Margm

I have mentioned my grandmother wrote a "book" for her grandchildren.  Her name was Elizabeth Parthenia Matlock Wise, and she was born one very cold day in January of 1899.  She married at 15.  My "Daddy Wise" was 27.  We have our grief, but this grief happens to so many people.  We all live an epic life.  That is why I do not watch epic movies or read epic novels.  My reality is an epic life.  I like fairy tales.  Unfortunately, that is only in children's books, but sometimes we live a fairy tale as long as we can.  I did, then it was an epic tale.

These are my grandmother's words:  "When we were married, I was half child and half woman.  I know I vexed him many times, and he hardly knew what to do with me. I could have made him a better wife had I been older." (Somehow, she had him seven children in ten years, I think she must have been a wife.)  While he was dying, he told me "Kiddie, you are the best looking woman in the whole hospital.'  As for myself, my husband was my all.  He was father, husband, lover, adviser, inspiration, and the best friend I ever had."  (He always called her Kiddie, because she was such a kid when he married her).  Remember, this was 1914, these things happened in those days.

On other pages she says:" I have been alone now for ten years.  I  have ten grandchildren, one great grandson and am expecting two more great grandchildren.  But for me, the light went out on that March day in 1956.  I miss him so much and the longer he is gone, the worse I miss him.  I want what I have lost and can never have again."........it goes on for pages telling about her life as a child, her first banana (hated it), political rallies at the churches, the different wars she had heard word of, her relatives fighting in the wars, and knowing older people that had fought in the Civil War.  Her travels (as far as West Texas from her little community near Plain Dealing , LA.) She owned a little crossroad country store.  The ones you see in the pictures of the old country stores, one like that.  Miles from a big town.  She told about the cotton gins, walking so far to school, then school buses being driven by horses.  It was a history that I go back and read often.

But, the sentence that rang true with me, one of them was this: "Living with him and having his love and protection was as near heaven as I will ever be until I do reach there indeed."  She went to be with him in the early 1980s.  

A story "old as time" but the pain stays as fresh as now.  

Thanks Kevin, I just think I talk too much sometimes.  Poor Billy, I did let him talk some.

Oh Janet, October 17th Billy left this world.  We married in 1961. You and I both are in such a shocked condition, as someone wrote, it is a wonder we can put words to paper.  Your  children, you, all of your family.  There are no words of comfort.  I know.  You have come to the right place though because there are people on here that have helped me.  If I can be helped, anyone can.  My heart is with you.

I picked a beautiful wooden urn for Billy.  On the top is engraved the tree of life.  Underneath are these words engraved:  A limb has fallen from our family tree that says grieve not for me. Remember the best times, the laughter and the song, and most of all the good life I lived while I was strong.

I never thought about Billy minding all the things I did for him.  Only a man could imagine this.  I did not mind bathing him, I did not mind his having to hold onto me to walk.  I had him grab my shoulders.  Any back problems or pain I had ever had, it totally went away while I was helping him.  I was very strong.  Taking care of his most private things he had always done, I never minded at all and he never could possibly have thought that I might mind.  I loved him so much taking care of him was more important than taking care of myself.  But, Billy was a man's man.  Just like my dad ran his own brother-in-law off that had come to help while my dad was dying, Billy thought he was less of a man I guess having to have everything done for him.  I got frustrated because I could not make him eat, but he really could not eat or drink and had to keep having saline boluses.  I can only take comfort in the fact his suffering was short lived and somehow, I wanted to keep him forever.  My friend took care of her husband for seven years after a devastating stroke.  Feeding tubes, everything.  She said she would have done it for seven more years to keep him with her.  I know I am very selfish.  I keep thinking that acceptance is one of the stages of grief.  I don't shake myself as often now realizing he is gone, but I am not sure acceptance is there yet.  

Well Kevin, you live in the "neck of the woods" Billy and I always wanted to RV in that direction.  Rain and gloomy here.  I type a good game, now if I can live up to it.  

