Thank You

Thank you one and all for your messages of love and support online and in private. Words don't begin to convey how much they have meant to all of us. Words also don't convey the depth of pain and loneliness I feel now with Sandi gone. I have not been around online at all and am just now finding things after, maybe, three hours sleep again last night. I have a lot to reply to so please be patient with me.

As it happens, today is the anniversary of her very first chemo treatment back in 2011. A treatment that damn near killed her then as her body reacted to the chemo that was supposed to stop the twin forms of non hodgkins lymphoma that would ultimately take her from us all these years later.

2017 has seriously sucked. Losing my Mom in January was bad enough, but she desperately wanted to again be with my Dad. For her, death was a release she had welcomed for years and that made things a little easier. Losing Sandi now is brutal. She so desperately wanted to be here with every fiber of her being. Those who treated her thought she had finally accepted what was coming when she grudgingly agreed to hospice. I knew better. I knew she still believed she would beat this damn disease and fought it until the bitter end. Those trusted with trying to ease her passing by making her as comfortable as possible were astounded she held on for a week. I wasn't. I knew Sandi and loved her. She hadn't given up. Her body failed her ....not her spirit.

We used to talk about our "new normal." That began on the afternoon of Thanksgiving Day 2011 around 1:30 when nine doctors came in, formed a ring around her bed, and broke the news that she had cancer and it was bad. Our life became before and after. Before cancer and after cancer. Trips to the hospital took over everything. First, to Baylor Plano. Then, when the damn things came back and were declared "advanced and aggressive" it was on to Medical City Dallas Hospital on Forest Lane. We were there so much I used to joke that they should build us a small garden apartment up on the roof so we could come down from the Penthouse and get her treated each day. I hated fighting the traffic --first from Plano and then from the house I grew up in these last few months.

I grew to hate that place. Not the people in it. But, what the buildings meant and how they had taken over our lives. The hospital these past months became our home more than ever and this house was just a way station because we spent so much time there. We didn't have a life outside the place. Cancer and all that entailed was a full time job with unlimited overtime.

I'd give anything to make that drive again if it meant she was with us. Instead, yesterday, I met with the folks at the funeral home and signed the contracts for her to be cremated as she wished. As she wanted, there won't be a memorial service. Sandi did not want a fuss made about her. In a few days she will come home one final time in a dark blue urn inscribed with her name and the relevant dates. 

I now have another "new normal." Life at 56 as a widower. She is gone and it hurts so much.