Show Posts

This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.


Messages - Juls

Pages: [1] 2
1
Main / Re: Just one more time?
« on: January 04, 2011, 09:26:22 AM »
I invite everyone to write their names and the names of their loved ones - together one more time.

2
Main / Just one more time?
« on: January 02, 2011, 09:48:08 PM »
Every year for 25 years I would spend about an hour in the weeks prior to Christmas addressing Christmas cards to family and friends.  And every year I always signed those cards from both my husband and myself.   

This year as the appointed time approached, I realized that I was no longer part of a couple and that never again would I ever have the occassion to put our two names together.  Of course I cried, and I hurt and I grieved some more.   But the truth is I would like to see our names together again.  I know many of you would too.  So for just one more time................

Eddie and Julie  (looks nice seeing it again)

3
Main / Re: Come Back Querencia - I Miss You
« on: December 05, 2010, 07:39:24 AM »
Oh Querencia I'm so glad to hear from you!!  I'm doing better now, although the holidays are going to be tough.  Seems I heard somewhere that the 6 month mark can be difficult and it's true.  Hard to believe it will be 6 months in a few weeks. 

So it sounds like you've been keeping yourself busy - especially baking again.  When I read that you'd made Split Pea soup I have to tell you I started laughing!  It is without a doubt my very favorite soup of all time!  It got me thinking about it so I'm going out today to buy a ham.

Sorry that it's taken so long to respond, things have been hectic  (such is life) and I haven't been back as much as I should.   It's been a little sad for me lately, but when I opened up the website this morning and saw that you'd responded I felt like Christmas had come early!

4
Main / Come Back Querencia - I Miss You
« on: November 09, 2010, 10:38:55 AM »
Don't know why, maybe because our experiences were so similar, but I felt a connection to your posts and to you.  It's been a while since either of us posted on this site but I find myself thinking about you a lot these days.  Are you doing okay?

5
Main / Re: The 'honeymoon' period is over!
« on: September 27, 2010, 06:40:41 PM »
A vanished world.  That about sums it all up doesn't it?  A world, a life that simply doesn't exist anymore - vanished.  How does that happen?  More importantly, how do we cope now?

6
Main / Is there a point to this?
« on: September 21, 2010, 08:11:06 AM »
Was watching a movie a few nights ago - don't remember what is was now.  But at one point someone asked,  'What is the purpose then of life?'  Answer, 'To end.'

Is that it?  I hope not.  I hope there's more to all this than that, but if there is I'm having a hard time figuring out what it is.  I use to think I'd found the answer - to love and be loved.  To find that special someone you could share your life with, build a life with, depend upon, connect to on a level deeper than any other.... I had that - we had that.  We were good together.  He told me once that I made him a better man.  I know that he made me a better human being. 

So if that's our purpose, if that's what gives our life meaning - then what is all this?  Why be given such a wonderful gift only to have it wrenched away?  Is there a point to all this that I'm missing? 

7
Main / Re: How Do I Go On?
« on: September 19, 2010, 08:42:53 AM »
Querencia - hmmmmm....sounds absolutely theraputic to me.  Sometimes I wonder if this stoicism we have to maintain only adds to and prolongs the grieving process.  Does our grief not deserve to be acknowledged?  Honored? 

8
Main / Re: Am I losing my mind?
« on: September 18, 2010, 12:46:36 PM »
Far from it.  My husband died June 24th - 12 weeks, 2 days ago.  The first 6 weeks are nothing but a blur for me where I lost all sense of time.  Then the protective cocoon started disipating and the pain slammed me like a mac truck.  But before I could even begin to get my bearings I find myself re-living the entire nightmare all over again with a year marked by a series of firsts.  First started getting sick August 26, 2009.  First time to the emergency room Labor Day weekend.  First exploratory surgery, Sept. 10th.  First hospitalization Sept. 11th through 18th.  He came home 1 year ago today.  Next comes October -first definitive diagnosis of cancer.  November and the trips to Denver.  December and the failed operation.  January and MD Anderson.  The first chemo treatments...first radiation treatments...first tests showing the tumor had grown..........

Seems like each day, each week brings a new first anniversary.  Where we were at, doing, thinking one year ago today.  Except this time I know how the movie ends.  I know that one year ago today the worst was yet to come.  The nightmare had only just begun.  The real horror hadn't even started - the slow, cruel, unforgivable destruction of the man I loved more than myself. 

I ask myself sometimes, in the dark quiet of the night, if I have the strength to do this again?  Was once not enough?  Is there a point to this torture?  I'm just so damn tired and raw I honestly don't feel like I'm much help to anybody with words of encouragement.     

9
Main / Re: Single Among Couples
« on: September 04, 2010, 10:04:06 AM »
Boy can I relate!  Do you ever feel sometimes like you're becoming one of the 'invisible people'?  Here you think you're doing a superhuman job of keeping your emotions and life under control - keeping up your game face - and yet you still feel the tension in others.  The way they change the subject, break eye contact, saddle you with expectations you can't possibly maintain.  All subtle suggestions that perhaps you should be all better now and just quit with all this grief stuff already.  Sometimes it can be like a knife in the heart and other times it just makes me so damn mad.  6 weeks?  Well she should be much further along by now.  Don't they understand that we're just at the beginning of all this?  Who made up these rules anyway?

10
Main / Re: How Do I Go On?
« on: September 04, 2010, 09:46:44 AM »
John,

Please allow this site to be your "safe place".   It can be exhausting to maintain that outward face we all must show the world.  Here there is no judgement, no rigid expectations, no pitying looks - just acceptance. 

