Small distractions bring big memories

Keeping busy keeps my mind off of Kim – but that, too, depends on the type of activity I am keeping busy with. Some become unbearable as memories flood in – like cleaning things up in the basement. Even the most mundane items remind me of Kim or bring me back to a time long before now when she was still vital and alive.

Getting ready to break down an oddball rack that held all of those tax records I spoke of earlier, it simply brought me back to when we moved in, and when we had our boat. Kim never really had anything to do with that rack, but it is still steeped in memories for me. I had to stop working on it and go upstairs to find something else to do.

And Jillian, my youngest, is really getting into exercise and fitness since I put the old Bowflex back together. She likes to get up early, go into the basement and do her workout with that machine and the resistance bands we bought the other day. All of which hearkens back to a memory of Kim on the floor in the family room doing her leg-lifts every morning in the time before any of the kids were born.

The weather being fine today, and having been cooped up in my office chair literally the entire day, due to meetings stacked upon meetings, I decided on a fast-paced walk around the block – which invariably follows the route Kim and I took every day last year. Generally not a problem until I come to the “crack the whip” turn, in which I still choke up a bit.

Finally, tomorrow is Family Friday. No-one wants to cook, so I decided to do a meatless version of my jambalaya – which necessarily sent me off in search of meatless substitutes for andouille and chicken. Kroger has veggie sausage, I was told by Jessie, so off I went to the closest Kroger – a store that I think I only set foot in once before without Kim in tow. (No veggie andouille, but veggie chorizo – I’ve made jambalaya with chorizo before, so hopefully…. and some extra firm tofu I should be able to fry and season to taste and act like chicken. Wish me culinary luck…)

It seems no matter where I go, or what mundane thing I choose to occupy myself, it draws my attention back to Kim. I suppose this will continue as I’m not sure why it seems to have escalated. Like exercise, the more I am faced with these – the more I face them – the stronger I will become. And, as they say: no pain, no gain. So it will continue to hurt until I drive my emotional threshold higher by continuing to work through them.

That rack needs to be broken up, and I need to strengthen myself. It will be ready for next trash day…

Shoulda, coulda, woulda…

A recurring theme among those of us who are left on the wrong side of the heavenly divide when our spouse passes is: if I had known, would I have gotten married? This is particularly resonant with those of us who were caregivers to our dying spouses and watched as some insidious condition or other had its way with them.

In my many bouts of introspection, I’ve often ruminated on this concept. My answer is “probably.” Why not a definitive yes or no? Let’s explore the reasons for it not being “no” first.

Reason 1

magnitude

Reason 2

But why not “yes?” You would think, based on the logic above, that that would be the foregone conclusion; however, the foreknowledge would interfere with the “probability cloud” that drove us to where we are today (remember that Schröedinger guy?), so the probability that anyone with that foreknowledge would react as they did without is less than one.

Once a geek, always a geek, I guess.

Bravery

Bravery is but a façade, the maintenance of which causes some to do courageous things.

Spring…

Who would have thought that the sight of flowers poking their heads out of the ground would be so depressing? Kim loved planting. She loved her flowers, and she loved planting vegetables. The porch was always full of hanging baskets and potted plants, usually flowers. Each side of the house usually carried her vegetable garden – last year, in pots as well. She was always so proud of the colors, and of the produce she would get out of her vegetable patch, and doubly proud of what she would make with the vegetables. I still have several jars of her last batch of canned tomatoes – she was particularly proud of those.

The first flowers to poke their heads out of the dirt this year were three snapdragon-looking flowers – don’t ask me what they are: I’m clueless. I just know that they are some of Kim’s favorite – particularly the purple ones.

When I first saw these about a week ago, they made me happy. Now, as things are warming up, and I see all the dead plants in the hanging baskets and her pots, I’m finding them depressing. The weather is nice today, but all I could focus on were the pots full of dead plants, the empty starter pots, the rotting wood from one of Kim’s favorite planters which we were planning to replicate…

I honestly don’t know what is at the root of this mood swing. I was feeling so “up” for so long! And one would think that, with the advent of warmer weather, I’d be hyped to get outside.

Part of it, I think, is that the warmer weather brings memories of the walks Kim and I would take last summer – she was still very playful despite her condition, and at one turn in the park, would do a “crack the whip” turn and zoom in to get a kiss. I miss that goofiness. Odd that as the warmth of summer started to fade toward winter, Kim faded right along with it, passing on the same morning as the first snow.

