Q & A

I recently received an e-mail from a family friend & blog reader asking me some questions that were on his mind and I thought, instead of a personal reply, I would answer them here...

Q:  How do you think you're doing with grief, loss and loneliness?

A: I really don't know -- I mean some days I think I do fine, others: not so good.  Mostly, I miss Bob so much that it is hard to even get up in the morning. But I do. I drag myself up.  The dog is a good motivator with this.

I often feel lost.  I mostly feel lonely.  It seems the world has become an alien place where I no longer fit in.  I often ask myself, who am I? why am I still here? and what on earth do I do without Bob?  I feel as if a whole half of me is missing. My identity is shattered. And I have lost my purpose in life.

This is the hardest thing I've ever been through: harder than the stroke, the lawsuit, the daily grind of caregiving.  Harder I think because I no longer have hope, and before there was always hope, and something to look forward to and work toward. Now, the only thing I look forward to is the day that I may leave this earth and be with Bob again. I no longer fear death, but will welcome it with open arms when my time comes.



Q: What do you think caused the tears at the yoga class?

A:  The teacher and also my yoga guru friend said the many people cry at their first yoga class.  They say this is because the yoga positions release "toxins" and "pent up stresses" and emotions come flooding to the surface,

The yoga class was strangely intimate with low lights and soft music.  Some of the positions we were put in were almost weirdly "sexual" in nature, and perhaps that's why folks like yoga.  For me, it brought back feelings/memories I haven't had in a long time.  I found myself missing Bob, missing his touch, missing those feelings of intimacy, and mourning the fact that I will never feel his touch again.


Q: Are you still seeing a therapist or going to group sessions for grief?

A: Yes, I see both a therapist and psychologist-- unfortunately my therapist, just when I was getting comfortable with her, has been offered a job in Germany and so I start with a new therapist this coming week.  I am thinking about joining another group session when the next round begins, but haven't gotten the schedule yet and don't know what or when they are available. I see a therapist about every two weeks, the doctor every two months. The doc gives me lorazapam, and just doubled my dose.  Not sure if it is really working much.... though it does help with calming me down when I drive.

I still meet with a few folks from the spouse grief group as we go out to lunch once a month.  This is a nice diversion, but I feel often like an outsider.  I am the youngest in the group and conversations seem to revolve around the others' children, grandchildren, vacations and family get-togethers.... They also talk a lot about their hearing aids and other health problems!  Only when you get someone, aside, one on one, does anyone bring up the lost loved one....



Q: What do you do for entertainment or occupying your "free" time?

A: All I seem to have is "free time"! Some days really do seem endless and it seems all I do is count the hours until bedtime...  I do walk the dog, I read some, sit on the back porch and listen to the birds and wind chimes and watch the sky.  We have many ancient oak trees, draped with Spanish moss, in our neighborhood and at night their branches are hauntingly beautiful against the dark sky.  I watch way too much TV.  At night, all three of us pile on the couch:  Kona, Ripley and me.  Kona stretched like a long furry snake by my side, head on my knees. Ripley curled on my chest, paw extended around my shoulder. I am swallowed under this pile of snuggling furry love and I find it very comforting and we often fall to sleep like this with the TV on.

I have given up taking Kona to nursing homes as I found it more depressing than anything... I am taking Kona out with me more often, grocery shopping, etc., and we are working on working better together as a team.


Q: Have you thought about writing again?

A:  Yes, I have thought a lot about writing again, which I suppose is always to first step toward a new writing project.  I have been reading some "how to" books on memoirs, just to get some ideas on format etc.  I don't think I want to write a "caregiver" memoir but want to focus more on the lawsuit, the tragedy of what happened to Bob, and the injustice of the whole thing. That interspersed with our love story.  I am getting some ideas but have not put "pen to paper" yet.  I feel, very deeply, that Bob was murdered by those nurses and believe his story needs to be told.

A friend had sent me a journal to write in shortly after Bob's death and I just made the first entry in it yesterday. It's a start.

I know I'm not blogging as much as I used to --- feels like there is no longer much to say and I feel, sometimes, that no one really wants to hear about me and my grief anymore....