And please remember that your grief is never our burden.  We know what your life has become.  Allowing us the opportunity to reach out to another, to make that connection, to offer support and caring, well it helps us as well as you. 

Your Kit sounds like a very special lady.  Hopefully with each other's help, we'll all find a way through this dark time in our lives. 

Juls
 

11
Main / Something strange and wonderful...
« on: August 30, 2010, 09:24:22 AM »
The last few weeks have been very difficult for me.  I have been plagued by doubts and worries about my husband, our marriage.  Eddie was an 'old school' kind of man - he kept his emotions under very tight wraps and could sometimes be hard to read even after 25 years together.  But I never questioned his love for me - until now.  Lately these thoughts come into my head like little pin pricks of pain - Did he?  Did we?  Was it really?  It's almost like my brain has not been my own and something has been torturing me with these doubts.

Last night I went to bed exhausted.  As I was just about to drift off into sleep a memory came into my head just as clear as if it had just happened.  It was of one of those quiet, peaceful moments that husbands and wives have together.  I gave myself over to the scene in my head.  It felt so good to be with him again, to feel his arms around me.  To feel love that didn't hurt but was soft, and warm and comforting again.  I could have stayed there forever.  All of sudden it abruptly shifted and I knew that I was no longer experiencing the moment from my own perspective or my own emotions.  I was feeling his emotions - masculine emotions very much different from my own.  This intense feeling of love exploded in my chest and spread out with such force that it was almost overwhelming and left me shaken.  The sensation of his presence was so strong that I actually reached out my hand in the dark.  In that moment I knew as well as I've ever known anything that he was letting me know exactly how much he loved me by allowing me to experience it for myself.  The tears flowed and all I could do was nod my head and say I know, I know. 

Now with the harsh light of day I'm wondering - was it all just a dream or was it real?  Can love transcend even death?

12
Main / Re: Am I losing my mind?
« on: August 27, 2010, 10:51:06 AM »
To querencia -
I have been giving a lot of thought to your last post.  You invited us to ask ourselves how much difference our actions really could have made to the final outcome.  It's funny sometimes how one little statement like that can open a door to a whole different train of thought.  I realized that while I had been feeling a great deal these last months I had not really been thinking - at least not in an honest and objective manner.  It's hard to do when you're in the grip of grief but sooner or later it is something we all must do.  I'm now beginning to understand that perhaps my expectations during my husband's illness and therefore my response to his death have been, well...unrealistic.  Does that mean that if I could do it all over again I would be any less determined or fight any less?  No, but what it does mean is that it is time for me to begin accepting certain unpleasant realities, namely the limits of my control over many of life's events.
Oh, and regarding your metaphor of the dance - wonderful.  Certainly sums it all up doesn't it?  If I may though, I'd like to add just one more piece to the analogy.  The next time you visualize that play don't forget that one very long and beautiful scene where the two of you held that stage together and danced as one.       

13
Main / Re: Where is everyone from?
« on: August 21, 2010, 09:35:26 PM »
Colorado - west of the mountains.   

14
Main / Re: The 'honeymoon' period is over!
« on: August 21, 2010, 09:31:43 PM »
I hope you do go back Querencia and when you do I hope that you find some peace there.  Shouldn't ever be ashamed of crying in a church - best place to let it out I would think.  At least it's better than a Kroger!  That's where I spotted some popcicles while grocery shopping.  Just so happens they were the only thing my husband could eat in the last weeks and when I saw them before I even realized what was happening the tears just started falling.  I was absolutely horrified!  Crying in public is bad enough - but crying in a Kroger?  Afterwards of course I found the silliness of the whole episode amusing.

So, if you're going to cry in a place outside of your home - take your chances on the church, it's gotta be better than the grocery store!

15
Main / Re: Am I losing my mind?
« on: August 20, 2010, 11:25:22 AM »
Oh, that wonderful little blue book from Hospice.  The one that takes the whole dying process and lines it out in a neat and precise order - a one size fits all approach to end of life.  Nothing in that book could prepare you for what was happening to your husband.

Maybe it will help you to know that had you done things differently - had you given your husband that morphine - you would just be dealing with a whole other set of issues right now.  See, I did give my husband more.  The hospital had upped his morphine to the maximum allowed through the IV.  But the nurse gave me a little button connected to the pump and told me I could push that button, every 8 minutes, and he would get an even greater dose.  She let me know in a quiet and subtle manner, that these extra doses would have a cumulative effect.  I knew exactly what she was telling me. 

I sat there next to his bed, holding that button in my hands - holding that kind of power in my hands.  I had fought with every fiber of my being to save this man's life.  I had even bargained with God that if some damn blood sacrifice was needed for my husband to live, then I would take the cancer.  Now suddenly not only do I have to give up all hope, all faith that he might survive but I have to decide whether or not to end it sooner?  Me?  Such a responsibility I would not wish on my worst enemy. 

I layed my left hand over his heart and held the button in my right.  Every 8 minutes, for over 3 hours, I pushed that button.  I never took my eyes off his face.

I will have live with my decision for the rest of my life.  Did I do the right thing?  I think so.  I hope so.  But the truth is this life and death stuff is more than any mortal can ever feel truly comfortable with.  So you see, you and I - we handled our husband's medication in two very different ways - yet we each have our own doubts and regrets.   I guess what I'm trying to say is there is no one right way, despite what that book says.  We're just ordinary people who did the very best we could under horrific circumstances and somehow we're both going to have to forgive ourselves for not having all the answers.   

Pages: [1] 2