I look at the "stages of grief" and know they do not come on in any order.  My mom took anger as her chief emotion.  One of my best friends took anger as first emotion.  Anger at him for leaving. (Like they had a choice), but again, anger is an emotion.  I have a distant cousin, a handsome fellow with a stormy marriage.  The first week after he was gone, and it was a long tempestuous marriage, that first week there was not a speck of him living in their house, everything of his was gone.  The funeral director with his pasted on smile after losing his love of over 66 years; well, we all handle things different.  I have anger at the ER, at the big hospital I took him to that hurt him physically.  I knew what a teaching hospital was, I retired from one.  I question myself for taking him these places, for starting the useless chemotherapy of only two sessions.  I question so much of what I did, because he trusted me.  I am so beyond intelligence to be trusted.  I can only hope I did not cause him too much pain.  I know it was the cancer.  I know we did not go through months and months of torture for him like our own father's did.  Both of our father's hit the stage where pain was all they had and they could not give them enough pain medicine to prevent the pain.  We could put ice chips on their lips, nothing else, just watch them suffer for days and days.  I know I should be thankful he did not suffer long.  But, why wasn't I holding him when he left me?  Anger is truly an emotion, but it is turned inward.  Some days I can get the final picture out of my head.  Some days I can lose myself in a TV program for a few minutes.  Anger, yes, it is an emotion meant only for myself, by me. 

Okay, I got up this morning with sort of an attitude.  You see, if you look in Wikipedia for the word procrastinate, you will find my family's picture, all of us.  The whole bunch.  Billy wanted to leave this house.  We bought it to make a stable home for our granddaughter, who was born in 1999.  She was a precious gift to the whole family.  My daughter was a nurse and helped deliver her.  My daughter had had an unfortunate disease that made her unable to have children, so this child, born on her own birthday and given to her by the birth mother, who was giving her up, was a wonderful addition, a most welcome part of our family.  Billy became her first Nanny/or Manny, which ever you prefer.  This child would not have been ours anymore if I had borne her myself.  She was the light in his eyes and he was her "Dade."  Things change, conditions change, people change, and she went to live with her mother right before she was 16.  I accepted it more than Billy.  That was his baby.  I won't go into details anymore but those two loved each other beyond reason, as do all his grandkids and two grown children.  He was a kid's champion, a child's protector always, even when they got to be 53 and 48 years old.  Always his babies.

I woke up this morning, gave a kiss to the cold urn, and it went through my head.  Not WWJD (what would Jesus do), but WWBD (what would Billy do?)  I am not trying to be sacrilegious.  I am trying to reason out the life I have been given, the one living without Billy.  Okay, first off, as many times as I tried to teach him, as much as he loved numbers, he had no interest in paying bills or balancing the budget.  I am no whiz either.  It has always been my thought that if there is $500 left at the end of payday, I have to have somewhere to spend it.  My mama would have it put back in a savings account, buy bonds, or whatever it is people do to save money.  Now, he would have taken my ashes along with him, but he would have gone to parts unknown in the RV that we already have.  He would have gone to the woods, to the mountains that we both love.  He would have no need for conveniences, he would become the mountain man in the books he read.  Always the mountain man, woodsman, bayou man.  I don't know to what part of the country he would go, he would just......go.

The fact that we have to put the house on the market would not matter with him.  If they could not find him, they could not catch him.  Still, our retirement checks come from the State of Louisiana, so I am sure the debts would find the source of his income.  I do  not have the luxury of doing this.  I have to pack all of his belongings into boxes.  All of the notes he figured line width and weight and methods of fly fishing.  I have all his precious obsessive notes.  I will pack all away in boxes and when I find my place to live, I will move them all into a room, and one of these days, I will go through these useless notes, useful only to him, but too precious to me to throw away.  I know the bills have to be paid and the State of Louisiana told me his checks will be "retroactive."  Is that the word?  Might be two months.  In the meantime, I have to get rid of all our junk.  Not his junk, I am not ready for that.  But, I have lots of junk to put up at the thrift store and the dump/trash site.  People wait for the junk I get rid of.  One man's trash is another man's treasure.  

So now, this morning, thunder in the distance, light rain, no sun, I will get ready to leave this house that neither of us wanted.  We wanted to be "on the road."  But sometimes family  is more important than "what you want."  My WWBD, has to be what Margaret has to do, and I will do it.  Today, tomorrow, and whatever time I have left.

I know this is not encouraging, it is really not anything but an observation.  I paid for the new death certificates to be ordered today.  I believe, probably the founder of the funeral home waited on me.  He was older than I am and shared that his wife had passed about two years ago.  They were married over 66 years.  He had a smile pasted on his face.  Bless his heart.  I paid for the certificates and went out to the truck.  And, that is his job, to work with death all the time.  After Billy passed away, I am having a hard time watching TV shows that have hospital scenes in them, and I worked at hospitals for 43 years.  I am so sorry we all have to go  through this grief, and truly misery does not love company.  We just have to help each other through these different stages.  Right now I have the impetus to run and just keep running somewhere, anywhere but here. 