And some of it is probably pressure I feel toward my Mom’s and Kim’s Dad’s care.

My Mom has my sister Cindy locally to see to her needs – which, too, makes me feel like I should be doing more – but since Mom had her two health breakdowns, I can’t pop in there before work, because she no longer gets up that early – that, and I now work from home. And Cindy is feeling the stress of Mom’s failing memory, and mom’s focus on her caregivers instead of on visiting family members.

Kim’s Dad has no-one within 400 miles aside from me and our kids. Rhonda comes to Michigan when she can, but I struggle with the “what do I do” if something goes sideways – especially with him complaining lately of his knee locking up or giving out, and dizziness when he stands up.

The clouds I can see out of the corner of the window near my desk are beautiful. I think I’ll go outside and look at them.

What I miss the most

My thoughts have been dwelling on Kim a lot lately. Remembering trips to her parents’ lake lot in my EXP during the summer. A time we hit a pop-up snow squall and spun out on Newburgh near Cherry Hill returning from a date with some of her friends at a comedy club in Ann Arbor. “Fatal Attraction,” the first movie we saw together (she picked it), and how she was worried that it would give the wrong impression (it didn’t). How we would spend hours just driving and talking. Leaving her house at night, and driving down Hines Drive to get back to my parents’ house after a visit.

I miss driving with Kim, holding her hand across the console, listening to the radio and looking at the scenery. Even after the kids started coming, we held hand in the car.

Holding hands.

What I think I miss the most is having her sitting next to me at mass, and unless we were holding a child: holding hands. I don’t think I’ve been through a mass yet that I don’t feel my eyes steaming up, remembering her there beside me. Funny: when we were at St. Dunstan’s, I became an usher shortly after the birth of Jeanette, and generally wasn’t able to sit with Kim. I performed my usher duties more than once with one of the kids in my arms. When Maida and the Archdiocese of Detroit pulled their petty little vindictive shit-show on the pastor, destroying the parish in the process, we moved to St. Thomas a’Becket. I wasn’t aware of the gift that they had actually given me: never again would we invest ourselves in a parish the way we had at St. Dunstan so, instead of being an usher, I sat with Kim. And I held her hand and gave her a kiss at the offering of a sign of peace, shared my phone for the after-communion prayers we said. Now, I just imagine her worshipping with the choirs of angels when the veil between heaven and earth is opened at the Eucharist.

Encapsulation

As I was driving to my mom’s today for a visit, I was thinking about Kim’s and my life together. The things we liked to do when we first started dating, our young married life, and our life later on. The term that kept cropping up in my mind was “encapsulated”.

Odd term to apply to a relationship, but hear me out.

We were introduced on a blind date. We both pretty much fell for each other on that first date. We didn’t work expressly hard, either one of us, at maintaining outside friendships – they either remained, or they faded pretty much on their own. Our life together was… encapsulated. We seemed very much to be a self-sufficient symbiosis without many needs outside of ourselves and our family. Even as Kim was dying, we looked into our family for the support we needed, hospicing at home.

I truly wonder if I will – if I could – find anything like that again. So much is gone. To compare our life together to construction, it’s as if you spent decades building the biggest, strongest skyscraper, only to have it suddenly disappear, leaving behind only the memory of what it was and what you’d hoped it would become. All of the familiarity is gone. All of the understanding developed over a lifetime together rendered moot. Poof! Just like that.

But love remains. Encapsulated in the half of the whole, it is safeguarded from being lost.

Another week…

This week was spent in a training program at work (you can teach us old dogs new tricks..). It’s for a software package we use to assess the dimensional variability in assemblies – I’ve used the output of this type of software for 30 years but had never been trained in running the analysis myself. Until now. It really will have little impact on me in this career but may offer options for my upcoming “retirement” career.

That’s pretty much the highpoint of the week, though – that, and I moved all of the desks I had bought into my office and leveled them. I think this will work out well, though I have to figure out some “under desk” storage for all of the accoutrements of the various equipment I will be using in there. And remove the rest of the “stuff” that got “stored” in there while I was on launch…

I did have at least one dream with Kim in it this week, but that’s the most apt description for these weird episodes – Kim is there, but we really don’t interact, and the dreams are just weird.

