All About The Numbers

As I was on a gurney riding in an ambulance the other day, I told the attendant that I expected to ride in a limo some day, in fact it is on my bucket list.  The ambulance hardly qualified.

  The other thing on my bucket list is to visit Italy next year, but the more rides in an ambulance seems to reduce my odds.  Especially since the day before I had ended up in a wheelchair pushed to the ER across from my doctor's office.  It really is all about numbers.

The trip to the ER via wheelchair seem to be related to the fact that my blood pressure reading was 80/40.  Small wonder my get up and go truly has departed lately.

The numbers dilemma came up the next day when, back at home, my pulse registered 176 on my fancy new wrist BP machine, and an earthquake was rumbling in my chest.  This time I was told to call 911.  Thus the ambulance ride, sirens blaring.

Once in the ER again qualifying for a cubicle pdq, , all kinds of things got shoved into me, blood taken out of me and the prominent number now was my DOB.  Ten-eleven-thirty-one, I said.  Over and over again.  It would more efficient if they wrote it on a piece of duct tape and taped it to my forehead.

About the numbers, I don't mind answering my date of birth but when an attendant calls across the hall what was my height I yelled the answer, 4 feet eleven, but I'll be darned if I yell my weight back.  I accepy the indignity of a gown tied at the top with my back side flapping in the breeze, but announcing my weight to  the world of the ER is beyond embarrassing.

In case you are wondering what caused these blips on the radar screen of my life, the answer is uncertain.  The plan is to cut in half  the strength of my blood pressure medication,  record the readings twice daily.  Also an aerotic aneurism in my abdomen shouldn't get past certain numbers either.

I see my doctor in another 3 days.  Checking on the numbers.

By the way, riding in the ambulance, I had the distinct feeling of Des with me.  I told him to relax and go visit his brothers until I get up there.  I am going to Italy first.

So says Sassy

Mind Trips...a Mine Field

One of my favorite books is The Christian Agnostic, by Leslie Weatherhead.  Lately, in my wondering and wandering through memories, I get bogged down in more questions than answers, and I puzzle over scriptual truths.

Along comes Leslie to tell me not to fuss over doubts and worries, he said to put them up on a shelf, and label it "Awaiting Further Light."   Easy for him to say, I think, struggling with my over loaded shelf.

I want to know if Des sees me through the clouds.  Does he hear my sniffles, listen to me talk to our cats?  Does he know I can't find his ashes, saved in a heart shaped  silver container by our bed. I keep searching.  It has to be here.  My mother always prayed to the patron saint of missing objects, St. Anthony.  I have Tony on speed dial.  No luck so far.

Another thing, has Des hooked up with his family who must have been excited to see him.  Or is excitement not a heavenly term?  I told him on the day he died, when he was still responding to my voice, to save a place for me up there.  I meant it.

He told me a few months ago that he would miss me when he was gone.  Is that possible?  All I know for sure is that he inhabits my thoughts a lot in supermarkets because I bypass his favorite treats, and I am undone in church sometimes when I look up at the stained glass picture and see him peering over the shoulder of Jesus. 

Gabriel, our grandson in New York set my heart at peace the other day on the phone, when I told him it hard been a tough week, at least in my thought patterns.

Gabe said, "I know one thing for sure, Gramps wants you to be happy."  Thank for the reminder, Gabe.

So says Sassy

Birthday Blues

Mail is not always the bearer of glad tidings.    Usually the mail box is crammed with catalogs, pleas for donations, bills and other junk mail.   Not to mention the ubiquitous mailing labels.      Today,  Happy Birthday card arrived for my huband from the Claremont School of Theology.   Addressed to Dr. Doyle Shields.  I considered  forwarding it to heaven, but I might get it back with 'insufficient postage.'

No need to remind me that his birthday on July 24th is one of the many 'firsts' survivors traverse on the path to the new normal.  He would have been 88.  A good run for a sickly child with low expectations for a long, productive life.  Lucky me he landed in Ventura County  where we met in July and ended up married in November.  What a crazy impetuous, joyful decision that was in 1971.   Who said it wouldn't last?

I write this in my new office in the room that was his old office.  No resemblance to each other.  My cats have made adjustments to my new digs as well.  When Des  held court in this room, the cats sat wherever they decided to perch.  If it was on a pile of papers Des needed, he just sat back patiently until they moved on. 

As for me, when Murphi nuzzles my hand clutching the mouse (not real), interfering with words of wisdom,  I move him off my knuckles and finally show him the door.  Not to worry about his wounded psyche.  He'll be back. 