At my age, there are so many of my former classmates (who we have kept in touch with) that have lost their mates.  In fact, more have lost them than the ones that are still married.  I did not like to brag on any anniversary.  My good friend had a fuss with her husband and then had to go out of state for their relatives surgery.  He had a blood clot or aneurysm during the night and by the time she got home the coroner had taken her husband.  Sixteen years later she has regrets.  I had thought of an RV, because we had planned it.  But, we had planned it together.  I cannot bring his desk or all his fishing equipment in the RV.  I will, if plans go right, go back to our home and live in an apartment.  It was where we began.  Seems a lot happier (right now) than where we ended.  Our relatives, our roots are back in that place.  My friend who I mentioned, told me to box all his things up and move them in plastic buckets.  One of these days I might feel like going through the things.  Not right now.  Not next month.  I don't even know if next year.  Yesterday was horrible.  Today I got some things done.  Happiness will have to be a definition I am going to have to invent.  One of my widow friends (we had got her husband and her together), she remarried again and he is very ill.  Can we find enough happiness to go through this again?  Oh Lordy, not again in my life.  And, I am knocking on wood.

I have to change the beneficiary on my insurance too Kevin............something else to do.  Oh, those extra death certificates make 10 in all.  I only ordered five at first and the funeral home kept one.  They will not come in for two weeks.  Sounds about right.  I'm not going anywhere right now.  I think I want to go back home to Louisiana though.  That is where our life began.  The last 18 have been spent in Arkansas and I really don't want to be where our life ended.  His roots are in Webster Parish, so are mine.  They have been forever.  My folks were some of the first settlers and his were too.  It won't be the same, but I will feel desolate where ever I am and I can be desolate around my friends and relatives.  

I have been trying to take care of one piece of business each week day.  I know some of you understand this, but money, paying bills, food, just plain being hungry are things I was not worried about.  Slowly, I am beginning to realize the world will not keep moving for me if I do not do these things.  We both retired from the state of Louisiana.  They were sent papers on the 26th of October and they should have received the official death certificate (certified) yesterday.  I called this morning and got a snippy little fellow (oh, he could have been seven feet tall, but to me he was three feet tall.).  I know you have had these people who answer the phone with their voice, read off what they are supposed to say, and then tell you "have a good day."  So, I told him "no, I will not have a good day, just because of you."  I did not curse (I wanted to call him names.)  I know he just has a job to do, and bless his heart, he probably works for the state also.  Anyhow, and this is an observation, I think the most heart friendly people are of the black race, and they always say they will pray for me.  Not snippy people, but real human people.  

I took care of two things today.  I ordered five death certificates, had no idea how many to order.  Later someone said order 10.  I think that should be closer to the amount to order, so I will go over to the next county and order them tomorrow.

I am finding things out about myself.  I am finding that I might not be able to drive an RV.  Billy and I were going to do this together.  I am sure he would not find fault with me  if I went back "home" to our home parish in Louisiana.  No plans yet.  My widow friends tell me to pack all of his things in the plastic boxes, don't go through them yet.  Move them with me and in a year or so, no definite time, I will be able to go through his things.  Billy was a very obsessive person.  He kept writings and figures of fly line width, weight, different methods, etc.  Things I am not interested in, but he kept notebooks of these figures and for his photography too.  I cannot throw them away, even if he is not coming back.  And, I realize he is not.  But I cannot throw them away either.  All his fishing equipment, I will keep.  Mama used to tell the story of the dog in the manger who would not let the other animals eat the straw, even though he could not eat the straw.  Possibly, one of these days I will discover my senses.  Right now they are covered up.  

There is an old Ray Stevens song with him calling up "Margaret" on the telephone.  Okay, this is me, Margaret.  The weather is dark and dreary, no sun out at all.  Hettie, my sister widow next door, she says these kind of days make you sad.  It has not been three weeks yet.  I can usually get his death bed image out of my mind, but today it is haunting me so bad.  Regret, guilt, depression, whatever the stages of grief that we have, they have all piled on me today.  Sometimes I think "well, poor me" but there are a lot of us out there.  I know I am not alone.  Anyhow, this is Margaret, and I'm hanging up for now.