I blame the stupid and archaic “spring forward,” but I’ve not felt anywhere as rested as I had in the months prior, and have been generally “out of sorts” ever since.

Pile onto this my mom calling today to ask me to bring forbidden candy to her tomorrow… Honestly: when you’re on the cusp of 90, you should be able to do whatever you like; however, I’m not the one who runs to the hospital with her with the health issue candy may be contributing to. But it does lay the guilt on me when she does that and I have to say no.

Sigh. It’s the weekend. Yay.

It’s a small, small world…

When Kim was first diagnosed, our PCP, Dr. Elias, referred her to Dr. Jacobs at Providence. When we spoke to him, Dr. Jacobs explained that he was a surgeon, and, based on the pathology report, the nature of Kim’s pancreatic tumors made her case inoperable. We took notes, nodded our heads, and expected that we wouldn’t be hearing from him again. In preparation for this meeting, we had asked St. Joe’s to forward him a copy of her CT scan, but it didn’t arrive in time for it.

A few days later, as we were driving to drop Kim’s sewing machine off for repair, the phone rang. It was Dr. Jacob’s. He had reviewed her scans and talked to us about what he saw. For instance, he estimated that the tumors had likely been developing for about a year and some other things we had not heard from any of the other doctors we’d spoken with. He also pointed out a few things, like very expensive pancreatic enzyme replacements that would help make her more comfortable – including tips on how to get them either free or highly discounted. He then told us to stop by his office so Kim could get some samples of pancreatic enzyme replacements to carry her until we could get a prescription for them (our prescription insurance did, thankfully, cover them). Of note: he wasn’t getting paid for any of this.

We listed him in the “genuinely good human being” column but didn’t have any further contact with him after picking up the samples.

A week or so ago, a very good friend of mine had a (thankfully!) benign growth and his spleen removed. As we were chatting about his adventure, he mentioned “Dr. Jacobs.” “Dr. Jacobs at Providence? Dr. Michael Jacobs?” I asked. Sure enough. One and the same. He was in exceptionally good hands…

Top of the mornin’ to ye

St. Patrick’s day. My feast day. A day that the family has traditionally gathered for a corned beef and cabbage dinner. The first one without Kim.

Kim loved these dinners, and she would have particularly loved this one. I had purchased a packer CAB (brisket) – the biggest I’ve ever seen – from Sam’s club about two weeks ago. I cut it into points and flats and had them brining in the basement refrigerator all week. Yesterday afternoon, I pulled the largest of these and sealed it up for a 36-hour sous vide. I kept the brine to add to the vegetable boil so that they would have that nice corned beef flavor we crave on this day as if they boiled with the meat in the traditional fashion, and the strategy worked perfectly. To all of this, I added my signature beef sauce and a loaf of soda bread.

Unfortunately, Jeanette had to work, and Jessica wasn’t feeling well, so it wasn’t a full house as I had planned, but Kim’s dad made it over and enjoyed both the meal and the company. The meal was great – the flavor of the meat was a little cardamom-heavy, but the color was perfect. Surprisingly a little tough for sous vide corned beef (likely a facet of the quality of the meat). But otherwise, perfect!

We shall overcome

When Kim was being lowered into the ground, a friend of ours grabbed me by the shoulders and said two words: “Be strong.”

At first, I was a bit offended by this – how could he, someone who is not experiencing what was tearing me apart; someone whose wife was alive and well, give me that advice? But he was right. I may not have been strong then, but it was precisely what I would need to work to become: strong.

Overcoming grief is like overcoming any other handicap. It takes mettle. It takes will. It takes effort. It is like weight lifting: you start out, and you can only lift a little bit and only a few times. As you work against it, as you practice it, you lift more and more, and more and more times. You build strength. You become strong. If you give up, you never build that strength – and it is strength that you will need.

You do not leave grief behind. It is always going to be a part of you. How big a part – whether a background issue, or a destructive force – is up to you, and your willingness to work to overcome its grip on you.

As anyone with a physical handicap can tell you: it’s hard work, but eventually, they learn to live with the handicap; live despite the handicap – but you have to be committed to that effort. Don’t give in. Don’t let bad days set the tone for your destruction. Keep at it, and you will overcome…