It's Her Birthday

August 23^rd, Marty’s dad, Arty, was born in 1925, I think I have the year correct.  August 23^rd, Marty’s birthday twin, Ellen Elliot, was born, seven years ago.  August 23^rd, 1954, Marty Jean Watkins came into the world in Clovis, New Mexico.  

The world, at least for some of us, was irrevocably changed, mostly for the better.

It’s been about 13 weeks since Marty left us, I want to say left me but that’s not even close to accurate, she left a lot of us in May.

I’m not sure what to do with this day, I’m just not.  It’s sad, it’s okay, if’s fine 3.0.  I’m just not sure how this day is supposed to work anymore.

When Marty’s dad passed away in 2004 I know Marty dreaded that first August 23^rd when she wouldn’t be able to sing “Happy Birthday to Us” with her Dad.  The first stroke kept her from having to deal with that day.

I’ve talked to both Erin and Matt today and I think they feel the same way I do, a bit of confusion on how to do this day.  It’s sad, I mean real live sad, but somehow on Marty’s birthday, on this August 23^rd we can’t be washed in simple grief and sadness.  

Somehow I think we, I know Marty would have wanted, must “suck it up” and remember on this day the Marty that was, the Marty that made us laugh, that made us cry, that made us think, that made us love, that made us understand love, that made us have courage. 

The Marty that touched my soul.  

I think today of all days I want to remember sitting around the dinner (supper if you’re from the country like me) table talking with the kids and asking them about their day, asking them who they sat with at lunch, asking them what they learned.

I want to remember the little sticky note Marty gave me with an imprint of her lips on them, the sticky note I carried in my billfold for years to remind me who I was.

I want to remember sitting in a garage of a rental house in Lubbock Texas watching and smelling the rain as Marty and I fell in love.

I want to remember watching her ski down the slopes at Red River and Angel Fire.  I want to remember her pulling me out of a snow drift in Breckenridge Colorado.

I want to remember lying in bed with Marty, laughing about something completely stupid that no one else in the world would have thought that funny.  

I want to remember the encouragement, the advice, the ear she gave me when work seemed 

impossible.

I want to remember the way she cradled and loved our children.  I want to remember her working on a paper Mache shark for one of Matt’s projects.  I want to remember her working on a video for a little girl named Erin who was thinking about being a doctor.

I want to remember how she cried when we dropped off the kids at college, and how we felt a mutual pride that they were ready and maybe we helped with that.

I want to remember a woman who was broken by a deadly stroke who stood on a rehab staircase, raised her hands in celebration and shook her back side.

I want to remember a woman who held my hand tightly and looked me dead in the eyes and said I love you too many times to count.

There’s just so much there, so many amazing moments and things I think about every day when my heart allows my mind to go there.  So many years, so many good things, so many happy moments interspersed with the worst of all times.

On this day, on this day when it feels so sad, when the mind realizes the magnitude of the loss, I remember her smile and her laugh, both of which always did and always will fill me with an eternal happiness.

Bone Crushing

There are times it is bone crushingly sad; occasionally the sadness of what has happened permeates every part of me.  It runs so deep and is so real it is almost a physical pain.  It never lasts long and it almost always happens late at night, at times when I feel most alone.

What has happened to Marty, to our life, is sad, it’s awful, it’s unimaginable to people who had lived such a charmed life, to people who hadn’t known much illness, to people who had seen little death and had lived lives of relative privilege and success.  

But it happened, the strokes happened, the life changing event erupted quickly.  The result, the consequence of the eruption is beyond sad.

The good news is that feeling sad; feeling the loss, feeling grief has become only a small part of our lives.  As time slowly moves us away from the days of the strokes, as the days of walking the black precipice has receded, so has the constancy of the sadness.  

The depth of the pain is there, the intensity of the grief is still present, but mostly it is set aside, hidden, tamped down as life necessarily continues.  Mostly, I just don’t think about it as often because there are too many other things to feel.

The truth is we laugh more than we cry, we joke more than we grieve, and we work hard at living a simple, scaled down life that is, at times, very hard.  

I see other people who must deal with overwhelming sadness, the people who have lost a child, the husband who has lost his wife to Alzheimer’s, the wife who has seen her husband succumb to disease to the point where neither spouse can recognize the other, and the soul mates that are now separated by death.  My Marty is here and present and knows who I am and that is my saving grace.

