If You're Going Through Hell

[Gin]

Everyone around here is sick.   My two daughters (not living with me) have some very bad sinus problems, along with muscle aches.  My son in California had back surgery on Friday.  I was surprised getting a text from him after the fact. He said he had to decide the last minute and did not want to worry me.  So, now I only get texts from him once a day.  He only seems to communicate via texting.  I wish I could help, but he is several thousand miles away.  I just hope he is in good hands.  This back issue is from a fall he had at work.  Already had both hips replaced from the fall.  

[KarenK]

I wonder if it is just a "sign of the times" and the environment we now live in, Gin.  At age 38(my son's age), I was still out climbing mountains and wilderness hiking. My daughter was  44 when she was diagnosed with cancer, fairly young but of course, cancer can strike at any age. I will be 70 this year and "knock on wood" have never really had any major problems, except the blasted fungal pneumonia in Kentucky which left me with Aspergillus. I just take it in stride.

Another setback for my son. He called several of the doctors on his list looking for a new PCP today and none of them would accept the insurance. So he called the insurance provider. It seems United Healthcare has bought his plan, but it does not take effect until Feb. 1, so he is without insurance until then. He can still go to the hospital, if needed, but won't be able to do anything more about his hip or the bleeding(which has slowed down). He has one of Ron's old canes to help a little. He's supposed to return to work on Wed.  Don't know if he will be able to or not.

[kayc]

Gin,

I'm glad you're hearing from your son.  My daughter can go months with no contact and only live 1 1/4 hours away.  Texting seems to be her mode too but she doesn't always reply.  She's doing better recently.  I'm glad he made it through surgery!

Karen

I'm sorry your son is going through so many medical problems and not getting the help he needs.  We have some major breakdowns in our healthcare and this is one example of that.  I don't wish we'd throw the baby out with the bath (dispense with Obamacare) but improve on it, fix the problems.  I'm afraid we'll end up with no health care because we can't afford it, but like everyone else, I have to wait and see what happens.  If your son gets worse I hope he goes to the hospital.  Gosh, they should put him on temporary disability until they get this squared away.  I'm kind of in the cracks too because I can't drive at night, can't see out of my left eye very well, and when I was working full time suffered eye strain and thus fatigue...yet I can't get disability.  They figure I could lick envelopes at home.  Meanwhile my eye is suffering, I'm in pain, and still waiting for my surgery...not knowing as the day approaches if I can even get down there...we are getting constant storms and road maintenance leaves a lot to be desired.  It's snowing as I speak.  They predict "little or no" and we get a foot of heavy wet stuff, very back breaking to shovel.  But I digress...my point being our lives are so hard, it doesn't seem to be like it used to be.  We don't seem to have our basic needs met no matter how hard we work and try. 

 

 

[Gin]

My son has complications from the neurosurgery.  Some sac got torn.  He still can not even stand.  This life is so hard without our loved one.

Karen...hope your son gets the care he needs.

Kay...hope the weather calms down so you can get your eye fixed.  I have to get my eye done in the Spring.  I told the doc that I have to wait until I can count on good weather.  My friends do not drive in bad weather.

[kayc]

Gin, I'm sorry about your son, that's terrible.  Will they have to do surgery or will it heal on it's own?

[Gin]

Kay,

I do not know, yet.  No text today.

[Margm]

I don't know how they do these things nowdays, if ever, but I have had them give information to me.  Sometimes I use my special wobbly voice (sometimes I cannot help that voice), but tell them who you are, maybe even cry a little, tell them how far away you are and there is no one there but him for you to talk to.  Unless he has specifically put on his hospital orders not to talk to anyone, they might/should/maybe will talk to you.

When I fill out anything about who I should let know about any illness I have I always put "everyone, anyone that asks" I need all the help I can get.  Or you could leave your phone number and have them ask him if they can talk to you.  Does he have a wife "next of kin?"  

[kayc]

Aha!  My mom had that special wobbly voice, I thought she used it to sound as old and decrepit as possible.  Now I feel it's confirmed!  

