If You're Going Through Hell

[Margm]

14 hours ago, Kieron said:

I can't even figure out where I would go next.

Our house was in a Garden of Eden, no crime, circle/end of street, houses were in a valley, behind trees on a hill, but we were hidden away.  I think 10 houses, all hidden.  I spent a few nights without Billy.  That was the loudest quiet I have ever heard.  We were gypsies.  We lived the longest in a house so the kids could start school, graduate same system, then we were ready to leave. (17 years).  Had the lake house, which was tiny, so we built a bigger one. Our retirement home.  RV in back..  We hopped in that 19 foot 5th wheel, sold the house, I think we burned clothes and furniture.  The big stuff was in the city house, which we left and before we retired, we lived in four RV's traveling around to the parks until we retired.  Then all hell broke loose and to save our son we got off the road.  Things worked out good.  Everybody wanted to buy our house.  (I gave it away, as few papers to sign as I could get out of.) Got a new RV in March, Billy left in October.  I make too much for a government apartment.  Billy was smart, together we worked 80 years and had retirement and could live as good as if we were working. When he left, I did everything that he would not do.  I moved into an apartment.  No roofing, plumbing, A/C, heat, yard to mow to worry about.  I cannot go back where we were.  I came to where he was born, grew up, graduated and met a girl that lived about 30 miles or less away and she had been born, graduated, and started technical school in the town he lived in.  The kids were born within 30 miles from here, graduated, and we all are back home, all but Billy, and I have as much of him as I could keep and sleep on pillows on the side of the bed, king sized ones, his regular clothes, his ever day clothes, they are on the side of the bed with me.  But move into an apartment?  That boy would never have done that.  I did not do it to meet people, I make excuses (not while Covid is here) to keep from eating out and going places.  I have friends and family close..  I want to live long enough to do a couple of things.  I don't know if I will.  If I don't, I won't worry about it.  I'm as happy and as close to Billy as I can get in this world and my nanosecond of waking up and thinking he is still there, it just dissolves as soon as it is thought.  There are prettier states.  But I'm kin to most everyone that was born in these parts, both sides of ancestors founded it.  Most are rooted in the soil around here.  If it sounds wild, I feel the people.  I have their genealogical history and my Grandma's book.  It is not home, but it is as close as I can get without Billy.  

My friend/cousin has lived in the same house 50 years.  She is not leaving.  My other friend who lost two husbands since 2000, she lives in the house she bought after first husband passed.  It floods there often.  She won't leave.  We all have reasons for going where we go or staying where we are.  It will never be the same so we make do with how we are the most satisfied living without the one who mattered the most.  We do the best we can with what we have left.  

Scott got sent home from work with high fever.  He has Covid.  Kelli is his nurse.  Tonight Scott is temperature free but Kelli has 102.  I take all the Lysol I can find, Lysol wipes, paper towels, everything required to keep them in the house, and I leave it at the door and knock.  I'm a Mama.  I want to take care of my kids.  I don't care if they are 58 and 53.  But I cannot go near them.  They are handling it okay.  Scott coughs and is hoarse, Kelli will sleep hers off.  They actually take care of each other.  But I'm a mama till I die.  I tripped today and fell on my knees.  Brianna got angry because I would not let her help me up.  My knees were hurting.  I had to sit it out until I could bend them good and then I got up.  I pulled my little buggy full of garbage bags to the dumpster.  No pain.  They will be sore tomorrow, but I am okay.  Nothing broken.  Just imagine, if I was skinny, I would not have had any cushion to protect them.

[Gwenivere]

@KarenK  my gawd, woman!  You poor thing being hit by so much in the past few daysI swear something is awry cosmically.  Seems so many I hear from are getting hit by with chaos right now.  I lost a tooth at the gumline a couple months ago.  No reason I can find nor my dentist.  I’ve had chipping, but totally gone?   It would be one I’d need for a bridge I need eventually.  I’ve alao got 2 fingernails. coming off.  I don’t get it. I want to blame the pandemic for it because none of this happened before.  I didn’t even know about the missing tooth til after dinner.  How can I chew a meal and not crunch a whole tooth?   My appliances have been acting weird as well as my desktop computer.  It’s like this rebellion is happening all around and in me.  We are facing close to 90 degree weather here next week and of course my living room fan is making odd noises.  

