Choice

As time unfolds and I begin to have more perspective on what the last 10 years or so were like, you know that 20/20 perspective that we never have until something is over, I am seeing more and more that I wasn’t entirely understanding on what terribly rough condition the husband has been in for a much longer time than I realized.

It probably has to do with the fact that his decline was so slow and steady, and also the fact that we had essentially been on lockdown for 4 1/2 years (before he left us) it’s really painful to go through old photographs, which I’ve been doing for the memorial coming up and realizing that everything Pal told me is actually happening to me. Pal told me that after his husband passed he looked back and did not know how he managed. Check.

I don’t know how I stayed on high alert 24 hours a day for so long because without being on high alert, I feel like I’m living in this crazy void. People told me that , they were worried about me and that I needed to give myself a break, but I honestly didn’t understand what they were talking about until now. I’m sitting here with nothing but time on my hands. It’s so weird!

I picked up the husband’s sneakers today, thinking I’d toss them into the garbage. They were so old I was sure they would be in too rough of a condition to even think about donating them. How many times have I tied those sneakers without really looking at them? In the end his fingers weren’t even working right. Nope. Not worn out. They actually looked brand new. Even the bottoms looked completely brand new. And it hit me how little he walked in the last 5 years.

It’s tough seeing him getting thinner and thinner and wild eyed in the photos. It’s crazy looking at photos from 10 years ago when I thought he looked so awful and compare them to photos from recent times. I took photos of his thighs years ago because they seemed so frail. I had no idea what was coming. That was probably for the best.

How many times did I stupidly say “If only I had a crystal ball I could pace myself and this would be so much easier”? Too many to count! Now I know that we don’t have crystal balls because if we did have crystal balls, we would go running into the night because the future is too scary until it’s in the rearview mirror. I don’t like it when people ask me how I did it because I did it when I didn’t have a choice. Was there ever a choice?

Tangent. This is a thought I might need to flush out in some future post. The people at hospice, keeping in mind that I did not have a great hospice experience and didn’t really care for the hospice caregivers on whole, often suggested to me that I get a full-time caretaker so that I could go back to being a wife. What the fuck does that mean? Do wives not take care of their spouses? Did they want me to leave the house and hang out with friends to be a wife? It’s so confusing to me. Do wives pay people to do the wifely duty?

Back to my current state. Choice. Right now I have a choice. I have a choice to get off the chair and do what needs to be done so I think I need to remind myself that it is now that I have a true choice and I can finally choose to do the things that I need to do that are all just about me. Gotta get this house in order. Gotta reduce the amount of stuff I own. Gotta get going