If he's in the hospital sometimes the nurses station will give out some information, sometimes not, but if he's discharged probably not.

[Margm]

I spend a lot of my quiet mornings, while Bri is still asleep, reading from my many grief books and articles.  I cannot remember where I got this quote, seems like it might have been from one of Marty's articles she gives us, and we sometimes remember, even if we have a crystallized brain.  Words might not be correct, but it is the image I got from it.  You see, I quit really counting the date of the month of Billy's passing.  I won't say that I forget every month, sometimes I still do, but what made so much sense to me was someone saying "Death is a date on a calendar, grief is the calendar."  Might have got that wrong.  My two books with my daily grief notes "Grief One Day at a Time" by Alan D. Wolfelt, Ph.D (I have one of his books also and this man speaks to me), and the other book with daily readings is called "Healing After Loss, Daily Meditations for Working Through Grief" by Martha Whitmore Hickman.  I admit, Wolfelt speaks to me more distinctly than anyone.  

But the strange thing was, I felt the need to read them this Saturday morning, nothing special happening except the disruption of my mind from the GriefShare meeting, and I saw I had not read them since November.  Why?  I have no idea.  I wish you all as good a week end as is possible.   

[KarenK]

My crazy thoughts this morning..........

Forty years ago, Death came to visit my family. It came to take my father via an abdominal aneurysm. It was the first time I had met Death. I was 30 years old. I was the last to speak to my Daddy as he was loaded into the ambulance. I said "I'm right here Daddy" and he replied "I know you are." He bled to death. That was it. I was angry at "God" for too many years to count.

Death is final.

Twenty nine years later, Death came to visit again, this time taking my sweet little Mother. She died before I could reach the private care home in which she had lived for the last six years in what I know was her own private hell, not because of the home, but because of the massive stroke that had ravaged her brain. I felt so guilty for not being there.

Death is final. Death is cruel.

Seven years after that, Death came for my soulmate, the one who had given meaning to my life for forty one years. I held his hand and slowly watched him slip in to Death's grasp.

Death is final. Death is cruel. Death is devastating.

I couldn't bar the door against Death, no matter how hard I tried or how much I prayed. One year later, Death came stealing through the night, during a horrific thunderstorm and stole my child. There are no words to describe the pain Death brought.

Death is final. Death is cruel. Death is devastating. Death is relentless.

Logic says that when Death visits again, I won't even be aware of it and all the many emotions it evokes. Death is, after all, simply the means to an end.

[Margm]

Karen, you are one of the reasons I know going to my meetings are going to be hard.  I hope I am gone before I lose my child.  Listening to the woman cry for a reason, and I don't know if she meant "why now" or "what killed my son."  This was scar tissue tearing away from me.  I sometimes think I am healthier than my two children, and have one grandson that we do not know is alive or dead.  I lost my mom and dad both and neither times did grief consume me.  My aunt passing away hurt me more.  What kind of person am I that I cannot grieve my parents?  I miss them, but nothing like missing Billy.  I want to leave myself before I have to face worse.  I am a coward.  

[KarenK]

Marg, it is not cowardly to want to go before your children. I thought surely she would survive because of her faith. Silly me! She was the bravest person I know, because she knew what lay ahead when she discontinued treatment. Perhaps she had a faint hope that faith would suffice. It didn't. Somehow, I have survived.

I fully admit that I am afraid to die. I don't want to be "no more", but then I wouldn't know it anyway, would I.  I can only hope that my son does not go before me. I don't think "God" carries bargaining chips.

[Gwenivere]

Marg, no loss I have experienced trumps Steve's.  I miss my parents but it was 'natural' in the flow of life.  Other older relatives too.  When we started losing friends, things became tougher.  Steve was the ultimate.

karen, I cannot even imagine how it would feel to lose a child.  

Im not thrilled with the idea of dying myself, but there is a slight siren song I feel about stopping the daily pain.  

