Jane is a Widow

This week is full of triggers……Father’s Day being the start.  The week before Father’s Day Troy was feeling and looking pretty good.  The new chemo was working better and his tumor markers had improved.  I often find myself going over in my mind how things changed so fast.  On Father’s Day Trey said he noticed that he was acting different.  I didn’t notice but I think I was preoccupied with all that was going on and Jay had come for a visit.  Monday morning didn’t seem different to me but when I got home from work that night he was sleeping in the chair and he stayed there all night.  I remember waking several times during the night and hearing the tv so I knew he was still sitting in his chair.  The next morning he couldn’t even get up to get dressed.  I remember him asking me to call the doctor and ask them to call him in something.  Trey came over because he was going to go to the doctor’s appointment with him while I went to mine.  He couldn’t even get out to the car by himself.  And from there things just went downhill…..After they admitted him to the hospital for pneumonia and started the antibiotics he seemed to be doing better.  He was on oxygen but not as much as when he first arrived.  That night he sent me texts telling me how much he loved me and to tell the dogs good night from him.  He was saying how nice the nurses were.  He sounded good but something happened in the middle of the night that turned things all around.  I can still remember it all like it happened just yesterday.  Breathing became more and more difficult for him the next day or two.  The next step was to put him on a ventilator.  They actually said it would maybe help him get through the next couple of days while the antibiotics took effect.  I need to take a break here……I just get so emotional when I think about it all.  I know he wouldn’t want me to get upset.  He would want me to be smiling.  Just like he always did.  He was smiling through it all.  God how I miss him.

It’s been a while since I’ve written anything.  Doesn’t mean that I’m not thinking about him or our life together.  Today old memories are poking at me.  I think it’s the time of the year.  He loved the spring.  He would be planning our garden.  The time trials in Indy were about the same time we would be thinking about what to grow in our garden.  The tulips would be blooming alongside the house, and the crab apple tree would be beautiful as always.  I miss those days, it’s almost like I can touch them but they are just out of my reach.  In just a matter of weeks the fair would be on in Middletown.  That was the highlight of our summer growing up.  The one thing we all looked forward to.  I could sit on the steps of our house growing up and listen to all the sounds coming from the rides.  That’s where I first saw Troy when I was 16.  I was with some friends and we passed him.  I wanted so much to meet him.  I eventually did and the rest is history.  That seems so long ago, I guess it was.  I love my memories.  They take me back to a time when everything wasn’t so complicated.  I miss walking the streets of that little town and having all the guys honk at you.  Meeting everyone at the park and standing around talking and laughing.  I didn’t realize that those were the best times.  I find so much comfort in my memories…….

Yesterday would have been our 43rd wedding anniversary.  I spent the day reflecting on what my day was like on that Saturday forty three years ago.  How happy I was, I felt like I was the happiest girl in the world, sure didn’t think that sometime down the road I would be going solo.  No one ever tells you about that when you get married, they don’t tell you that it’s not always going to be this way.  But we are all on borrowed time.  Nothing lasts forever.  It’s hard to believe that it will be five years this June.  It doesn’t feel like its been that long, it seems like yesterday.  Like everything is frozen in time.  So I just inch forward a little each day.  Happy Anniversary, Troy!

Was thinking about Troy last night and today.  He always got me a card for Valentine’s Day and either some candy or a present.  I still have the card that was attached to the flowers he sent me the first Valentine’s Day after we married.  1977 was the year. They were red roses sent to where I worked, Ball Corporation.  They were beautiful.  He always remembered to get the kids something for Valentines Day too.  I’m really missing him today, some days it just knocks the wind out of me.  It takes so much effort sometimes to keep moving forward.  But he would want me to.  He would not want me to be sad…..he would want me to keep moving forward and when I look back to smile on all the memories we made.  They are mine forever and priceless.

I am so glad the holidays are over.  No matter how hard I try they are just not the same without Troy.  He loved Christmas and always shopping at the last minute.  And he always came up with the best gifts.  You could tell he put a lot of thought into what he bought.  They were unique gifts.  I sometimes wondered how he came up with some of them.  Christmas was always hard for me.  My childhood memories of Christmas aren’t very good.  But Troy made up for all of that, so without him I find myself sinking back in that depressing mood from years gone by.  I know he would be upset with me for moping around.  But he’s not here to make it all right.  He always knew the right thing to do or say.  He always made it all right.  He knew me so very well.   I guess spending all those years with me he could read me so very well.  I think I need to be somewhere else when the holidays roll around next year.  Maybe somewhere warm and beautiful.  I said that same thing last year and I didn’t go anywhere this year.  I’m finding the more I stay at home the more I want to stay at home.  That’s probably not a good thing.  I need to work on that……

It seems I once again find myself longing for holidays past……..When I look back they were the happiest of times, the kids were little, both sets of grandparents were alive, and of course I thought it would never end.  But it did.  They are memories now, and I wouldn’t trade them for anything but sometimes I wish I could go back there if just for one moment.  The memories get all muddled together but I am so thankful for them.  Sometimes a memory can smooth over a painful moment.  Kind of put a glaze over it so you don’t feel the sting so bad.  The holidays for me have changed so much.  I don’t really recognize them anymore.  Sadly, I really don’t look forward to the holidays anymore.  I often wish I was away on a trip, someplace different.  Maybe unfamiliar surroundings would lessen the pain.  Start a new tradition.  Troy loved the holidays.  He loved nothing more than having his children around.  So this Christmas again I will miss him and his silly shopping antics.  Troy, it’s just not the same without you.

