AKA "The Writing Woman"
I think I keep waiting for your return.
Maybe you’re at the store. Maybe you even left town for a couple of weeks, as strange as that would be.
Maybe you’re off riding your bike…riding, riding…back streets, dirt roads, through the park, enjoying yourself on this beautiful 76° day.
Maybe you’re at Costco roaming the aisles, checking out all the … Read the blog
Jo asked me if I was better off after losing you than I was before we met.
We were talking finances, and the answer is yes.
But how many other ways am I better off today?
You told me so often how intelligent I was, how beautiful, how sexy, how talented. You disparaged others who didn’t appreciate me as an … Read the blog
Two decades in the middle of my life. In time, is that what you’ll become? I man I loved for two decades of my life?
Twenty years is so awfully awfully short. Why does it hurt so much to picture you this way? To think that some day you’ll be a man I once loved?
Will I be an old … Read the blog
My life has become a movie: Groundhog Day.
Every morning I wake up and realize you’re gone all over again.
I drive in my car on the way home from work, looking forward to seeing you when I get there – oh wait, Rick is dead. I knew, but I forgot.
I walk into my house and suddenly realize the … Read the blog
Since May, Rick wasn’t himself. The radiation caused pneumonitis in the same lung as the tumors it had killed. We enjoyed our wonderful Florida vacation beginning the second week of April, but the final week, he began experiencing pain in his lung.
It became more difficult for him to walk up the slight slope of the sandy beach each evening … Read the blog
Life is easier now. Since the cancer diagnosis last fall, it’s been continuous stress: monitoring, doctor visits, pills, x-rays, tests, scans, chemo, radiation, shots, canes, then walkers. Reading about cancer, and pneumonitis, and blood cells, and medical studies, and alternative treatments. Trying to get you to eat, trying to help you dress and shower, trying to inspire you to get … Read the blog
I hear a lawn mower running outside. It’s a beautiful (too early) fall day. You would love this. You would love the smell of autumn, and the sounds of the mower outside the window. You would want to take a nap with the window open, curled like a burrito in your old stinky blanket. You would tell me that since … Read the blog
It’s work at home Friday again. I can imagine you in your office, doing whatever chore is required today to keep the business going. I can hear you asking me, “Is there anything I can do to help?” when I complain that there are too many deadlines and I can’t keep up.
I can’t go there. I can’t start picturing … Read the blog
You did everything you were supposed to do.
I asked if you were angry. You said, what can I do? All I can do is what they tell me now.
And you did.
Four rounds of chemo
Pills for nausea
30+ lung radiation treatments
10 brain radiation treatments
Numerous numerous numerous blood tests
3 blood transfusions
Shots for the low … Read the blog
Officially dead.
One by one, form by form, I remove your name from our accounts and you begin to disappear from this world.
No longer joint owner on our bank accounts, credit cards, mortgage, pension.
No longer listed as beneficiary on anything of mine.
Removing your name from each feels like a dagger through my heart.
… Read the blog