Inhope you can get thecwater leak fixed easily.  Dental stuff is such a pain in the butt. It’s rarely simple and NEVER cheap.  

And you to, Marg?  I hope your not into much pain today.  I’m always afraid of tripping and falling because I don’t know if I could get up.  I’d be the old lady in the commercial that’s run forever.  I’d hate to use my medic alert button for that.  More dignity in something else.  Help, I’ve fallen because I stepped in my own oxygen tubing!  Sheesh.

[KarenK]

So sorry that you fell, Marg and that both kids are sick on top of that. A definite curse in the air!(Too much "Once Upon A Time")

Gwen, I was eating the soft part of pizza and definitely knew it wasn't supposed to have rocks in it! Dentist is closed until Tuesday. I still have pain in my jaw from the last infection if you press on it. As the doctor would say "Don't press on it".  Lol

I checked and my contract does not cover water lines if that is the problem. I'll call Sears first to determine that. The problem with Sears is the wait time. You usually can't get an appt. for a week, although I would think leaking water is an emergency. Sure can't wait long and may have to call the plumber. He's same day service and yes, expensive. It's a pain in the rear to unload the island and move it with the hand truck to pull the dishwasher out. Oh well, gripe, gripe, gripe.

Hope Ally's wound is healing.❤

[kayc]

Karen, oh no!  On BOTH things!  I hope with you that the water leak is covered.  And I hope they can do something about your teeth that won't cost an arm and a leg...I hope they aren't charging interest but that might be a bit much to hope for in today's world.

[kayc]

10 hours ago, Gwenivere said:

My appliances have been acting weird as well as my desktop computer

Both my laptop and my PC were behaving weird earlier this week, AVG up to date on both, ran scans, didn't find anything, seems okay now. ???  Maybe it's the air?

Marg, I'm so sorry to hear you fell!  That's one thing I noticed about losing weight, no cushion anymore...my car doesn't feel as comfortable to me as it did.  Seems I lost my boobs and my butt.  Not pretty with growing older and all of the weird stuff skin does in our old age!  I hope you're okay!

[Margm]

23 minutes ago, kayc said:

I hope you're okay!

A tiny bit slower, I gingerly protect myself, but other than that they are still able to pick my behind up from sitting down.  That takes strong............something.  

[widow'15]

12 hours ago, KarenK said:

Oh well, gripe, gripe, gripe

Karen:  After reading your post I think you have the right to gripe just as loud and long as you feel necessary to get rid of any anger you are feeling.  You are surely experiencing enough misfortune.  So sorry. 😞  Dee

[Gwenivere]

8 hours ago, kayc said:

Both my laptop and my PC were behaving weird earlier this week, AVG up to date on both, ran scans, didn't find anything, seems okay now. ???  Maybe it's the air?

Seems I lost my boobs and my butt.  Not pretty with growing older and all of the weird stuff skin does in our old age!  I hope you're okay!

I don’t know what is going on with problems lately concerning appliances or services like water.  What I DO know that timing is never good, but for some reason everyone seems to be getting hit.  I have a former best friend in NM who told me about some cosmic energy thing coming that was going to mess with stuff.  She also believes aliens are here so I didn’t pay it much bother.   Maybe there is curse in place like in Once Upon a Time.  I mean, we were having do much fun with the pandemic and each of our personal physical woes, why not add in more just to make it a true test of how much a person can take?  I know I woke up this morning thinking if the world ended right now, that would be just fine with me.  