[Margm]

43 minutes ago, Gwenivere said:

slight siren song

I think many of us can honestly say we have heard that song.  

[kayc]

I am not afraid to die, but I worry how my kids will feel when that time comes.  It's never easy to be the one left behind.
 

Karen, that was written poetically, it really touched me.  It should be a published piece.

[Margm]

These weekly meetings are kind of bothering me.  I will go tomorrow.  They are not teaching me anything really.  I have met the thing I dreaded, the mother who just lost her son.  Okay, that sounds selfish.  I am supposed to be wanting to help people.  OMGosh, I want to go first, but I wanted to go first anyhow.  There are not many widows.  

They had me go to the cancer survivors meetings years ago.  I could not stay.  

I am not a timid person.  Two grown children leaving out of state very soon, one going to meeting, another going somewhere I am sure she is going to have to have help getting back. (moving)  My sister is getting to teach literature, which she loves, and hopefully the colleges will keep enough money to keep her working.  She is happy.  We still have to take care of expensive stuff for Mama.  Didn't have succession in AR.  I signed everything over to her but about the cheapest we can go with it is $1500.

Kinda like them putting me on the psych ward and then expecting me to eat family dinner with crazy people.  

Did I say life is stranger than fiction?  Well, some people are anyhow.     

[KarenK]

Marg,

Because the Griefshare program is rooted in faith, I probably did not absorb the information proved by the sessions, although I did attend them.  I will always have a problem with the "God has a plan" type of thinking. That is just me.  I think I went just to be around others who "got it". Everyone was very nice and each of us had suffered different losses. I don't think it's a matter of who you lost, more that you all feel compassion for each other. I certainly can understand your fear and reluctance to go. I know the one who lost her child appreciates your being there.

I have been a member of Cancer Survivors Network for 8 years. They were like a second family to me and my Debbie. Another great group of people just trying to survive. Sadly, I have lost many cyber friends over time. I find it difficult to post there now as my family did not have positive results.

[Margm]

Most of these women come from this church.  Karen, I admire you so much, and it scares me so much to lose a child, or grandchild.  Billy and I both would have given our life for any of them.  This woman just wants to know why and how.  I think there were three men who died.  I don't know how they died, but it was when we had a cold snap so it could have been hypothermia, maybe if they had been drinking.  I am just guessing.  I know when Scott got shot, they would not even give me his glasses from the police station.  He was in a place he should not have been and dope was involved.  He got off, but never got his glasses back.  He was shot in the leg, major artery, and had enough sense to tie off his leg with his coat.  It was touch and go for a long time.  They tried to operate and he would lose so much blood they would have to sew him up with him coding.  That was one of the reasons we gave up RVing.  The forest rangers had to come find us up in the Gila Wilderness in NM.  I called my work and they kept me up on his condition but even then they did not tell me about the coding, only that he was shot in the leg.  The leg, so that's not such a big thing.  I didn't know the details.  I even talked to his doctors who I had worked personally with and found out the details.  He had so much blood pumped into him we did not recognize him he was so blown up/swollen from the transfusions.  And, he did get off drugs, but his son hasn't, where ever he is.

I could not go to the cancer survivors meetings.  It was too soon, it was too painful.  I could see many results that were not going to be positive and I went into denial.  Might still be in denial.  Like I said, Karen, I admire you.  Proud of you.

[scba]

Hell means that....Given a certain event that happened today,I tried to think of what my bf would tell me to do, then to hear/perceive nothing back, just the echo of my voice. 

I really lost him.

[kayc]

8 hours ago, scba said:

Hell means that....Given a certain event that happened today,I tried to think of what my bf would tell me to do, then to hear/perceive nothing back, just the echo of my voice. 

I really lost him.

