Let's give 'em something to BE EXCITED about...

Next weekend, I return to my college for the first time in about 8 years for OBU Homecoming weekend! Should be a riot!

The next weekend, I'm hoping to go to the Brownwood Sleep 'n' Eat, featuring Gayle & Lynn with grilled steaks and biscuits & gravy. Also, a double feature with 2 nights of 12+ hours of sleep.

The next weekend, I'm back in Austin for Christine's wedding...48 hours of Hoop-la beginning Thursday evening and going through Saturday night. Also hoping to see little Emma since I missed her last time.

Two weekends later, I'll be in San Antonio for my cousin's girlfriend's baby shower...quality time with the ladies of the fam! Also hoping to squeeze in time with my good friend Jenn that I haven't seen in a few years b/c she lived overseas.

AND the grand finale...2 1/2 weeks later, Jesse will arrive for the Thanksgiving holiday where we'll spend the long weekend gorging ourselves in Kerrville at Royce & Cynthia's.

I'M SO EXCITED!

PS Christine's bachelorette party last weekend in Austin was a blast...pics have been on Facebook if you're friends with me, but I hope to post here soon!

Labor Day in Seattle

On September 4th, the one year anniversary of Daddy's death, I flew out to Seattle to spend the long holiday weekend with my Jesse. I can't think of a better way to have spent that day, and am so grateful the timing worked out that I had this wonderful gift on that day.

After a LONG 11 weeks apart, Jesse and I reunited at the Seattle airport. We spent a moment getting over the "you're a stranger" thing again, but didn't have time to dwell on it because we had a packed weekend ahead!

We spent time with Jesse's best friend, Kjell (pronounced "shell"), and his girlfriend Patty. This was my first time to meet Patty because she lives in POLAND. And I thought Jesse and I have a long distance relationship! Here's Kjell & Patty making burgers.

We had crepes with my fantastic friend, Gina, at a lovely cafe on Capitol Hill. Gina was my BFF in 8th grade...as you can see, we still have our immature moments. Or, more accurately, I do while she watches.

I was so excited to see my roommate Leah, her awesome dog Sophie, and my old apartment for the first time since moving out in April. We had a great time catching up, and Sophie even posed for the camera!

Jesse & I spent an afternoon with his parents, Joe & Maggie. It was the perfect Seattle day - rainy and in the 60s. We had brunch at Portage Bay Cafe, famous for its fresh fruit bar and all-organic menu. I scarfed my favorite Cinnamon Twister French Toast...yum.

After lunch, the four of us went for a walk on "The Ave" in the U District. Maggie had heard about public art on all the street lights, so we went to check it out. Here are Joe & Maggie trying to stay dry and enjoy the art.

To have a break from the wet weather, we grabbed a drink and played a game of pool at "Earl's on the Ave." Joe kicked my tail, but it was still fun.

I've chosen just a few of the best (in my opinion) street light art. Businesses along The Ave all contributed to the designs.

Next scheduled visit: Thanksgiving--Jesse comes to Texas!
Only 10 weeks and 2 days to go...but who's counting?

Longing

I received a text today...a wedding is on the horizon.

I received an email today...a baby is on its way.

As a friend struggles through her husband's unemployment, I know it can't be easy. Yet, she has him. He has her. They have parents and siblings. To me, having those relationships trumps the trials. It makes them less scary than going through them alone.

As another friend goes through cancer, I know it is scary. Yet, she has him. He has her. They have two children. They have parents and siblings. Again, those relationships make the trials bearable.

For me, when the trials come, I have...me. And that makes the trials feel unbearable. I bear them, but I don't know how. I have panic attacks, and awful pits in my stomach from the fear of living my life alone...becoming an old Dog Lady (I'm allergic to cats). I know life wouldn't be easy, but I wish I had those relationships to guide and support me during my trials.