I get to hear Marty laugh and best of all I get to laugh with her; laughter was always one of the best parts of our marriage.  Marty knows me, she knows her children, she knows her grandchildren.  I don’t have to worry about Marty wandering off, I don’t have to worry about Marty taking the wrong medication, I don’t have to worry about her being afraid of me because I’m a stranger.  Through the muck of this life, Marty and her story of survival brings smiles to so many so how could you always be sad.

Our life is not smooth; it’s not what I would call easy.  It’s hard, in some ways and on some days it feels impossible.  We have missed out on so many opportunities, so many moments, so many events.  Like so many others in the world we have missed part of a life we had hoped on living, but at least we are still living and on the whole living well.  

Our journey through life has been seriously interrupted and we have had to deviate from a planned path or at least the idea of a path.  The interruption has been at times seriously sad, frightening, unbearably difficult and awe inspiring to me and to those who watch and admire Marty.

Occasionally a soul killing sadness grips me and starts to suffocate me.  We will always have the “what might have been” hang over our lives, we will have to carry a certain amount of sadness with us on our journey… it just is. 

 Fortunately, today, the happy times for Marty and the happy times for me outweigh the weight of the strokes, and the journey continues.

It's Just A Cold

I’m not sure everyone who cares for the chronically ill experience the same feeling, the same impact. I know I do, but there may be others who handle things better.  I just know, for me, it takes very little to color life darkly.  The small stuff, a lousy cold, can suck the life out of a good time.

Marty got a cold.  It changed my view.  Marty sneezed, coughed and wheezed; it colored my every waking and sleeping minute.  It still does, it still will until the last dribble, until the last cough is clear.  

It doesn’t have to make sense.  It doesn’t have to be reasonable.  It is real, just as real as the seasonal color changes.  The change in her cough colors everything I see and how I feel on a minute to minute basis.  It’s just plain crazy to let something so small change not only my perspective on the present but my memories of the past.  Crazy clearly is my life.

Marty’s cold came the day before Christmas.  It kept us from Christmas Eve services with our children and grandchildren.  Given the report of the chaos of those moments maybe the cold spared us anxiety.  I would have liked to have had that anxiety with my kids; Marty would have liked to have had that anxiety.

The cold wasn’t the flu, it wasn’t with high fever or the oft times accompanying low blood pressure or low oxygen levels.  It was a cold; a hacking, sneezing, snot dribbling cold.  It was something simple, but something that changed my perspective on holidays, present and past.

Christmas day was full; Marty rested the best she could given the blowing, sneezing and running.  The family was there, the house was brimming with people, with food, with warmth; with all of the good things of Christmas.  We sang Noah’s prayer, we ate, we laughed, we traded gifts, it was the red and green and bright lights of Christmas.  

But, by the end of the day, when it started to get quiet, when family filtered out the door and the day started to wind down, the color of the day, for me, grew darker as I grew more tense and more worried and more focused on the dark side of my life with Marty.  

By the end of the day I had carefully and artfully taken what had been a comfortable Christmas and convinced myself that we had never had a good holiday, that there had never been a worry free Christmas and that I was destined to miss out on the pure joy of any special time because of some cough or sneeze or wheeze.  I completely colored our entire life with dark shades.

Normal for most is treating the cold, accept the cold, deal with the snot, deal with the cough, lie down for a day and move on.  We don’t deal in normal; at least I don’t see any of this as normal.  I see it, right or wrong, as the potential precursor for something much worse than a cold.  How’s that for optimism and Christmas joy.  A cold is the harbinger of a funeral.  

At the dark of that Christmas night I pitied myself into a party.  My daughter tried.  She reasoned with me, “Mom is stronger, healthier and better able to withstand a cold, we know more than we used to, this is just a cold, we know what to do.”

Doesn’t matter, didn’t matter, I let the perceived magnitude of a moment in time color reality and erase years of reality.

We came home from the lake the next day a day earlier than we had planned.  Marty got a bit better during the day but she still labored under the cold and all of the coughing and sneezing stressed her lungs to the point she was wheezing too much.  But she got better and just like Erin tried to tell me, Marty is stronger and we do know better how to handle things.

It took me days to gain the perspective to see what I had talked myself into, the tricks I had played with my own head.  It took me days and sweating with Gretchen the fitness muse to finally say, I over reacted; I maximized and let the moment take over not only our present but our past.  I wish I was smarter, I wish I could see the truth in real time.

We’ve been to Great and Wise, he had a cold over Christmas too.  Marty is over the cold and God willing will avoid the flu making the rounds.  We did take the flu shot, I hope you did too.  

By the way, I did get the same cold and just like Marty, I got over it, just like a normal person does.

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.