@kayc: Billy worked for Louisiana DOT.  He was supervisor of the laboratory.  I admired him because they told him he could tell the employees to go do stuff, but Billy would not tell anyone to do anything he would not do himself.  His blood pressure went down to normal levels after he retired.  He was never a type A person.  I am.  We always knew he would outlive all of us because he was laid back.  He never got in a hurry, but he got it done.  The only solace of his illness is that it did not drag out.  That was not like him.  How do we left behind survive?  I guess we "just do."

Yes, unfortunately I understand.  I wish we all could feel better.

Karen, I worked medical transcription for 43 years.  My last supervisor said it was dying out.  She was president of our state's group.  I could not imagine voice recognition taking our place.  It could, it did, it is a poor substitute.  

Wow, you guys are definitely not  from my deep south.  We get snow occasionally in Arkansas but few and far between in Louisiana.  

Please take care of yourselves.  It is hard to do it on your own without your partner.  I cried for my mama the first time I was sick after I got married, I was 18.  The last time I did that.  Now, I would cry for Billy.  I still have the residuals of the colon rupture that he pulled me through.  It's hard to live for other people, but sometimes we have to do that.

We did too Kevin.  I had a new reel and rod just before he got sick.  We were looking forward to trying it  out.  I don't want to even use it now.  Maybe later.  Billy was one to keep in shape, and that is ironic.  In August he was riding the elliptical 30 minutes at a time.  Then he was down, totally down for six weeks.  Lots of regrets.  We had no sign, other than backache he had had for years with slipped disks.  But, they allowed him to ride a bicycle and elliptical with no pain.  Walking long ways, that was always a pain.  Because of the pinched nerve, 30 years ago his one leg would just give out.  Because of the trauma of a hemorrhoid operation by a country doctor and the results thereafter when he was 24, he went for one colonoscopy before they started sedating.  He would not go for another.  There are so many if, if, if, if.............

I worked at a teaching hospital.  When they brought in the doctors with English as a 2nd language (actually, some never learned it even as a 2nd), it really got hard.  I began it in the days with belts, IBM Selectric, different colors of "white out" for each copy and invariably some doc that would tell me to go up and add another paragraph between first and second, which was impossible.  One doctor from Iraq, (transplant surgeon) would dictate so terrible, three pages usually, I had to know anatomy to just know where he was operating so I could get some words right.  Glad to be retired.  Billy and I both retired on the same day. (I hated retirement and went back to work at a Catholic hospital and then a Presbyterian one.  I got to work at home, so we were together those 18 years all the time.  He had 18  years of retirement and lost many coworkers and friends during those 18 years.  I wonder if they are all reminiscing now.

Good luck kayc.  As a medical transcriptionist at a teaching hospital, I would drag my feet at each new computer program.  I soon learned you can teach an old dog new tricks if they put it in 1, 2, 3 form.  Like #1 was "turn computer on."  They arranged the new teaching schedules just for me along with each new program.  Then after 43 years they took away transcription and made me an editor.  That meant I cleaned up the "crap" put out by voice recognition.  One time when the doctor said "parenthesis" around a word the computer printed out "bull flatus."  That was when this editor became retired from cleaning up this stuff for good.  I don't miss editing, but I miss the good clean transcription.  

Ricky, in my life, alone means being afraid.  It has only been two weeks.  I dread night coming and when I fitfully sleep I look forward to daylight.  I have panic attacks, only I call t hem terror attacks.  I had had them once before 33 years ago when I had cancer, but they were few and far between.  Now they are nearly every day.  We were getting ready to leave this house when Billy passed away over a six week period.  We were going RVing, then all of a sudden he was gone.  In those two weeks my mind has lived here, there, everywhere and every place seems more frightening, yet I don't want to stay here.  My lawyer told me that I really needed to wait a year before deciding.  I don't buy green bananas, what does that mean, wait a year?  I am 73-years-old.  I was supposed to go first and he was going to take my ashes along with him.  I felt somewhat  comforted.  Now I have his ashes and I will not be making long trips, but I think I do see myself living in a small Class C, maybe, and his ashes will be with me.  I think the only thing we all know we are going to do is grieve the person we loved for so long, the person we lost.  Unfortunately, now we have to find ourselves.  That is a long journey, and again, I don't buy those green bananas.  I hope you find the solace you need on this forum.  There are some wonderful people that are going  through all the stages of grief.  We are here for you too.

