptoms as something else.
Chest pain = hiatal hernia
Shoulder pain = old injury
Numbness and tingling in hands = carpal runnel
Neck pain = sinuses
Breathlessness = obesity
Fatigue = depression
Lethargy = thyroid
Muddled thinking = depression

But, finally, after a prolonged bout with pneumonia, they have found something. The right side of my heart is somewhat enlarged and there is a murmur.I had that before, if you remember. About twelve or fifteen years ago (How the years run together after time passes!) That time,which was also after a bout of pneumonia, it resolved itself, at least to the point of nothing being found.

Now, they want to do an angiogram think, like they did about five years ago when I had pneumonia and chest pain and they sent me to Christ hospital. And found nothing.

This time, though, they are going to put me under. If they have to put stents in, I will have to stay overnight.

And it scares me quite silly.
Dunno why. When they did it before, I was awake and the worst part was having to lie flat and not being able to go to the bathroom. Thought I was going to wet myself and their bed before they let me get up.

I am afraid they are expecting to put stents in and that that is why they are putting me under. Not afraid of the stents -- that's  a fairly routine procedure these days.

The truth is, I don't really know what it is that scares me so badly.
Waking up to NOT YOU, maybe.
Again.
I should be used to that by now.

I don't think I need the stents, but I fit the profile -- fat, fifty, female.
I do not think they are looking beyond that profile.
And I think there is something more going on.

The right side of the heart, as we learned after your experience, is connected to the lungs. And I can't/don't/won't ignore the connection with the illness I had in the spring. With problems I still occasionally have -- I have become somewhat asthmatic.

Maybe I'm afraid of something wrong with my pulmonary system.
Maybe I'm afraid of not being diagnosed.
Maybe I'm afraid of COPD.

I don't know, Rex.
I just don't know.

It's all the more terrifying to me because you won't be there, not anywhere. Not at the hospital. Not waiting at home.

Not to diminish the love from daughters and sisters and friends.
But they aren't mine
They aren't you.

and I'm not too sure I wouldn't be even more frightened to see you there while I'm wandering the in-between world.

I just don't know.
That, I suppose, is the reason and the conclusion.

I just don't know.
And that is scary.

Waltzing Warren

I had Warren for two days last week. Thursday, we took Tracy to school, and then it was just he and I.
What fun!
He played and laughed and cried and played and ran and climbed and beeped. He chased the cat and the cat chased him. She would put out her paw and smack him on the head as if to say "Tag. You're it."

I always wish I could record every minute of time I spend with him. (No, not really. Diaper changes aren't that exciting, except when he tries to escape.) I hope the memories will stay with me.

I wish I could share the experience with you. I so want to say, "Rex, look at this boy!"

That was never more true than when he was dancing on the bed.

He climbed up on the bed, bounced on the pillows a couple times, and then he hit the switch on the music box. (The music box is for a crib but on the bed frame)
He listened to the music, and laughed, then threw out his arms, lifted his glowing face, and danced.
He gave himself to the music.
He stepped, and because he was on the bed, there was a bounce in every step.
He twirled and spun.
He swayed.

Through it all, he laughed.
His face was alight.
His movements were fluid and graceful.

I have never seen a child so young so rapturously caught up in the moment.

Rex, will you just look at this boy!

Anniversary

One year ago this day, you were still with us. Barely, but still here.

And, Oh, how I hated to see you that way. I don't think you would have liked it too much either, if it had been your choice.

But then again, in a sense, it was your choice.

We had all said our good-byes, at least as best we could.
How can you say good-bye to someone you don't want to go?
(You look at their suffering, you look at their helplessness, you look at their ravening disease, and you say "enough")

We told you we loved you, and that you could go; we'd be all right. Somehow. Together.

We (your brother, sisters, and niece, as well as Tammy&David) had even gone to the extreme of chasing down your oldest daughter and giving her the chance to say good-bye and I love you. That didn't go so well from out point of view, but we had done it for you, and we hope that you know it was for you. That if you didn't get the love from her (she was much too busy zipping up her twitchy boyfriends pants when he had to go potty) you got the love from us finding her for you.

You awed us, you know.
You were with us still, you responded to our ins and outs; our conversations. We could tell from your heart rate and your breathing and your blood pressure and 'stuff'. The nurses may have thought we were crazy -- they had turned off the machine in the room, but by watchingf their numbers outside, we could tell.

We just could tell.

Then as your time dwindled, as you began to let go, and go, you continued to awe us. Your rates would drop only when your children were not in the room. If they left and came back -- either of them, or both of them -- the drop would stop and begin to climb again.

So strong you were, so determined.
So Rex.

So Tammy decided to go home to her babies, not wanting to prolong your imprisonment in a faulty failing body.
Tracy went to distract herself with a tv, and to not distract you from Going On.

And I sat and held your hand and watched the numbers go lower and lower.

That big old loving heart stopped first.

You kept on taking just one more breath, even after that.
Just one more breath.
And another,
And another.

Until you finally realized you were free of the need for that struggle, and you let it go.

As  we had to let you go.

We miss you. Even Hailey tells me how she misses you.
Warren talks to your recliner.
White Castles and GoldStar make me cry, inside if not outside.

But one year ago, at this time (@6:30 am EDT), we had approximately six hours left to see how you loved us.

And we did see, dear.
We saw.

Birthday

You would have had a birthday Saturday.
You would have been 59 years old that day.
You would have had to renew your driver's license. Or decide not to.

School started, and River Days came and went before the date.
Reminders.
Reminders of a date I was trying not to think about.
(At least there was no Tobacco/ Farmer's Festival this year the weekend of.)

My sisters remembered you.
Our daughters remembered you.
I knew it to e your day, minus you, and I slept and went to work, where way too many of the men in the pictures had some feature that reminded me of you.


I don't think you have birthdays Where You Are.
If you do, wouldn't your birthday there be October 16?
But your mom is there, and your sister Dorothy,(and others) and I like to think that you felt the good memories and love from here, and that they somehow reminded you and remembered the day as yours, and I hope that they gave you the attention and the loving notice that I could not this year.




I could not, because you weren't here.
Because you aren't here.
 
You will never be here again.

But August 23 will always be your day.