Q: Tell me about life...

A:  My life is no where near what it used to be --- but I think, we are all here, in this life, to learn something, to teach something and to grow.  I have learned a lot from Bob. I have learned what true love is and what is the most important thing in life --- love.  I do wonder what new lessons I need to learn, or what I need to teach, in the time I have left on this side....

Fun -- then Meltdown

Last week, my dear friend, Jenn, came to visit for a few days.  It was great to see her. We did a lot talking and a little site seeing, and I even managed to drive the 40 miles to Tarpon Springs and back which was no small feat for me, as I have been so nervous behind the wheel since Bob passed away.

Jenn & Kona at The Sponge Docks

All was well, until Jenn took me a yoga class.  Now, I've never done yoga before -- but I was willing a victim here, thinking it would be, you know, good for me.  The class itself was billed as "gentle" and "relaxing" so what could go wrong? Right?

I tell you, it was neither "gentle" or "relaxing" even though the whole time we spent pretty much flat on our backs.  The moves weren't hard, but half way through I found tears inexplicably falling out of the corner of my eyes. Afterward, I was a total emotional basket case and found myself near tears the rest of the day.

The next day, I woke up with terrible sinus congestion (from all that crying?) and a splitting headache and every muscle in my body seemed to ache.

Jenn left early Saturday and I spent pretty much the whole day sleeping on and off and feeling miserable...

And Sunday morning, I felt a bit better, then suddenly was hit with all sorts of GI issues --- and was pretty sick again, until today.  Though I'm still a bit shaky and headachy and filled with inconsolable grief...

Jeepers -- all that from one yoga class?

An interesting side note, both Jenn and Sally (who visited last month) received an unexpected nighttime visit from Bob while they were here.  Described as a "heavy" or "large" presence, neither thought it was foreboding or "evil", but certainly both felt that Bob was with them for a moment.  Jenn, more than once.  In fact (correct me, Jenn, if I get this wrong), Jenn said she "felt" a message from Bob which was something like "What are we going to do about Diane?"

Good to know he is really watching over me. And perhaps I am not as crazy as I sometimes feel....

Visitors

My dear friend, Sally, was here for a week and just left yesterday.  Sally and I go way back.  We used to work together and in the late 1980's, we both went through divorces, and rather bonded over that. And though we have kept in touch, I haven't seen her since around 1999, so we had 17 years of catching up to do!

Between catching up, we caught some sights including these manatees, lazing about in the bay:

The manatee in the forefront is rolling over, you can see his flippers.

We also did some shopping, went to the beach and all around had a great time.

Another visitor showed up in the early hours of dawn on Friday when I was startled awake, and saw my digital alarm clock flashing the time "12:43" a.m.  Now the thing was flashing, like it does when there is a power outage or power surge -- but when that happens it's always "00:00" that is flashing not "12:43".  So this is rather odd.  And odder still, I remember having woken earlier to see the time as "1:48" and falling back to sleep.  So basically the clock went backward in time and stopped and started flashing...  Odd, that.  I turned on my nightstand light and reset the clock to the right time, which was 5:48, and then I turned off the light, laid back down to try to catch some last minute sleep, when suddenly a lamp in the kitchen turned on.

And it was not just any lamp, but a lamp that Bob had painstakingly restored long ago.  That lamp stayed on.  It didn't just flicker.  It just snapped on and stayed on, causing both Kona and Ripley to look up and regard the light coming from the kitchen.

I got up, thinking maybe Sally was up already and had turned the light on, but no one was there.  I turned the light off and noticed the microwave which also has a digital clock was working perfectly, no flashing numbers there.

And then I knew it was certainly Bob who was paying me an early morning visit.

That day, Sally and I hit the beach, but before we left the house, Sally called out, "Bob!  We're going to beach!  You wanna join us?" And we both laughed.

