A Last Testament

The last testament. 

 

A stream of conscious babble of things still ever present on my mind.  A testament to the woman that was, a testament to the woman whose reach is farther than her earthly life.

With thanks for her, with thanks for my family, my children, their spouses and the all the friends who have reached out to us over the last days.  

In my eulogy to Marty I talked about her role as an educator, before and after the strokes.  So much of what I know, so much of what I am comes from Marty.  We got married at 21….really pretty young…..and I was still growing up so Marty, in essence picked up where Bettye and Larry left off and she raised me too.

Marty taught me, or at least tried to teach me to live in the moment.  As is apparent, that is easier said than done and even when you think you have learned the lesson….nope, not really, it’s a struggle.

Marty taught me that we, as human beings, can adapt to almost anything.  I thought there is no way I could care for anyone, much less, my wife, who was supposed to be caring for me.  I was wrong.  I learned, I adapted, I figured stuff out, so can you.

We will all be cared for or will care for someone in our lives.  It is inevitable.  In our culture, our world, we have made remarkable strides in prolonging life, consequently, more and more of us will need someone to take care of us as we get sick or just get old.  Just know, it’s going to happen to you and when it does, see the previous paragraph

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Tell people you love them; we all need to hear it.  Tell people why you love them, we all need to know it.  Write a note, touch a shoulder, make a phone call, go see someone, just make sure the people you love and care about know it and know why.  Marty knew she was loved, she knew who loved her, she knew the lives she had touched, she was lucky in that.

The last years have been a rather remarkable journey marked by fear, sadness, amazing joy, peace and contentment.  We have seen our baby get married, our babies have babies, six of them, big birthdays, big anniversaries, funerals, and just normal everyday life.  While I would not have chosen the path Marty and I walked it has been one of the most amazing, rewarding and decent trips I’ve ever made.

There have been remarkable people come into our lives.  We have come to know and love all the nurses and people at Great and Wise’s office, we have come closer to our two pastors, Leslie and Deedee as our journey wound around some thorny times.  We have been blessed with some amazing “sister-wives”, Nykkie, Erica, Renea, Renee and LaShonda who all made our lives better, seriously, they improved a somewhat difficult life.

We could not have had better care than we did at Providence those last days.  The nurses were attentive, knowledgeable, tender and caring.  They hugged me, they had tears of care and they touched me as I left that last day.

Providence Hospice was compassionate and amazing as we all came to the end of our journey with Marty.  She was not afraid, she was not in pain, she managed to pass as graciously and peacefully as one can.

The funeral, was, a funeral.  We sang, we talked, we listened.  It all seems a bit like a pagan ritual, but it provided some amazing closure and we heard and said some stuff that needed to be heard and said to put a period on the end of this journey.

As I walked up to the entrance of Providence Hospital that last day, I thought we all had done the very best we could do to keep Marty safe, to make her life meaningful and to keep her alive.  I believe that.  

 

As always, as anyone would, there are regrets, there are thoughts and words that were left unsaid, there were emotions untapped, there were wishes unfulfilled.  

But we did the best we could, and it was pretty good.  

As John Denver sang in Poems, Prayers and Promises….” I have to say it now it’s been a good life all in all.”

Marty, I love you today as much as I did when we married.  I doubt that will change.

Choosing Your Family

My uncle in Houston recently passed away and his funeral was being planned on the same day as a planned trip to Dallas to watch the red headed David Beckham, my five year grandson, Noah, play futbol. 

I called my son Matt to check on start times and talk to him about my choices.  Should I go see the grandson ply his soccer skills or should I do the right family thing and make the trek to Houston to pay respects?

I wasn’t completely flummoxed, I knew what I should do, I was caught between doing what I wanted to do and doing what was the right thing to do.

Marty was always my go to person when I was dealing with a conundrum, when I wasn’t flummoxed but needed a push in the right direction.  Marty had an internal compass to help point the way and she was never reluctant to tell me where to go and how to get there.  

