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.

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.