At the beach, we rented a cabana and while Sally went on a long shell hunt, I lounged and read a book, looking up occasionally to admire the endless Gulf of Mexico and, above that, the too blue sky without a cloud in it.  I asked Bob to give me a sign that he was there with me, something like maybe a cloud or a bird ---  And a few minutes later, I looked up again to see one small wispy cloud had appeared, directly in my line of vision and that cloud quickly formed into the shape of a face, then, just as quick, disappeared.

Then Sally returned and we were pretty much dive bombed by a flock of seagulls.  Though that could be maybe explained by someone nearby having food.....

Right now, I'm resting up for my next visitor, Jenn, who is due to arrive in March.

Chris Transferred

So, the news today was that Chris was transferred to Kindred.  Now, Kindred is a speciality pulmonary hospital which I am well familiar with because Bob spent about a month there back in 2010.  They are experts with weaning off ventilators and treating severe pneumonias and other pulmonary issues.  Bob had pneumonia and a pulmonary embolism and I remember thinking (upon noticing the other patients there) that Bob was doing better than most of them. Kindred does tend to take in the severe cases.

I spoke with Chris's daughter today and she told me that Chris is not doing very well at all.  She is very bloated and has a huge gaping open wound in her stomach -- the latter caused by an infection that set in her feeding tube.  The smell from this open draining wound was so bad in the room that the daughter had to wear a mask to keep from gagging.

Chris is not coherent. And seems to be "drifting on and off".  Her urine is orange, and they are suctioning green gunk from her lungs.

The daughter was not able to get much information from the one nurse present and could not find a doctor (no surprise here, as I had the same problem when Bob was there.) So the daughter did not get much information as to Chris's status....

I do know that Kindred is the only facility I ever had Bob admitted to where they asked on admission if I wanted to issue a DNR. On admission! jeepers...  Of course, I declined.

I also remember when Bob was discharged and transferred to Acute Rehab that the transport driver told me that it was "pretty rare" to pick up someone alive from Kindred as usually patients there check in but don't check out...

Prayers, people.  If you have a moment.

Thanks.

Goodbye, Bobmobile

Yesterday, I sold The Bobmobile.  I sold it back to the dealer whom we had bought it from, the same one who gave me the $30,000 offer on the phone. And they were true to that promise.

Goodbye!  

I also donated Bob's power chair.  I'd been wanting to do this, but not sure how to get it to the right type of person who needed that type of specialized wheelchair.  Turns out the company I sold the van to, also sells/repairs power chairs and has many contacts with local charities and often donates chairs to folks in need who cannot otherwise afford them.  The salesman told me that they would be happy to refurbish Bob's wheelchair and find it new home with the right person who otherwise couldn't afford it.  So, one of the employees drove me home (in the Bobmobile) and picked up Bob's wheelchair.

It was bittersweet.

Sweet, because the 30G will pay off my Honda Fit, and then some.  And I've checked the power chair off my list of things to do...

Bitter, because every time I get rid of something that was Bob's, I feel like I'm erasing him....

In other news, today I'm expecting Sally, a long time friend from up north, who will be staying here for about a week, and I am looking forward to it, and especially looking forward to having company on Valentine's Day, which will be hard for me, because that day also marks our one year anniversary of moving into the new house.

Signs

So, this is weird....  When I posted my last blog post, I was rather shocked when I clicked on the "View Blog" button and up came my blog, with my new post, and I saw that both Boomer and Zenith's photos were gone.

Yes, they were missing. Both of them.

Which is really strange since I know I did not remove those photos and no one else has that kind of access to my computer or password, etc. In addition, nothing else was removed from my blog, just those two photos.

I do know that a couple of weeks ago, I had contemplated removing both those pictures because they rather made me sad to see them there, but then I found I just could not bring myself to do it.

Now the photos have disappeared and I can only think of 2-3 possibilities:  I did it my sleep (Ha!) or  I have developed memory loss problems (I hope that's not it) OR it's Bob's handiwork....

hmmmmm....

I must say, that sometimes Bob seems to be a busy guy over there on The Other Side.  Just this morning, while I was thinking about writing this post, about Signs from Bob, the doorbell tinkled.

And I mean tinkled.  Not the real brrrrr-RING that it usually makes, but a tinkle.  And I know it was the doorbell that made this sound as Kona went nuts barking at the door.