I was barely out of bed and got a call from some private company about Medicare supplemental crap.  Bad enough my mail is full of it.  Essentially they are telemarking and that’s a no no since I’m on the do not call list.  I hope this isn’t the next phase of being bothered. Then another call from a bullpen in India about who knows what, I could barely hear the guy and the accent was too limiting.  I hate those most of all as they usually run computer scams pretending to be Microsoft.  Since I get bored a lot, I simetimes want to mess with them but they always hang up.  Steve once did that playing along, acting all scared, what should he do and it was fun.  I forget how he ended it but I remember laughing so much.  Wow, just made myself sad with that memory.  Guess cause I never laugh anymore.  I really haven’t truly since he left.

Body changes?  Tell me about it!  I watch the music guests on late night TV and the women that strut their stuff in slinky stuff remind me of my time.  I'm not boob endowed, but being once almost 6 feet tall, I had the legs.  Flat stomach. Made the most if it too in how I dressed.  Steve would often tell me about the oglers.  That sounds so vain, but I was back then.  Notes on my car, mght go on a date and then not be able to ge rid of them.  So I look in the mirror now and see just another misshapen older, grey haired lady no young person would ever think I was ever anything but.  I’m learning that now.   I guess I also assumed old people just came that way.  When I volunteered I saw pics of the people in their youth.  Didn’t mean 'I' was going to end up that way......ha!  Denial is powerful.  

I really miss sex.  Might as well just say it.  Wasn’t a romantic about it either.  Too boring.  Passion.  Intense.  I see both on TV and so miss that heat.  Really miss kissing.  Yeah, I miss holding hands and such, but it’s a part of me that cant be filled in only the way Steve and a very few others could.  It’s been so long because after the diagnosis in 2009, it was hard for us to feel that spark.  So over a decade of losing that integral part of our connection.  We both felt it.  He felt like a failure, I felt helpless to stop him from taking that on and we didn’t talk about it much because it was too painful to.  There would never be a way we would feel OK about that loss.  It was an unspoken feeling we shared at trigger times that normally would have led to that.  (Adding in here we weren’t the champagne and roses type, more the rip your clothes off.)

So now I sit waiting to talk to my grief counselor again.  Another week of complaining (uselessly as I know I can’t change anything but I still want to, detrimental complicated grief) and her listening knowing I already know that.  Absolute frustration about the back pain and taking care of Ally that sometimes causes resentment towards her, but it’s really at what my life has become.  Nothing could have prepared me to have to live a life of such loneliness being a huge extrovert.  This is like getting the death sentence for......I don’t know what!  Living a moral life?  Giving to others for 25 years at Foss?  Helping my friends and family when I had them?  Cocreating a marriage that was so based on honesty and rules of engagement to avoid conflicts that were toxic?  Keeping our physical connection thriving?  Not bothering the world in a live and let live attitude?   Even if I believed in karma, I can find nothing he or I ever did deserving this.  Be it him or me let behind.  My counselor says I am stubborn.  She is right.  I know I carry blame for that.  I don’t how to accept all this.  If only it would pause for a bit so I could catch up and maybe figure out some coping strategies that could be core along with the daily shifts tha will always continue.

 

 

[Gin]

I so miss the physical closeness, also.  Especially painful when I see a sexual scene on tv.  Gin

[KarenK]

Now Gwen, don't knock our southwestern states aliens. Lol  I have seen many strange things in the very dark skies over northern Az out in the boonies like the one that appeared and killed my headlights at 75 mph or the avocado green man in the grocery store. That was really weird, although I doubt aliens would be doing something as mundane as grocery shopping. Still.....    We have our very own Bigfoot which Ron and his friend swore they saw when hunting one year. Your northwestern states can definitely outdo us on Bigfoot.

Because of a botched surgery and diabetes(I guess), we lost our intimacy back in the mid 90's. I learned to live without it, but it was a huge blow to his ego and caused a personality change which was hell to live with. I never could get him to understand  that I loved the whole person, not just one piece. That's all water under the bridge now. Terrible to say, but there are times I want him to come back from the grave and apologize for things he said to me. Ain't gonna happen. I miss the love and intimacy we had before the bad times. That's what I try to remember.