I know there are good things in my life, but I still find myself longing for family, immediate family. Someone to belong to everyday. Someone who thinks the sun rises and sets because of our love. Just one would be nice: a mother, a father, a brother or sister, a husband, a child. Just one of them. Most people have a few of them, many people have all of them. NO ONE I know has none of them. I have none of them.

For many years, I've watched people get married and have babies. Will it ever be my turn?

Am I living the life I want to live?

STILL can't get enough of...Emma!

A year ago today...part VI

Thursday, September 4, 2008

My alarm is going off. I stir from sleep. Why is my alarm going off if it's still dark outside? I reach for my cell to turn the alarm off...oh, it's not the alarm. I have a call. From an unrecognizable Corpus phone number.

I answer and the person says, "This is Randy, the nurse at Bay Area Hospital."

And I know this is it. Randy (yes, the nurse shares the same name as Daddy) tells me that Daddy's levels are dropping, and I might want to come down to the hospital. I look at the time. 1:45 am. Amy has woken up beside me. I ask if I need to come, if this is the end. Randy says he can't say, but that he is definitely deteriorating.

I put on my glasses and Amy sits up. I tell her what the nurse says and she begins to get dressed to go. Amy is pregnant and has been told by her doctor that she should try to remain as calm and stress free as possible. I'm thinking that taking her with me in the middle of the night to watch my father die is probably not keeping her stress free, so I tell her she doesn't have to come.

She insists on coming with me.

We drive Daddy's truck to the hospital. As we pull into the parking lot, Randy calls again. He wants to know if I have decided to come. I tell him we are in the parking lot and will be there shortly. He is clearly happy to hear this. I now know it's over.

Turns out that since ICU is closed to visitors, they close the entrance to ICU at 9:00 pm. Amy & I run around, find another entrance, and try to make sense of the hospital hallway maze. There are no signs to ICU. Finally, we find it and run into Daddy's room. It is 2:13 am.

Daddy's eyes are glazed over. I call Royce and wake him up. I tell him this is it as Daddy's levels plummet to zero. Within two minutes of my arrival, at 2:15 am, Daddy is officially pronounced dead. I'm telling Royce, "It's over. It's over. It's over." I can't think of what else to say.

Royce tells me that he & Cynthia will drive in tomorrow morning and meet me at the funeral home. They encourage me to go back to Amy's and try to sleep.

Randy tells Amy & me that he needs to unhook the machines and do some other things and asks us to leave the room. Five minutes later, we are allowed back in. Randy has closed Daddy's eyes, unhooked all the machines. He appears to be sleeping peacefully.

I crawl into bed with Daddy while Amy texts our friends. Randy tells me the coroner will arrive in about 45 minutes to take Daddy. It's only been about 7 minutes, already Daddy is cold and hard. How can life be gone just like that?

Christine arrives at the hospital. I'm still lying with Daddy, and she slips in next to Amy.

The coroner arrives and I am given a minute alone with Daddy. He's not there, and I know it, but I still hug his cold stone body and tell him it's okay that he left. Then I left.

Amy, Christine, and I decided to go to IHOP and get pancakes at 4:00 am. Poor Christine had work in the morning, so she left after IHOP. Amy & I returned to her parents' house. We rent a movie on demand. Amy fell asleep but I watch the whole thing. At 6:00 am, the news came on. The normal news. As if everything hadn't changed.

But everything had changed.

A year ago today...part V

Wednesday, September 3, 2008

Jesse and I wake up early. We are quiet as we drive to the airport. I have no interest in continuing this horrifying reality without him. We arrive early enough that we can sit on this side of security and have breakfast. As has been the case, Jesse eats and I watch.

Finally, we can't wait any longer. Jesse hugs me tight, and gets in the security line. I watch him go through, tears brimming my eyes. Two older women who were sitting near us at breakfast ask me, "It's always hard to say goodbye, isn't it, honey?" I just nod and keep my eyes on Jesse. He waves after he gets through, and the tears are streaming down my face now.

