Fall Back

I can't figure out if continuing to blog is like picking a scab or lancing a boil. [Equally gross analogies.] Or to put it another way.. Is this helping or hurting? Most blog entries come complete with a pretty decent cry on my side. I wonder if I would explode from the pressure or if it would just harmlessly evaporate? Where would the thoughts that end up on this blog land otherwise?

October reminds me of Dad. Mom and Dad close on the house Monday, Dad has chest pains and goes into the hospital Tuesday and has a quadruple bypass Wednesday morning. On the operating table, Dad has a stroke and the next few months are a new adventure in terror. I can spend the rest of my life not seeing High Point Regional, Wesley Long or Moses Cone Hospital and be perfectly happy.

I always described Dad dying like standing on 2 boxes and having someone kick one out from under you. You could still keep dry, you were a little wobbly, but you still had a box to stand on.

Why can't I get past this? Why can't I get over this? Why does this still hurt? Why do I still cry? Why can't I just be big?

Picture Perfect

When I talked with Wendy today, she said I needed to warn her when I post pictures. [It is a rare thing.] Wendy said something like "I had forgotten this look" but we both agreed how much we liked this picture.

We all have pictures of Mom, with her hair all prissed up, all made up with every thing perfect. Mom would take a picture of herself in a minute. Big smile, lots of color, lots of everything.

This picture is none of that. Mom is sporting her wig at this point, but still has on some makeup and earrings. I don't see Mom's port accessed, so we may be either starting or getting ready to leave. We are back in the corner in our favorite chair. In my small camera phone, I have the picture of Mom that I carry in my heart. I see love. I see peace. I don't see fear. I don't see pain. I see everything that has brought us to this day that we have spent together. In this picture, in this second, we are together and that is enough.

Happy Mommy

This is from my old phone. I just spent $20.00 to buy a memory card to move this to somewhere I could keep it. Mom is snug in a warm blanket at George's. I want to put this near the second week of January. It's a good day. All the chemo we can stand and all the cookies we can eat and all the sodas we can drink and all the warm blankets we can ask for.

Uncle

My body has a way of saying enough. A juicy, miserable case of bronchitis that usually will make me sleep a couple of days and make me feel so much like crap, I forget I have things to do.

So I sleep. [I have slept pretty much since Friday morning.] I had a follow up with Jason on Thursday and he told me my lungs were "crumbly". I can usually count on a round of the yucks when I don't get any downtime. I have been pretty much at work each weekend for the past few weekends and a few late nights thrown in.

The week of Mom's first chemo, I went from Strep on Monday to Bronchitis and a double ear infection by Wednesday. I am a walking germ infested snotty nosed whinny baby. I am sitting in Jason's office crying because I feel like trash, but I have to be better by Friday.

The initial purpose of Jason this week was to check back in after the 29 days. I am going to stay where I am on the dosage, but start counseling for a while. I feel flat right now from the drugs, but for the first time, I can see past the flatness. I think I am in a place where I can talk now, which I haven't been in a long while. I can talk about how scared I was, how I wonder what else I could have done (been more aggressive with Mom's treatment plan, called Hospice earlier), how I wonder if Mom was scared when she died and if she knew we were there and she wasn't alone, and how I wonder what Mom saw in me during the last few weeks and was it what she thought she would see.