Since I am not in a celebratory mood this month, A new life is about to emerge next month.  Another great grandchild for Suzanne and Ryan.    somewhere in mid-August,  Matthew Ryan Jaeger, will join their family. .Big brother Lucas and Nathan can't wait.   Life does go on.  And we are grateful.

So says Sassy

 

A Mixed Bag

This journey through the latest chapter in life without my life partner still seems like a bad dream at times.  Other times, I am almost complacent.   The good, bad and the almost surprising, weave in and out of the days and now nearly four months later in my untethered world.

Lately, days are full of laughter, nights not so much fun.  But all in all, surviving and soon thriving is my goal.

I sit at my desk in my new office, once occupied by Des, typing in a room full of light and books and memories and  files and family pictures.   Murphi is stretched alongside the computer screen, purring softly.  I peer out the window and see trees and sky. 

What does Des see, I wonder.  I feel his love here.    More so in church, and even in the supermarket, where I reach for his Oatmeal crunch cookies and remember to put them back.  Change surrounds me.  Life goes on.

My Wednesday afternoons are taken up with a grief group conducted byt the assisted living people associated with Hospice.  Went to my first one last week,  getting lost looking for a streed named Westinghouse that is behind a Tire store off Telephone.  I will go back again.  Seems to fit my needs.  The counsellor ended the session by having us share something humorous about our loved one.  We all did and left laughing.  How appropriate to celebrate his life this way. 

He used to tell me, I'll miss you when I'm gone.  Ain't that the truth.

So says Sassy  

Shifting Tides

I have been a widow for three months.  Grief comes and goes, not in the five stages reflected in books on death and dying.  I mourn in a crooked, winding path of sweet memories follwed by piercing guilt and empty wishes.  I skipped over denial.   I held Des when he breathed his last breath.  It came so easy, silently, peaceful.

Anger has no  place in my mourning.  Anger is for the living,  meaningless without  a target.  Void of  energy.   Yet, I am not embracing acceptance quite yet,  To embrace acceptance, I must consider the future.  Right now, ny goal is to live in the here and now.

His presence surrounds me, his voice breaks  through the silence  and I look at his snapshots, here and there around the house.  Silly ones, as wearing his green top hat mugging for St. Patrick's day, or staring patiently at his beloved cat, Murphi sprawled across his desk, scattering papers and notes without a reprimand.  His best buddy he calls him,  the guys, he calls our cats.  Of course, their female gender is not acknowleged.  Although he did once muse aloud about his household of females.  His harem I said.

This is my first blog since I stroked his face and told him he was going on a wonderful journey to see , at last, his brothers, Ep, Dick and Merle....his mother and father and friends who made a path for him to follow.   I told him to save a place for me.  I am comforted by my faith, family, friends and furry critters. 
 
 Des always said, sudden death, sudden glory.  Meanwhile, I plan not to waste this gift of life.   Love and gratitude - it is all there is.    

So says Sassy 

Dumpster No.4 Departs

The dumpster arrived last Tuesday ready to absorb the past, But the garage views it with suspicion.   On the first day, we label boxes 'save', Dump and donate.  By the end of day four, after three loads gone, Dumping is only option.  I was merciless.  Des, I am sure is appalled.  Hope he is over it by the time I join him in our heavenly palace.

Meanwhile the garage has room for my car, suitcases,  a cabinet with tools and more, plus a bottom drawer with old, old letters he saved.  These go back to 1983 when there was major chaos I won't share.  But Yikes!  How we got through that challenge, Only God knows and actually that's who saved our sanity.

I'm saving his office for when I no longer have bouts of sadness, especially  on Sundays.  I have been reading, "Fear"  Essential Wisdom For Getting Through The Storm" by Thich Nhat Hanh.  It is helping me deal with memories  of those Sunday visits to the Mound when after visiting him, guilt followed me home. 

 Hahn reminds us that our memories can cause us real suffering, both emotionally and physically.  Save them for a later time when we can look at them compassionately, he advises.  My true home is in the here and now.  The past is not my true home.  Easy for him to say, I think.

Then I find a Plastic bag labeled 'Dick's handkerchiels for baptisms'  and two neatly folded linen handkerchiefs are in it.  Dick, his beloved brother, and baptisms to remind me of his calling.