Once he gets out of my sight, I turn around and leave the airport. Amy has promised to spend the day with me since Jesse is gone, and I have never been more grateful. I pick Amy up at her parent's house. We go to My Favorite Muffin for my self-induced therapy, and on to the hospital.

Today is not a good day for Daddy. He is not alert. He seems unaware of anything around him. He doesn't show signs of recognizing anyone. There is no joking around, no eye contact, no response.

It is 9:00 pm. The ICU visiting hours are over and we are being kicked out. I try to look Daddy in the eye (he looks at the ceiling) and tell him I love him. No response.

To be continued...

A year ago today...part IV

Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Another night. Fitful sleep. No phone call. Daddy is still alive.

Another muffin to-go to the hospital.

Daddy keeps trying to talk. There's a tube down his throat. What basically comes out is a hoarse whisper. We find that even when we can hear what he says, it doesn't usually make any sense. I wonder what it's like to be hopped up on morphine. I wonder what Daddy thinks is going on. Does he think he's dying because I have flown in from Seattle and thrown myself on his bed, sobbing and saying I love you and apologizing for being a terrible daughter the past few years? Or does he even know what's happening?

It's hard to tell, seeing as how he says things that make no sense and grabs in the air at things that are visible only to him.

He's had nothing to eat or drink for more than 2 weeks. Nothing except the IV coursing through his veins. His lips are cracked and raw, dry from thirst. I ask the nurse for more swabs. When she brings them, I dip the swab in his water cup and hold it to his lips. He tries to suck on the swab. I wet his tongue, which is also cracked from dehydration.

I make my calls to Gayle and Kim. As I speak with them, I wander down the hallway. That's when I realize that outside the window at the end of the hall is Daddy's church. Mama's church. My church when I was little. Right there across the street.

When Jesse is in the room, Daddy watches him like a hawk. He has never seen me with a boyfriend before. I'm sure he is trying to figure out if Jesse is a hallucination from the morphine or if I've finally found a man.

Finally, Daddy looks at Jesse and whispers to Royce, "Well, I guess he's one of us now."

Later, he tells Jesse to come back and see him in four months. Jesse says he will.

At one point, he becomes annoyed with all of the women in the room and waves us off, but tells Jesse to come over to him. Jesse can't make out what he tries to tell him. I like watching them talk.

Jesse and I take a break. We walk to my elementary school, which is right next to the hospital. 25 years ago I had been a first grader here. We sit on the swings, and I start to cry. I can't believe that I am sitting in a swing that I might have sat in as an innocent little girl, yet can look up to see the hospital where my second parent is dying. I share with Jesse some of my childhood and the frustrations of being the child of a parent with limited mental capacity. And he was Jesse--patient and comforting.

Based on the fact that Daddy is still alive and quasi-alert, the nurse tells me that Dr. Brackett now gives Daddy a 5% chance of surviving. Doctors of different types come by throughout the day and examine Daddy. His previous physician visits, the one who told him at age 50 that since everything seemed to be normal he didn't need to have a colonoscopy. I wonder if he had had one, if it would have cut his life short by ten years or given him an extra thirty.

I am told that the miracle sign we are looking for is for Daddy to pass gas. I find this ironic, considering how often his stinky, stinky toots had sent me gagging. At a minimum, the doctor wants to hear sounds in his bowel. He puts his stethoscope to Daddy's abdomen and says he thinks he heard something. For the rest of the day, we hope for a toot.

That evening, we watch country music videos on CMT. Daddy seems to tune in once in awhile. I flip to the Astros baseball game, which Daddy loves to watch. He seems more interested in the imaginary things on the ceiling.

We turn in early, as I have to take Jesse to the airport in the morning. Without knowing how long this might go on, Jesse can't stay.

To be continued...

A year ago today...part III

Monday, September 1, 2009

No phone call through the night. I woke up and couldn't believe it. Daddy must still be alive, 40 hours after being given a prognosis of "hours to live." What did this mean?