I think each of us think or thought we had somehow earned or deserve happiness forever. It just doesn't work that way. We each had it for a time, some longer than others. Nothing lasts forever, except maybe death and there  are no happy endings except in fairy tales. A good friend of mine on the cancer forum and I both had this thought that perhaps being kind and generous(as he and my daughter were) somehow earned a person the right to happiness. It doesn't. Cancer took them both, just as it did your Steve. And yet, look at all the sleazebags that remain sailing merrily along. There's no rhyme or reason to any of it.

[kayc]

18 hours ago, Gwenivere said:

I hope this isn’t the next phase of being bothered.

It seems everyone in the country bothers us with Medicare stuff for a few months and then all of a sudden it slows way down.  It can be VERY confusing and overwhelming.  Still not certain I have any answers but I picked one and stuck with it, someday may change it.

18 hours ago, Gwenivere said:

I guess I also assumed old people just came that way.

Ha!  I was just thinking about that yesterday, how did I go from this adorable young person to...THIS!??  It was easy, just got old.    We all do.  Few remain perfect and buff, life takes it's toll.  I bear the scars of my life's battles, I guess!  I look okay dressed and groomed, but oh my, it's not like it used to be!  But on the inside, there is the difference!  I have learned a lot over the years, there is the richness...what few take the time to get to know and treasure.  But I've learned that, too, as an old person, value the insides of people, the essence of them and who they are.

7 hours ago, KarenK said:

There's no rhyme or reason to any of it.

Yep, pretty much!

[Gwenivere]

Karen, I grew up in NM so I am quite familiar with Roswell and Area 51.  Seeing odd lights in the sky and being told it was from (then, don’t know if it’s still called) Kirkland Air Force Base.  Never saw green guys shopping tho.  😁

bigfoot isn’t a big deal here anymore.  I love the new Progressive commercial where Flo s talking to hm and he says his name is Darryl.  

I’m sorry to hear you lost intimacy too and hurtful things were said.   It’s something I’m wondering why its hitting me so hard now.  Guess I had lots of other stuff to get to get thru and it’s its turn.  We noticed a change a couple years before the diagnosis which made sense.  By then it had affected him mentally creating anxiety which is a sex killer right there.  I was relieved  it wasn’t a loss of attraction.  I wish he hadn’t belittled himself tho.  I think I made it worse by trying to ignite things when I should  have let him make that call as I probably added to his frustration.

All I have to do every day is turn on the news to hear about some 'sleazebag' still here who hurt or killed someone.  Ruined someone’s else’s family and they (hopefully if justice wins) got a cot and 3 hots.  We recently had a rookie cop shot at a routine traffic stop and it’s so terribly sad.  Who knows the good he may have done just starting out.  Another poor cop accidentally killed a young girl that a fleeing felon put between him and the police in a nanosecond.  Two families haunted and he in jail.  Makes me want to reconsider equal justice but I can’t support more loss of life.  Going back on track to our grief, sadly you are correct.  No rhyme or reason beyond nature, both human and biology.  

Doesn’t mean I can’t stomp,my feet and complain tho.  Sometimes it helps to cuss the world out.  I’ll admit, there are times I’d like to smack happy people, but only from envy.  If I didn’t see that then there would be something terribly wrong with the world.  It’s justvhard to take never feeling it anymore.  The most I get is out of myself for little bits when talking to cashiers or the rare person in line at the store that realizes talking from 6 feet away thru masks is OK.  There’s such silence shopping now amid customers.  This is weirder than Area 51.

Kay, we have to embrace the insides now.  Strange beings havectaken over our bodies.  👽

[Margm]

In July of 1981, I was sitting by the bedside of my little grandmother, who was in the morphine coma that supposedly helps with the pain of dying.  She was restless and instead of heading off into the unknown with good memories or dreams, she was still laden down with guilt that "I couldn't be a wife to him."  She kept murmuring this in her coma. Grandma married at 15. (She outlived him 25 years). She had read about the prince rescuing the princess on a white horse. (Those words were written in the "book" she left us family members), only he was on a brown and white horse.  I've repeated all her illnesses she had, but while she was dying, she was feeling guilty about not being able to be a wife to him, and I knew she meant in the sexual sense of the words.  I adored my grandfather.  He was the kind that could tell you that you were his favorite grandchild, and you believed him.  (As I am sure all 7-8 other ones felt the same).  After he had passed on in 1956, I heard about all his "other women."  You see, he had five daughters who "talked."  I know Grandma knew also, but the cancer, radiation, surgery and having seven children in ten years had taken away her ability to be "a wife to him" in every sense of the word.  And God bless her heart, she felt guilty all the rest of her life.  It was all her fault, she thought.