Our old fashion mechanical doorbell.

This is not the first time the doorbell has made a small tinkling noise and, upon opening the door, I find no one there.

And this never happened while Bob was alive.

Speaking of doors, while I was waiting in the shrink's office, Kona started growling -- a low ominous growling --- which is very unlike her when we are out in public, heck, it's very unlike her at all, so I was quite startled until I noticed that Kona was looking at the front door to the office, the door that leads outside into the parking lot, and that door had slowly opened a crack. Then Kona barked. So I got up, opened the door fully, and no one was there....

Then there's the back gate, last week, when I stepped outside to see if the rain had stopped enough to take Kona out for a walk and I heard, distinctly, the sound of the metal gate latch clicking open, and then the gate swung open wide, and I nearly shit my pants -- because, jeepers, I was expecting no one and it was night time, and I ran into the house, locked the door, peered out the window and no one was there.

There have been other signs, over the months, some subtle, some not so subtle. Like Bob's beloved C.Crane radio that flashes (like a wink) at me when I walk through the room, and that's when the radio is turned off. And it does this, at least, once a day, sometimes more.  I've gotten in the habit of just saying, "Hi, Bob!" when the thing winks the digital display at me.

Or the mysterious fortune cookie slip that I discovered in the middle of the kitchen floor one morning, and knowing, full well, I hadn't ordered any Chinese food in I can't remember how long, was quite shocked to pick up this slip of paper and see what it was.  Even more startling was the fact that this fortune did not have the "lucky lotto numbers" on the back of it, which is always the case with the Chinese place we order from. The slip is below:

There have been other things, too, like the night I was talking on the phone with my sister, and we were talking about Bob, when suddenly I heard a noise coming from my office, and when I went into that room, I found a video of Bob playing on my computer screen...

Or another night, when talking to a friend about Bob's artwork, when suddenly all the lights blinked out, and even the phone went dead for an instant, and then everything came back on.

And then there's the occasional strange shadow or reflection that appears on the living room walls.  The other day it was a reflection of a window that quickly moved from one side of the room to the other side, turning the corner onto the next wall before disappearing.  And I had the shades pulled down...  Another time it was the shadow of a head and shoulders of man, that walked across the top of the wall -- our walls are 9 feet high and I ran to the french doors to see if there was someone on our front porch, but no one was there.  And the shadow disappeared.

Or the sometimes strange websites that show up on my computer in the morning (I leave the computer on sleep mode at night, so usually what shows up is wherever I last was) -- websites that have no business being on my computer and usually have to do with gardening (a former hobby of mine) or -- once, an obscure musician singing a song about "finding your creativity".

On Bob's birthday, I was quite amazed to hear the anchor on our morning local news station announce "Today is National Nothing Day!" and for years, this had been a joke of Bob's because a long time ago someone had given him a desk calendar that had all the strange different designated  days (you know what I mean, such as National Artichoke Day, or Walk Your Dog Day, etc.) and on his birthday the calendar said "National Nothing Day".  And all these years, I have never heard anyone mention this, ever, except, of course, Bob, and here it was, on the morning news, with a brief history following of how the day became named back in the 1970's and designated as a day to "do nothing"....

And then there was my friend, Shirley, who wanted to take home a Florida souvenir and especially wanted a refrigerator magnet with preferably a flamingo on it, and we went hunting all over, not finding anything in all the gift shops we went into, and I finally had a sudden inspiration and said, "Let's check Walmart" and when we did, she came out of the store with a HUGE smile because she found not only a flamingo magnet but one with a thermometer on it -- and we had just been talking about how I collected flamingos and Bob collected thermometers.  She bought two.  One for her and one for me. And Shirley looked at me as she gave the magnet, and said, "That's a sign from Bob, I'm not kidding. This is too weird.  And they only had two of these!"

I know some folks may think I'm crazy, and that some of this is just coincidences or computer glitches or whatnot, but I must say, I believe.

I believe.

I believe.

I believe.

And I don't want to stop believing...