I cried all the way to work today.  It has been a long time since I have done something like that.  As I was driving and I could see the wide open grey autumn sky and hints of fall colors in some of the trees, I felt an overwhelming sadness come over me.  I missed Troy so much and Indiana so much.  All those autumns we spent together there, I miss it all so much.  The smell of burning leaves in the air, and sitting round a campfire roasting hot dogs and marshmallows.  The air would be so crisp in the morning.  I have such wonderful memories of life in Indiana.  When I was in grade school and walked to school, I would look for the prettiest red and golden leaves to press in a book.  Our street we lived on had huge maple trees on it and the leaves would just be beautiful in the fall.  I miss all that.  I miss my Dad, my husband, my in-laws.  I loved them all so much.  I miss my Aunt Beulah.  So much has changed in my life since 2014.  I’m so thankful for all the fond memories.  They comfort me on those chilly days.

I didn’t write anything on October 16 which was a day from hell for sure in 2013.  I can still remember standing in the outpatient area looking at Troy as he moaned and groaned and hearing the doctor say the word “cancer”.  I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs, and tell him he was lying, Troy did not have cancer.  He was going to be just fine.  You know how when you’re a kid and you put your fingers in your ears and sing lalalalala while someone is trying to tell you something you don’t want to hear, well I wanted to do that so bad.  Scream lalalalalala at the top of my lungs and plug both ears so I couldn’t hear all the awful things the doctor was saying.  I ran to the bathroom and called Trey, and I remember saying your Dad has cancer.  What are we going to do?  And if that wasn’t bad enough, he needed to go by ambulance to the hospital because the doctor had perforated his esophagus.  And one of the nurses kept telling Troy to be quiet.  That pissed me off.  Tell someone who is in agony to be quiet, are you kidding me?  I reported her to the doctor and the hospital,  they said  a perforation of the esophagus is very painful.  And she was telling him to be quiet.  I wanted to scream would someone please stop this merry go round so I can get off.  My head was just spinning from it all.  I just kept thinking this cannot be happening but it was, Troy who was one of the kindest people I have ever known had cancer and it was bad.  When we got to the hospital the doctor was showing me how it had already spread to his lungs and liver.  Again I wanted to plug my ears and sing lalalalalala.  It was all so surreal, like I was outside looking in.  Like it couldn’t really be happening, but it was.  I always feel sad around this time of the year.  Troy loved autumn and so do I but I can’t forget the day our  lives did a complete turn around.  Our lives would never be the same.  And that day will forever be etched in my mind.  The beginning of hell.

I haven’t written for a while.  I’ve been in a funky kind of mood.  As it got closer to Troy’s birthday, I became more teary eyed.  God, I miss him so much.  I want him back so much.  But he’s not coming back, I have to keep telling myself that.  No matter how much I want him back, he’s not coming back.  And now I am in that time of year when we took our last vacation together, went to the beach.  He picked the place out, I think he knew he was very sick.  I mentioned going to Vegas and he said let’s go to the beach.  I think he wanted to see the beauty that only comes from the ocean.  We would sit on the balcony every night and watch the waves crashing and the sun going down.  We would walk through John’s Pass and stop in at all the little shops.  It rained a lot when we were there but the ocean was still beautiful.  I’m glad he picked our last vacation together.  God, I miss him so much……..

I haven’t been here in a while, feelings have been up and down.  Mostly down.  I keep trying to put one foot in front of the other but I find myself back-pedaling a lot.  I’ve let myself get so content with just being in my home, in my space with my dogs.  I am merely existing.  Not really living.  I keep telling myself to get up and step forward but I find myself right back where I started.  Troy made everything right, he always knew what to do and when to do it.  I have lost all sense of direction since he’s been gone.  I am sure he would be disappointed in me.  I often remember the remark he made about someone who had a car wreck in our neighborhood and died.  The family put up a cross where the wreck happened.  On more than one occasion he said to me, you would think the family would just move forward and not put up a cross……. I think of that a lot.  You see it’s harder to do than  you think.  Unless you’ve been through it, you just don’t get it.  Everything in your life comes to a screeching halt, nothing is ever the same, NOTHING!! I hate that phrase “pick up the pieces”  You can’t pick up the pieces.  How do you pick up the pieces of your life you had together.  They don’t fit anymore.  They are all jagged and sharp.  No color.  There is such a big piece missing that you can never replace, nothing will ever fit there.  You try but it just doesn’t fit.