Missing You All.

[Gisela]

Hello everybody,

Three days without messages? What happened? I have been missing you all.

Gisela.

[kayc]

Yeah, that's how I've been feeling. I was wondering if I ran everyone off! I need to hear from you guys!

[ustwo]

kayc, I'm still here. You are not alone in this journey. Sometimes it's hard to even explain feelings...this pain. Facing each day is a battle for all of us left behind. But you are not alone.

Do not let anyone tell you how to grieve. Whatever brings comfort is right. I sleep with my love's picture. My sister called last week. Her words "I understand". For the first time I said "no you don't...and I do not wish this pain on anyone". This is my sister who had to answer her cell phone at the cemetary as we are laying Gene to rest.....actually walked away to have a conversation. I've forgiven her because nothing is going to keep me from being with Gene when I finally am free of this grief. It's Sunday and I am trying to find the strength to go to church for the first time since my world ended 7 weeks ago. I think I can make it. I would rather just stay here in the dark.

May memories of George comfort you..........the love you two share is forever.

No one else shares the love....no one else knows your pain....no one can tell you how to grieve....no one can tell you how to hang on to what makes you feel close to your love. No one has a right into my world right now...to tell me what to do. Everyone here has given me the strength to know I'll go on...never to be the same but I'll go on. We'll all go on somehow. We all are alone but not alone here at this site.

George wraps his love around you!

Always Gene!

Always

[kayc]

Thank you for your understanding warm words of comfort. I hope you were okay as you went through church for the first time. I've been going all along but the first few times all I could do was sit and cry. Today is six weeks for me. Six weeks, and it changed my life completely. How I miss George! And yet I wouldn't wish him back in to the pain and suffering of this world...I want him here for me, but not at the cost of more pain to him. I miss him so much.

I had left to go to my annual Sisters' Reunion and 15 min. later George suffered a heart attack; not realizing what it was, only knowing he didn't feel good, he drove himself to our rural clinic. He told the doctor not to call me, he didn't want to ruin my weekend. That was like him, always thinking of me. Of course, he didn't know he'd die that weekend. By the time I got the message that night, he greatly downplayed it, he told me to stay put, that he'd be in testing all the next day and wouldn't be able to have visitors anyway. I knew he'd feel bad if I came back, so I stayed. But my heart wasn't in it, I couldn't sleep, all I could do was cry and pray. Oh if only my Beloved could have known, he would not of asked me to stay put. I called him Sat. morning and he sounded good, then they came and got him. I talked to him Sat. night and he didn't sound so good...he'd gotten the results but hadn't shared just how bad they were with me, he only told me part of it. (My friend visited him and she shared with me later that he had not wanted me to come back early, he didn't want me to know yet.) But at this point I knew it was more serious than he'd let on and I told my sister I only wanted to be with my husband, and I cried. I'd ridden with her so I didn't have a way back unless she took me. Instead of dropping everything and taking me to the hospital (four hours away), she went gambling and left me at the house we were renting. I cried and prayed all night. The next morning we left to go home and I didn't get to the hospital until 1:00 p.m. There were constant visitors, then they moved him to ICU and when they finally let me go in to him he was asleep. He woke up having another heart attack and they threw me out. We never got to say goodbye, we never got to talk alone. I wanted so much to comfort him as he left this world and they denied me that. I have a hard time with this. I leave my sister's actions with her to deal with, I would not have responded like she did, I would have driven her to her husband immediately without even waiting to be asked, if roles were reversed. To know your sister chose gambling over your getting to be with your husband in his final moments...but of course she didn't know it would be his final moments, but she had to know it was a possibility because by that point they had scheduled him for a five-bypass and said all five arteries were totally plugged. It wasn't until later that I learned that he'd been having heart attacks for 18 months with improper diagnosis and that his heart itself was so severely damaged and full of scar tissue it just wouldn't pump anymore. My sister has to deal with her own response, I can't even go there. I don't understand how or why people choose the way they do, all I know is, I have learned a great deal through this and I pray God will use it to make me caring and helpful to those I come into contact with. One thing we've all learned is, you never know when your loved one's final moments will be, we must make the most of what we have. George and I may not have gotten our very last moments together, but we certainly made the most of what we had together in our marriage, and we definitely knew we loved each other. We had a very good marriage, short, but very, very good. And that counts for a whole lot. I can't have regrets about anything in it. Only what was beyond my control or not humanly something I could know. And he'd be the first to understand.

Seven weeks, six weeks, it's all still so fresh and so raw. I got rid of his welding clothes, as if purging him of that horrible job, he gave so much of himself to it and they didn't deserve it. They used him up and never even cared. They never sent a card or anything, to them, he was just a body to do their bidding, and even though he worked hard enough to produce three men's worth of work, they still didn't appreciate it. I never want to see those welding clothes again. They even stole some of his tools. But the rest of his things I hang on to, I hold them, I try to smell him on them but the smell is fading away and that makes me cry. I don't want to lose any part of him! It is so hard for us to watch them go into the next world! I think it's because it is beyond our reach.

I can't watch a video even, we always watched them together. I don't want to go for walks by myself, I hate living here alone, my heart is broken. It is hard to find the drive to go on, yet I push myself to because it's what he'd want...for the sake of my kids. Tuesday I have my stress test, it was the last thing he'd asked me to do, so I have to honor it. Of course, I'd rather die and go be with him than to continue on by myself, but I can't...I have to choose to live. And someday, hopefully not too far in the future, God will see fit to let me join him. Maybe when I have the place paid off and the kids can scatter our ashes together here and they can have this place with all of it's warm memories. That is what I live for, so I have to make it another ten years. After that, it doesn't matter to me.