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.

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.

A Moment; A Reminder

I had a moment the other day.

I was talking to you, as I often do. About my pain, about work, about the girls, or the babies. Or maybe the mowing -- I think of/talk to you a lot over that. I don't remember what the topic was, but it suddenly hit me, like a physical blow, that you weren't really there, that you can't answer, that there is no sharing
.
You are gone, and I am left with this big hole in my soul where you have been for nearly half my life.
I was hurt; I was angry.

And then I remembered.
1) You are no longer struggling for that one more breath
2)  You are not hungry and unable to eat
3) You don't have to choose between eating or breathing.
4) Your bones are no longer painfully grinding themselves into dust.
5) You aren't tethered to a chair, a room, or an oxygen machine

While I wish you were still here, I am glad that you are no longer sick; no longer suffering.

I have to remember that when those moments hit me.
Because those are all the things I've wanted for you, all the years that I couldn't make it better.

I had to give you up to give you what I wanted for you.

worrisome weekend

It was a scary weekend, Rex, let me tell you. I went and got the kids -- Hailey had been insisting I would be there Friday, so what could I do? When we got there, Tam was telling us how the baby is sleeping for short periods of times, or for long times -- no rhyme or reason that she could tell. Also that he was having some short temperature spikes -- which Hailey does in the night on a fairly regular basis. She wasn't too terribly worried because he had a doctor's appointment on Tuesday, anyway, and she intended to bring that stuff up.

So, we bundled up and hauled them off. Warren was pretty fussy at times Friday night, and took the short naps, but he would get down and play. I had to put chairs down tom keep him out of the kitchen. What is it in the kitchen that so fascinates the little ones? All the legs to hide behind and under?
I started saying Warren is Explorin' (like Dora the Explorer)

He warmed up to his horsey, after a while. The one he got for Christmas, that Hailey just fell in love with and decided he had to share with her. He didn't mind sharing. He was scared when we first sat him on it; kept trying to put his feet up. Then, eventually, he wanted to stand beside it and push the buttons to make it make noise, and he did finally throw his leg over it. Couldn't quite make it without help, but he tried.

Saturday started out the same way, with a whiny Warren occasionally explorin', but then about noon he stopped. He wanted to cling and cry and he would doze off while I was holding him upright, but if I laid him down, he'd wake up. His nose was running and his fever was climbing. And he didn't even want to play with the wet washrag on his head!

And, as it got later, he started getting those black black circles around his eyes. The ones you used to get when it was not quite time for the nebulizer.

And I could feel rattling in his ribs when I was holding him upright, so he could breathe or sleep at the same time. Not have to choose one or the other.

The washrag wasn't doing much for his fever.

I was pretty sure he was going into pneumonia. I called Tam and said I was bringing them home. If she felt it was just a cold, then she could treat it, but I knew it was more than a cold. He was either developing pneumonia or on the verge of a full-fledged asthma attack. There is something seriously wrong when a baby won't play, at least a little bit!

And those big black circles!!!
I was scared and edging on hysteria. I know respiratory problems when I see them, and the little ones can go into pneumonia so fast!

It turned out to be upper respiratory infection -- not a cold. Throat, ears, sinuses infected. I may have been hysterical, and over-reacted, but I wasn't wrong.

I wasn't wrong.

And who knows that acting as I did when I did didn't prevent a pneumonia? I can't claim that it did or didn't -- but it could have.

I never want to see anyone with those black circles all around their eyes. Certainly not our Baby Boy.

All's well that ends well, as far as Warren is concerned. I do wish I hadn't panicked, but I'm glad there was just cause for my concerns.

And very glad that Tammy listened to me, for once, when it comes to her kids getting sick. Although I have been wrong about Hailey a couple of times.

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.

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.