Jesse and I stopped at My Favorite Muffin to pick up breakfast. I think this was my self-induced therapy for the next several days. I picked up the muffin because it was comfortable and familiar, never mind the fact that where I would take the muffin would be completely uncomfortable and unfamiliar. Never mind the fact that not a single muffin I bought during this visit would actually be eaten.

Jesse and I spent the day at the hospital. Visitors came and went: Daddy's roommate, Rose, his good friend, Guy, several people he worked with at the Post Office (he'd just retired in April after 39 years of service--don't get me started on the injustice of THAT), people from bowling league, people from square dancing clubs. My father had friends, that's for sure. He was one of the most loyal people I have ever known. He didn't know a stranger, and once you were his friend, it was for life. Most of the people who came to visit had known him longer than I've been alive.

I liked the visitors. For one, it was nice to see how much people loved Daddy. Two, it allowed me a few minutes to leave the room without worrying about him being alone. I would use those times to call Gayle & give her a brief update. After Gayle, I called Kim, who was my grandmother's great niece and caretaker for most of 2008. I didn't want to tell Grandma what was happening to her son-in-law until it resolved one way or another. I was lost without Grandma though. My only sanity when Mama had died was Grandma.

Daddy was fairly alert this day. He actually seemed like himself. He wasn't able to speak, but he joked around by his facial expressions, shooting up one eyebrow in the way he always did.

Dr. Brackett, who had performed both the initial surgery on August 19th and the follow-up where he discovered the mass on August 30th. Royce, Jesse, and I sat down with him and I finally began to understand most of what was happening.

Basically, my father's first surgery was a routine procedure to remove a large polyp. This happened on a Tuesday. Five or so days later, he became really sick and couldn't stop vomiting. They put him in ICU, but he was in stable condition. They just wanted to monitor him closely to see why he wasn't recovering.

They ran tests, one of them being a dye test. The dye never came out, so they decided to do exploratory surgery to fix the apparent obstruction. This surgery took place on August 30th, 11 days after the first surgery. It was supposed to be an hour or so, no big deal. I was fully aware of this much, as I had actually talked to my father on the phone a few times since his initial surgery. I knew he was going into surgery at 2:00 pm and should have been out to recovery a couple of hours later.

When Dr. Brackett opened Daddy up, he found something shocking that he had never seen before (and he was a seasoned doctor...not sure how long exactly, but he had white hair so you figure it out). He found an inflammatory mass tangled up in large veins that most of us do not have. My father, according to Dr. Brackett, had a unique anatomy with his colon on the left side instead of the right and these veins. Dr. Brackett didn't know for sure what had caused the mass but thought perhaps it was this unique anatomy. I have other ideas, like a knife slip.

Because of the veins, the mass couldn't be removed so Dr. Brackett attempted to resection Daddy's colon to bypass the mass. But he didn't really think it would work. Essentially, Daddy had a dead bowel and we were waiting to see if a miracle would happen. Dr. Brackett came out of surgery and informed Royce that Daddy had hours to live.

Here we were, two days later and Daddy was still alive. Nothing about Daddy was conventional. I wasn't the least bit surprised to hear that his colon wasn't like the rest of us. By Monday afternoon, Dr. Brackett expressed disbelief that Daddy was still with us and said that maybe a miracle would happen. He estimated Daddy's chances of survival at 1%, but said the septic shock (self-poisoning) that was going on in Daddy's body could perhaps go on a few days longer before he died.

I was glad Jesse was there to remember what the doctor had told us. As people called my cell, concerned friends who wanted to see how I was doing, I handed the phone to Jesse. Eventually, I gave him the cell. Just answer it and talk to them. Answer their questions so I don't have to.

Jesse was scheduled to leave the next day to return to the brand new job he had started the week before. He decided to stay an extra day, for which I was very grateful. We went to Amy's parents' house, one of my second homes, for a home-cooked meal and some relaxation before returning to Daddy's apartment for the night.

To be continued...