The strokes really burned out that compass.  She’s a good listener and incredibly supportive of whatever I decide but she is not so much for the advice anymore.

I have a core group of people I turn to when I need to intellectually bounce things around, when I need to check my own moral compass.  My daughter is great to talk to about dealing with people.  She has her mother’s intuitive approach to humanity.  

My daughter-in-law keeps me in line socially; she helps me navigate the rather strange waters of being polite.  My son-in-law is the out of the box thinker, the one that sees a different way to approach a problem; he keeps us all from group think.

This one was for Matt, our son.  He can be my moral compass.  It’s not that he is “better than” or even thinks he is “better than”, he just has his mother’s compass.  Like everyone else I know he doesn’t always go where the compass points, but, like his mother he knows where it’s pointing, and, like me, he feels appropriately guilty when he ignores the needle.  He is an amalgam of his mother and father.

We talked and I told him my dilemma, which really wasn’t a dilemma; it was a case of want to versus an important need to and I already knew that.  He told me a story (that technique sounds vaguely familiar) about Noah, his five year old not wanting to get up for school.  The kid likes school, he just doesn’t want to get up and do the morning get ready hustle.  Matt told him that sometimes in life we have to do some things we may not want to, but we do them because they are important.  Again, it all sounds vaguely familial (not a typo).

Family, my family has become central to Marty and me.  In living my very important ego driven pre-stroke life I too often neglected family.  I talked a good game but my follow through kind of sucked.  That has changed; Marty’s illness has taught me the importance of family.

Sometimes a family fragments when something catastrophic occurs, not mine.  My entire family, our kids, their spouses, my parents, my brother, my sister, their kids have all rallied around Marty.  They have loved her, they have loved me, and they have unconditionally supported both of us.  Marty, in her own way has taught us all about the importance of closeness.  She, at least in my mind, has helped me find my family again.

I went to the funeral; I will go to one of Noah’s soccer matches another time.  I didn’t go to the funeral because I am a helleva guy, we have covered that before.  I didn’t go because of some sense of familial obligation or even because we sometimes have to do some hard things.  

I went because Marty taught me the importance of family; I went because, as my little brother said, it’s family.  Family is a big deal to me.  I admit it wasn’t always so, I now understand why it is a huge deal.  

I know what Marty would have told me to do because her legacy, her children told me.

Emotions Came Up

I haven’t seen Marty shed a tear in seven years and brother; she has had many reasons to cry.  I haven’t seen Marty purse her lips, rub her chin and narrow her gaze with anger since the strokes.  Her emotions are tamped down, the fire that once burned is subdued.

After Marty’s first stroke she became placid, quiet, and too internal for someone who was always very external in her thoughts, words and feelings.  After the 2^nd stroke, the woman who was once loud and brash became even quieter, more reserved and void of external emotional queues.  Her emotions are bottled up, seared over and sealed up by the damage to her brain.

But, emotions, feelings, are not to be denied forever.  They build, even for the most placid among us, like too much water in a balloon until they have to escape, until they have to erupt like ash and stone from a volcano.  I didn’t see it coming.

When I first got word that Marty’s mother had started to really deteriorate I told Marty what was happening.  It was a weekend we were at the lake and I could tell the news was on Marty’s mind.  She doesn’t always retain things she hears, those things she hears and remembers are a big deal.  She remembered about her mom, she was bothered, you could see it in her eyes and in her demeanor if you knew what bothered looks like for the new Marty.

When I asked her about going to Dalhart to see Jean she was immediately all in, yes, she wanted to go see her mother, yes, she wanted to go, yes she wanted to go right now.

We made the trip; we arrived in Dalhart late Saturday afternoon.  After we got settled I wanted Marty to rest a bit before we went to the world famous Bar H grill for dinner.  I also wanted to go to the nursing home and see Jean and kind of reconnoiter the situation, hoping I could see what was real and brace Marty just a little before she saw her mom.