Kay, my Billy liked to give the kids nicknames.  He called Scott by the name of the little boy in The Yearling, something like Faderwing.  So, that was his artist name for years.  I think he had more paintings stolen than he sold, but they do not call them starving artists for nothing.  He got into some "trouble" and was shot in the leg when he was grown, and Faderwing had a bad leg in "The Yearling."  Billy called our daughter "Darling Jill" from Gods Little Acre.  I won't even try to explain that.  He showed his paintings a lot of places and then he has had artist's block for a number of years.  It goes along with bipolar, but so does artistic abilities.  He is really good.  Of course, I am bragging.  He used to have a site to go  to, but I think it has been taken down when he went into his blue funk a few years ago.  

I might blanch something and freeze it , but you have a lot more knowledge than I do.  I was afraid I would kill us all if I canned.  Mama never did though.  I admire you for that.  Mama kept 3 meals on the table a day.  Might be leftovers for supper, but that was okay.  She would cover the table from dinner with a table cloth.  We never got sick.  

Only one breakdown today.  Guess I will make up for it tomorrow.  (i think sometimes I give too much information, I'm sorry).

Thanks Kevin.  I only have words.  My son has the steady hand of an artist.  My hands shake with a congenital tremor and I sure have had trouble signing my name to all these things we have to fill out.  My grandmother wrote a book for her grandkids and my friends appreciate me writing about the "old days" on Facebook.  I do not know how to take pictures for the computer, that was Billy's joy.  He had just bought a new camera and a 300 lens.  My daughter took it.  He never really got to use it.  But to Billy, the joy was in the shopping and he stayed on Amazon and everywhere picking out just the right one.  He loved for that old brown truck to bring him presents.  I just found his 1956-57 school picture and rather than hurt me, it made me smile.  Maybe there is hope for all of us.......at least for moments at a time. @Karen: Your husband would have wanted you  taken care of.  We have enough guilt, regrets, all part of this grieving process.  I have to shut my mind off seeing Billy that last time..  I should have been holding him, but he knew how much he was loved, and I know Ron felt the same for you.  I have to feel all our other halves have to want the best for us.  I just know it.

Thank you Kevin.  Billy was a man's man.  I cannot tell you how many times we watched Gunsmoke.  I guess it was his favorite because it was his dad's favorite.  My son is an artist.  Billy grew up in the small town of Sibley, Louisiana.  Eight in his graduating class.  Back in a time when they all lived in relative poverty, but none of us knew we had poverty.  I lived at the northern part of that Webster Parish.  My mom had her Victory Gardens.  She grew up in a time where you canned everything so we all never went hungry.  Neither did Billy's family.  We may not have had steak, but after we were first married we had many a meal of pinto beans and cornbread and tea.  Cannot beat that.  The kids had no where to go so they  would sit on the bridge over the RR track.  One time before TV, and I doubt if Billy's family read the newspaper much, unless it was a school lesson and other than KWKH, our country radio station, he was cut off from lots of things.  No means of transportation.  Country store in the little town.  The boys would get together on Saturday and Friday and sit on the bridge across the RR track, all congregate together.  The main road through Louisiana passed through the town, before interstate highways.  They still missed Sibley even then.  One day a blimp came down the RR track, flying just above it.  A big gray one.  To an 8-9 year old boy it was a bomb and they were all dead.  I loved that story.  I loved the simple life we all came from.  I made small plans to go back where we first began.  My son wants to paint the group of boys in their 1956 clothes, hair, cigarettes, Converse shoes, jeans rolled up one time.  He also will paint Billy and his best friend hitchhiking to the town where they played American Legion baseball.  Baseball was always part of his life and in later years he was a wonderful coach for football and baseball/softball for our kids for the YMCA.  He let all the kids play and they won over and over. The parents loved him.  So did/do I.  I look forward to my son painting the pictures.  He is a good artist and will do the late 1950s justice.

Billy's dad drove the tractors that cut the grass alongside interstate highways.  In the south we let the red, white and blue clover flowers grow and they are beautiful.  Billy's dad would see some old rusty tool that had been sitting there for years, pick it up, bring it home and store it on the back porch.  When he passed away in his 60's, Billy took all those rusty tools.  Scott was looking last night for something, does it even matter?  I have forgotten, I don't search as it was only two weeks yesterday morning.  Billy, like his dad, had put a lot of papers, just sacks like sandwich bags into a bigger sack and that was put under lock and key.  Scott went through it and said "Mom, this is just nothing but trash."  I told him not to throw it away, I am not ready to even get rid of his trash yet.  Cannot even go through it.  It is like I have reached some shaky plateau that I know he is gone, but I cannot even get rid of the trash yet.  Maybe the time will come.  Not now.