Gratitude kicks in about here, and I know what a great ride these 41 years have been.  Last week Sheb Wooley's.  widow, Linda Dotson and I were reminiscing on the phone about what kind of mischief Des and Sheb were up to now.  They were great friends.  Linda  said, "But Weren't we lucky gals to be loved by such wild, crazy guys?"

Absolutely, so says Sassy

Snapshots of Happiness

     It is more fun to go through old snapshots than clean out a garage.  Our garage holds strange and unfahomable tools and other things that Des was loathe to toss out.  This is the week we start the sorting with a handyman named Dana referred to me by  my Dr. Murphy who happens to be his brother.  I recommend either one whether you have pain in you joints or in your clutter.   But I digress.

    About snapshots, they  seem to multiply faster than ants at a picnic.   Boxes and albums abound.  I started to separate families into separate stacks so I can offer them for the taking,  when I noticed a common thread.  Des and I looked happy, smiling at the camera with eyes that smiled too.

   There we were at the foot of the Eiffel Tower, waiting our turn to go up to the top.  In another we wore bright orange life vests on a cruise to Alaska during a lesson on what to do if the ship goes down.  Titanic flashed across my mind,  but then I can get dramatic.
Again on the water, we are  headed down the Columbia River following the path of Lewis and Clark in a bright red paddle wheel vessel.  More water, riding on the Maid of the Mist in NiagaraFalls.  Did I mention I can't swim?

    A last on land, there I am sitting on a swing in the back yard of brother and sister-in-law Dick and Siby Shields while she hangs out the wash in a soft summer breeze in Ripley, New York.  Still life in motion. 

    All these lead me to start an album, pictures and narratives of our life,  lived with gratitude..    I've decided to highlight  grand travels to Paris as well as tedious road trips across the country, west to east and back again. 

   We got acquainted with our blended families through our travels. Wish I had a snapshot of Des surrounded by my noisy Italian family in the basement of a home in Chicago.  A comic strip would show him with a cloud above his head, asking 'what did I get into?' 

  On the other hand, I got up close and personal with a cow on Dick's farm, awed at how big they are, city slicker that I was.   Des and were extremes in our backgrounds.  He was the youngest of 7 children, I was an only child.   I never finished college, he earned a doctorate.  Still our values matched and do did our faith.  Love made it work,  warts and all.

So says Sassy

    

My New Title

 I lost my status as a wife on March 12, 2013.  Now I am a widow and I don't like it.  I used to be somebody who belonged to someone.  We were a couple.  Now I am a single.

 Widows come in all sizes, ages and ability to cope.  I have gone through the early stages when a wave of sorrow washes over me like a sudden tsunami and I weep like a forlorn child.
Shopping in supermarkets bring on silent sadness as I pass watermelon.  Des loved water melon.  And cinammon rolls and cheese omelets and peanut buttter cups, and he loved me.

A week before he died, he wanted to just talk.  So I put down the book by Joel Osteen I had been reading to him and put my head on his shoulder.  We reminisced about highlights we had enjoyed over the years, especially the three months we spent in Hastings Nebraska where he ran agape groups for Bud Israel, the pastor of the local Methodist Church.  We loved the people and they seemed to love us.  Even me.   Especially when Des told them I could analyze handwriting. He like to brag about me, share his limelight.  A  sweet guy.
 
"We were a good couple," he said.  I agreed.  Why did I marry you, he asked.  Because I  was adorable, I said to make him laugh.  I loved to make him laugh.  It was a moving  conversation.  We both agreed that we would do it all over again.

Next morning, his speech was not good, another stroke maybe?  Who knows.  A few more days and he was gone.  But that last evening of clarity was a gift implanted in my memory.

So, now I cope.  Little by little.  I am most emotional in church where it is so easy to feel his presence,  I try to remember to bring a tissue, but my pal Donna hands me one wordlessly.   Easter was glorious and I saw him in the stained glass scene of Jesus surrounded by children.  I used to place him up there as a young boy, but on Easter morning when I looked up, he was all grown up, standing next to Jesus and looking at me. Believe it or not.  Another gift of faith.

The Hospice organization sent me information on ongoing grief groups I might want to attend.  I'll think about it.  This week my doctor told me I was resiliant.  Hope he is right.
  

  

  

cCats and Coping

     My cats miss my husband.  So Do I.  At least I can visit him at the residential care facility where he has lived for the past 5 months.  They grieve their loss.  I see it in their accusing eyes.  Or so it seems to me.  Cats are unfathomable.