Jean was in the dining room pulled up to a small table with another resident of the memory lane hall.  A nurse was trying to get her to eat just a little.  I watched as Jean sat there without any interest in the food, closing her mouth and shaking her head when it was offered.  Jean was sitting up in her wheelchair, good news; she wasn’t interested in eating and had lost too much weight, bad news. 

My ego wants me to think she recognized me as I knelt beside her chair in the dining room but I don’t really know if she knew me or just accepted I was someone safe.  She grabbed my hand, smiled just a little as I got close to her ear and reminded her who I was.  She didn’t say anything as I told her we had just made it to town and I would bring Marty to see her tomorrow.  She looked at me, clutched my hand tightly and said, “If she wants to.” 

She didn’t want me to go; she held my hand tightly as I stayed beside her chair for a few brief moments.  When the nurse came to move her back to her room she kind of forgot that she wanted me to stay, so I left with a heavy heart. 

I reported to Marty what I had seen; she didn’t seem fazed by it too much, she probably was too overloaded by the trip and the different surroundings to care what I said.

The next morning Renea, our steadfast caregiver, Marty and I went to Coon Memorial to see Jean.  She was in her bed, dressed, curled up, sleeping, sort of.  It wasn’t a deep sleep; it wasn’t a restful sleep as she continually moved around in the bed, moving her legs, pulling her right leg up under her left leg.

I tried to get Jean to come full awake but just didn’t have the heart to nag her too much.  I asked Marty if she wanted me to roll her closer and she nodded yes.  I pulled Marty’s chair next to the bed and sat beside her as she watched, upset, bothered, distraught over her mother’s condition.  “Skinny,” was all she said.

We had been there about ten minutes and I asked Marty if she wanted to go, she didn’t.  Jean had rolled over on her right side with her right hand resting on Marty’s chair, then she rolled on her left side with her back to us, that’s when Marty started to gag and heave just a little.  I immediately stood up and asked her if she was all right, a head nod, followed by continued gagging.  I asked her if she was about to throw-up, she shook her head no, and started to spit up a little bit of  phlegm. 

I don’t know why I do it, I’ve done it once before, I immediately cupped my hands under Marty’s mouth to keep whatever vile stuff came up off her shirt.  I hate vomit, it makes me sick, I don’t know why I would do that.  I nodded to Renea who was already getting a trash can, just in time to catch the morning’s breakfast. 

We left.

If you look you can find it.  There is something called sadness vomit, or at least that’s what Renea found and called it.  We went to the park by Lake Rita Blanca and decompressed, me fussing over Marty, badgering her with, “Are you okay?”, “Do you feel sick at your stomach?”  She probably thought, “Yes, at you.”

I think all of the sadness, all of the grief, all of the feelings of helplessness simply overwhelmed Marty.  The old Marty would have been at the nursing home all day and all night, she would have been looking at the charts, asking questions, challenging people.  She would have been talking about how sad everything was, she would have been dealing with her grief, with her worry, with her angst in tears, words and anger.

The new Marty, the Marty who has been changed by strokes could do nothing to help, she couldn’t adequately express or address the fear, the anger, the sadness she felt.  She simply got sick; the emotions erupted in a simple bodily function.  She vomited.

We got back to Waco Monday afternoon.  We were all exhausted from the emotions of the trip, the brief time away and the drive, the seemingly interminable drive across Texas.

Tuesday Marty and I talked.  It had occurred to me maybe when it was time for a funeral she might not want to return, she might want to avoid the emotional upheaval that is a certainty with a return trip to Dalhart.

Me, “I think it’s going to be a real simple funeral, is that okay with you?”

Marty, “Sure, it makes sense.”

“Do you want to go back?”

Resolutely, defiantly, emphatically, “Yes, I want to go.”

“But it made you sick, I worry about that.  What if you get sick again?”

“I might,” she said, not trying to reassure me, “You might want to bring a trash bag in case I do, I’m going to the funeral.”

That’s the Marty that wouldn’t worry about expressing her emotions.  That’s my Marty.