Less than a year later I was at M.D. Anderson with the same cancer my grandmother had had, only I had a more complicated double cancer.  Actually treatment was the same as it had been that many years ago, but no surgery, they were afraid it would spread.  You don't give hormones to female cancer patients.  I had probably had a little too much "fun" and at 39, I was pretty much ready to be put out to pasture.  Now, you marry "in sickness and in health" and after listening to my grandmother's dying words, I damn sure was not going to die of guilt because "life" had happened to me.  I chalked it up as "I had a good time while it lasted, and I probably had more fun than was lawful" and I had had as much radiation as was humanly tolerated.  They did not even like to do chest x-rays on me.  I would like to say I put it all in God's hands, but I think God is a man.  At any rate, how Billy handled things from there on was his business.  By the wedding vows, it was mine too, but Grandma taught me something.  My life was not going to end with the  murmurs in a coma "I couldn't be a wife to him."  

I might be a lot of things, but having someone feel sorry for me because life happened, that is the last thing I want.  To be a martyr, to me, is something I never wanted, but I wear it a lot easier than sympathy.  

And, I think if you write "Grace and Frankie" they might have a place you can order their toys, even for arthritic hands.  

As an addendum, I knew Kelli would have it, she cleaned Scott's room, sprayed the Lysol, cooked for him, cleaned the upstairs bathroom.  She had 102 temp in doctor's office.  They did the fast Covid test, but we all knew she had it.  It comes on fast after you have been exposed.  They gave her a Celestone shot.  This morning at 2:00 a.m. I was her phone prisoner.  Then she was writing that she never knew being sick felt so good.  At 2:00 a.m. I was tired of talking but that shot ran on until about daylight.  She is sleeping now, so is Scott.  I wish I could go take care of both of them, but know I can't. 

 

 

[Margm]

I'm not feeling good about the "hell" part of this because he is waiting for me in Heaven (even if his old girlfriends did beat me there).  He was just two years older than this when we married and this is his last birthday cake before we lost him in October.  He will always be 75.  He will always be 18, he will always be ageless.  We miss him, I miss him terribly, especially after that nanosecond that I don't wake him up each morning.  I think that will go on the rest of my days.  

[KarenK]

A great cake, Marg and I love the fish. I'm sure there are lots of lakes and streams in Heaven. He and Ron are probably right there together.

[Margm]

I'll bet Billy is talking his ears off then.  He was a very quiet man until he got around another fisherman and then he wouldn't shut up.  I hope they are very happy.  

1 Corinthians 13:12/King James Version

12 For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.

And I've got to go on that.  It is not just their birthday or anniversary, Valentine's Day, Father's Day or Christmas, we miss them every day.

[Gwenivere]

17 minutes ago, Marg M said:

It is not just their birthday or anniversary, Valentine's Day, Father's Day or Christmas, we miss them every day.

So right on, Marg.  I can’t think of one morning that he isn’t on my mind within moments of waking up.  Then come the big thoughts that a whole day is ahead to face without him.  He’s never there to snuggle with at bedtime.  All those holidays are more salt in the wound.  It will never feel right to wake up alone anyway, but especially Christmas, birthdays or once very special family days.  We celebrated our furry kids bdays as well.  That was always a burger night.  Gawd, the memories just never end. If only the real thing didn’t.  

[kayc]

8 hours ago, Marg M said:

I'll bet Billy is talking his ears off then.

Aww, then George has met up with them too as he LOVED fishing!  Being highly allergic to it took the fun out of it for me, I had to wear disposable gloves, have someone else bait the hook, gut it out, cook it (outside), clean the grill, I used to do all of that!  But I go out with him and just sit in the nature, both of us quiet so as not to scare off the fish, but it was always so peaceful!