    Des misses them, too  He aks me if I talk about him.  Do they remember him?  Oh, yes, I say.  Who wouldn't miss his adoring pats, his murmured words of love?  I do.  But I know where he is and why. They don't.  They stare at me with round unblinking eyes, hungry for affection.  So am I. 

     Their behavour has changed since his absence.  Mitzi, the more verbal and hedonistic cat, whines for attention and food.  Her sister, Murphi, the mellow orange ball of fluff, follows me, leaps above my recliner and settles in.  Her tail brushes my forehead.  She yawns and waits for my next move.  Often, she slides down to stare at me face to face, her whiskers brushing my cheek.  I pet her and say, I know, baby.  Life is not fair.

     Mitzi is more restless, moves about for a place to nestle. She avoids the love seat, their special place, where she and Des sat side by side watching television.  Des would hold her tail and she didn't mind.  Kind of like holding hands she  stared straight ahead, her paw resting on the arm of the love seat while I watched from my recliner.

    She hasnt found her new niche yet, but does replace Murphi on the perch above the recliner when Murph goes for a potty break.   Mitzi rests her chin on my head then rubs it back and forth with pressure.  I try to duck down so she can't reach my head, but Des would say, oh look how she loves you.  I would smirk and say she just wants food.  But maybe he is right.  We all want love, the  unconditional kind.  Agape love, Des called it way back when.

     Does he feel it now, ten minutes from home by car,  but permanently embedded  in our hearts?
 
     Murphy purrs, Mitzi whines and I sigh.   I'm working on gratitude, but it is a tough sell.

So Says Sassy

Comforting the Comforter

As I sneeze and cough, I find myself envying my husband. Actually, I covet what he has. Before your mind takes a wild leap, I'm not talking penis envy here.

I wish I had a wife, like he has. When he is sick, his wife (aka me) keeps hm comfortable, brings him food, rubs his aching back, pours tylenol down his open mouth. Keeps the ice coming, he loves ice water. Pile blankets over his freezing feet. He has neuropathy and is 'freezing.' So I stoke the fire. You get the picture. I am woman, therefore I am a comforter. It isn't a guy thing, in my wistful experience.

Most men prefer to solve abstract problems, like letting his wife know she should move over to the slow lane now. Even suggested recently that maybe she should take one of those driving classes for seniors now that he had to give up his license Men often do other stuff like taking out the trash, change light bulbs, wonder if someone should feed the cats. Someone is my other name, by the way. As for making a cup of hot tea and adjusting your pillow just right, not in his gender description. There must be some exceptions, though.

Come to think of it, in my childhood home, my father was the comforter. When I threw up in the middle of the night, my dad took care of it, letting my mother sleep. He gave me yummy hot toddies for a sore throat, had sympathetic brown eyes, curly mustache and soft brown eyes. His only flaw, a gambling addiction.

Well, the guy in this house, is only addicted to pampering , so getting another wife is not the answer either. I'll just have one more mouth to feed, while she brings him his slippers. Wish I had a hot toddy about now.

So Says Sassy

New Beginnings

The year is ten days old and I have not broken any resolution yet. That's probably because I resolved to make no resolutions this January. So far, so good.
Other years I was on a WWWW kick. Stood for water, write, walk and worship.

I drink water when swallowing pills. Never carry water with me anywhere. Not totally true. I have been known to carry a bottle of water when I go to water aerobics, but that's in case I have to swallow my dizzy pill. Translation: Antivert or meclizine for vertigo. Except that now I have discovered an over-the-counter version you can chew. I am becoming addicted to green tea with honey, lately. How healthy is that.

Walk is an easy one. I do it all the time. Every time my husband begins a sentence with, 'I hate to ask, but where is.....?' I jump up like Pavlov's dog and begin to look for whatever. Just an aside here: Pavlov was too smart to have a cat.

Worship is more than showing upon Sunday morning at church. I do that regularly. It is more than reading spiritually uplifting stuff. I do that, too. I'm working on finding out where I am most serene, more empty of mind chatter, awed by cloud pictures and gnarly trees, persistent sea gulls who peck at driveways at fast food places expecting against all odds to find a feast. Being present in the moment is where I am most likely feel the Presence I need.

Writing is a no brainer. Isn't that what I am doing right now? It comes upon me to write whenever a thought crosses my mind that would make a good story, or to pontificate or when something makes me smile like the pigeon I saw walking across the street in the crosswalk. Didn't he know he could fly? Who could fathom the mind of a bird, or anyone else, for that matter Think I'll write about that, but first I need some water. I'm thirsty.

So says Sassy