I like to believe I am confident, intelligent, in control most of the time. I hold certain beliefs that are so fundamental to my being that they are more like feelings, or even more like part of my structure, my foundation. I don’t even realize I have these beliefs, but when something threatens them, something happens to perhaps change those truths, those beliefs – well, I feel like I’m stepping into my house, everything is the same, the walls, the furniture, the smells, and yet the floors are gone. So the house can’t be the house anymore. It’s still my home, but it’s entirely different.
I am so scared. I am so scared because he is scared. He is being so nice to me. He is so concerned for me right now. He cleans the house, he says “Whatever you want to do is fine with me” when I ask him if he wants to go somewhere. And he is scared. He said last night that he had always been afraid that maybe he had a ruptured disk or some other ailment that was going to require surgery. Looking back, he wishes that had been the diagnosis.
My mother called me last night to tell me where she and my dad were going to be. “Just wanted you to know we’ll be at the E.H. Golf course if you need us for anything.” Need them? I go weeks without knowing where they are, and now they feel the need to stay in hourly contact it seems.
My mother bought two burial plots a couple of weeks ago, and before she purchased them she kept bugging my sister and me to go look at them with her. We both told her she was nuts, we didn’t too, and Beany even felt that in light of her recent trauma that it would be bad luck! So yesterday my mother said again that she wanted me to go look at them with her. I told her she was silly, but fine, I would go with her so she could just buy the damn things. Then she said to me “I already bought two. But I want to buy two more.” I said “What for, so you can have extra room in your coffin?” and then I got it. I got it. And then she said “we can even get an extra big headstone on it for our name and for DTE’s”. fuck fuck fuck.
My dad drafted a letter for me to make a withdrawal from a retirement account he had set up for all three of us kids. He left the dollar amount blank and said “Take whatever you want”. And then he called his former colleagues and got information for us about the neurosurgeon D has the appointment with, and also got us the name of another one so we can go for a second opinion if we want.
I think about how empty our lives would be. I would have to be the driver all the time. I would have to make the oatmeal for Lucy. Lucy would be mad forever. He is her best friend. And GMan, there are things he only feels ok talking to his dad about. He needs that man in his life, the one man who doesn’t have bogus “man” expectations, the one man who encourages G’s creative side, and his love of animals (stuffed or otherwise)…
I feel like we’re having sex less often. We probably are, because of the pain medication he’s taking. He can’t even lay on his side like he used to. We always, always sleep curled up next to each other. I find it hard to fall asleep without his warm body next to mine, the full length of him in front of me. And now he sleeps almost sitting up, and only for a few hours at a stretch. How will I sleep without him? That, to me, is one of the biggest ways I would notice his absence. It would be huge.
This is too real. Every time we hold hands I’m thinking “god, don’t let it be, don’t let it be, I want to keep on holding hands.” My kids need hime. They NEED him. I can’t do for them what he does. If he is gone, I don’t know how they will go on. And I don’t know how I’ll function, either. Like the floor, I take him for granted far too often. But I know I need him. My belief, my truth, is that he is in my life, daily, alive.