I love Billy's cake!  And what a handsome young man!  I envy you that you got to grow up together, spend your life together...I wish we'd had more time.  But then I suppose it'd be all the harder for me to live without him...although I can't imagine it being any harder than it is, it may have taken us a lifetime to find each other but when we did, we knew.

You are right, every day is hard, but I think birthdays, anniversaries, deathaversaries are particularly hard.

[Margm]

8 minutes ago, kayc said:

..I wish we'd had more time.

Time didn't matter.  Some miss the many times we had, we had children, grandchildren, great grandchildren, but I wanted 54 more years.  If it had been five years I would have wanted 55.  If it had been five months, I would have wanted 200 months.  I was fortunate.  The young woman I shared the treatment with at MD Anderson was the daughter of a Knoxville surgeon.  She too had her grandmother's type of cancer.  Pretty, young blond girl.  Just married.  Her folks were with her through it all.  Her husband left for long periods of time, you think his job kept him away.  Nope, I'm sure the marriage didn't last and I felt so sorry for her.  But her mom and dad were right with her.  

She was a beautiful young blond woman and I hope life treated her kindly.  We kept in touch for awhile, but I could tell the marriage was breaking up and our talks became less and less.  My other cancer companion passed away at the same time my dad did, and she was something special.  I called her house, talked with her mother-in-law, the funeral had just finished.  No need to go give Larry (her husband) a serious talk about life in general.  He married the days after her funeral, as fast as you could get a license.  I visited her grave and put my  plaque Scott had painted.  "We met under the tree of life.  She was sunshine at a dark time.  I will miss her forever.  Forever was not long enough."  The cemetery in that small west Texas town with tumbleweeds and dry land had a beautiful, tree laden, green, well kept cemetery.  I was at peace and so was she.  

[widow'15]

1 hour ago, Marg M said:

Time didn't matter.  Some miss the many times we had, we had children, grandchildren, great grandchildren, but I wanted 54 more years.

Marg:  You are right, the time we were together doesn't matter.  What matters is that we don't have them now.  You and Billy had a couple more years on us - we would have been married 51 years in June 2015.  He passed in April 2015.  Bob, also a dedicated fisherman, would talk about fishing at any time or any where to anyone.    Hugs, Dee

[KarenK]

Got my plumbing issue fixed. I didn't see how it could be the dishwasher leaking because water was still seeping out without dishwasher being used. I felt water dripping underneath the sink below the faucet. The faucet was corroded(only 30 yrs. old) so we got a new one which my son installed. Cancelled my repair appt. and didn't have to call a plumber.

[Gwenivere]

Great news, Karen.  One less overpriced professional.  Only 30 years?  Geez, can’t they make anything last a decent amount of time?  🙂. My gutters are rusted thru a lot of places.  Never have figured out the use of them.  Water rolls off the roof anyway, just to designated random places thru the downspouts.  Would be a fortune to replace and, for some reason, our house can’t have those covered ones that never need cleaning.  So a company gets mucho bucks twice a year to scoop them out and haul off the debris.  Owning a home can become a money pit.

[widow'15]

2 hours ago, Gwenivere said:

Owning a home can become a money pit.

Gwen:  Amen to that.  Not to mention the property taxes that keep going up.🤑 Dee

[Gin]

Another birthday (81) without my Al.  Saw one daughter over the weekend.  The other one is working overtime at the hospital.  Maybe in another week or so.  My son called, but his phone was hard to understand.   Things sure are different.  My friend came over and sat in the yard with me today.   Never thought I could last this long without him.  But here I am still missing him terribly.  Gin

[Kieron]

4 hours ago, Gwenivere said:

Owning a home can become a money pit.

You got that right.

 

1 hour ago, widow'15 said:

Not to mention the property taxes that keep going up.🤑 Dee

Yup.  Ours are going up 7% and this was announced BEFORE the riots etc.  And we get less in return every year, it seems.