  

[Margm]

The year 2015, we did not know Billy was sick until after August 31st.  We found out then about the aneurysm.  In working up stomach pain a few days later in the ER, they found the cancer.  He had had back pain from herniated disks since his late 30's, early 40's.  We were not worried, the surgery had been perfected.  Within a week we knew the cancer was all over him.  I won't mention all the glands it had invaded, but thinking back, some strange things I attributed to age, might have been the aneurysm or the cancer.  It was a shock.  He had been going to doctors, squamous cell cancerous mole on his back, an irregular heart beat I had found on checking his blood pressure.  His nephrologist twice a year.  I did not suspect this cancer, he did not suspect it (that I knew of).  Thankfully, or unthankfully it took him fast.  I had printed out this picture below ironically at the starting of 2015.  (We did not know he was sick, this was just how I felt.)  It is Winnie the Pooh day again this year.   Honestly, last year this time I could not have brought this memory up in print. 

[kayc]

Ahh, much better than that (100 minus 1 day) would be to go together.  We don't know why it couldn't have played out like that, but maybe we were needed a little longer.  After all, what would your granddaughter do without you?

[kevin]

I planned for my death to be first, so concentrated on Angela's care plans in my absence.( I  was very nervous about Angela's dementia )...I was actually relieved to be the one left behind until I came to understand this Grief Journey.......This Journey does display our vulnerabilities and poor judgements.....but what a Journey........

[kayc]

We had talked about "what if one of us dies..." but that was in abstract terms, no way can you have any clue what it's actually like until you're there!  I thought I'd be strong, ha!  Still I'm glad it wasn't him that had to go through it.

[Margm]

“Relationships take up energy; letting go of them, psychiatrists theorize, entails mental work. When you lose someone you were close to, you have to reassess your picture of the world and your place in it. The more your identity was wrapped up with the deceased, the more difficult the loss.” ― Meghan O'Rourke

My identity was Billy.  It seems for more years than I have been living.  After these, what? 17 months, I still have moments I cannot believe it.  I just looked up into the sky as I am typing and there is a distinct cross where two jets have crossed paths.  I live close to Barksdale.  And in another place, another cross.  Where is my magical mind?  Billy took it  with him and I wish he would give it back.  My own health is precarious, even though I can still move around like I always could (except I do have the tin man syndrome) from not moving my joints.  I don't go to doc's except for checkups cause they cannot fix me.  If my fever goes up, I have to go.  So, I take my MiraLax and my temp and my Xanax.  Antibiotics are not good for my "innards."  

I've got to find enough money somewhere for Mama's succession, (even though I legally signed everything over to my sis.)  It costs to die in Louisiana.  But, we have to try to save the house for her, and that is on my mind.  I should get enough income tax return for that.  My daughter is running off to another state that she has no idea what living there is like, but Carrie Fisher's saying "Instant gratification is not fast enough" fits the bipolar disposition.  My son is leaving  for a month in New Mexico.  Job training.  Other than worrying about them driving, that does not bother me too much.  My sister fell and did not tell me, but showed me a week later (so I would not worry) and she cracked her head too, but seems to be getting around okay.

I'm putting this here because I am too lazy to start a new thread.  I cannot go back to the GriefShare meetings.  Last time was spent with us comforting a poor woman who had lost her son earlier (He was about my son's age and hit me hard.)  Her husband before him.  The meeting before was a woman who had been married about 40 years, lost her husband, married her neighbor widower and he had now passed.  Actually, it is made up of more lost children, mothers and fathers than widows.  One of our leaders said she knew she should "be over things" at three years, and I got to wondering "what am I doing here?"  I shared some of my "'words of wisdom" with these other Baptist women and I got a few strange looks. (Wonder why?), anyhow I feel kind of like my son said he felt going to NA meetings, they just made him want to go home and do dope.   These meetings make me very sad.  I wasn't looking for elation, but I was not looking for more sadness either.  My friend who introduced me to this group, she is a strong Christian worker in this church, I feel I  have let her down.  Don't need that guilt.   

I think sometimes you know what is best for yourself.  You are not running, you are not hiding, you are taking time for "scar tissue" to form.  I think God has put enough interruptions in my life that Billy is encouraging him "keep her busy."  I am busy.  

I don't know which chapter this is of my book, but I will finish for today.