Margm

I went to Mount Ida today for business.. The person was at lunch where I was to meet. So, I went by the house and to see Hettie. Hettie was not home. The house did not seem the same. Big wooden fence built all in back, big, long, around all the open property. I did not know the house or street. No feelings. No crying. I looked at my pink dogwood just starting to sprout out. Not mine anymore. Not me anymore. Not Billy either. It was neither of us. I am him and he is me. We were not there. I shed no tears all the way up there, all the way home, although I did talk to Billy on the way home. I don't think I did on the way up there. Dissociation I guess. Sometimes the mind does protect itself. I had dreaded it so much, just like I dreaded the cancer checkups.

Well, I guess it was in the back of my mind. (You know, that part that is seldom visited.)

I don't listen to much music, but this morning the words to this old song, listening (of course crying) and it just is so true. The "soul to bleed" got to me the most. I know Bette Midler sang it, but I was thinking it was about Janis Joplin, old song. Old soul. Some say love, it is a river, that drowns the tender reed Some say love, it is a razor, that leaves your soul to bleed Some say love, it is a hunger, an endless aching need I say love, it is a flower, and you, its only seed Its the heart afraid of breaking, that never learns to dance Its the dream afraid of waking, that never takes the chance Its the one who won't be taking, who cannot seem to give And the soul afraid of dying, that never learns to live When the night has been too lonely and the road has been too long And you think that love is only for the lucky and the strong Just remember in the winter, far beneath the bitter snows Lies the seed, that with the sun's love in the spring becomes the rose

Patty, if you get a chance, please let us know if anything at all is any better. Hearts with you.

Absolutely

He is beautiful. You have wonderful grandchildren. And a new one, just so precious. Life is precious.

Thanks Marita. I needed to hear that. I needed to read that. One of my best friends, her daughter just had two strokes. She has lupus. She is my son's friend. My friend is supposed to be at home taking care of her brother, taking him to therapy for his cancer. She lost her husband 18 years ago, they had had a fuss, they were still young but she had to be at cancer surgery for a newborn grandbaby. He died from brain aneurysm during the night. Beautiful woman has gone 18 years with their parting angry. She has never gotten over it. My other friend, her daughter just survived another stroke (now these are young people to me), they are my children's age. But she was already bedridden from another stroke. And my friend takes care of a grandson that is probably in his 30's now, with MS, has been full care since birth. Getting old sure is not a picnic. I would like to say "aint" but since I am only 75% redneck, I'll hold back. All God's Chillens got troubles.

I'm so sorry Gin. My daughter-in-law writes me because I went through the same thing with her ex-husband, my son. He always had some friend that he would be staying at their house. Of course drugs were involved. One time I came in and he was laying on a futon, roaches everywhere and he was skin and bones. He came around mainly because he respected his dad so much. We got rid of the RV and provided him a home with his own bath. He would shut himself off and got off them by himself. One time he told his dad he was going downtown. Billy said, okay but don't come back here. He didn't leave. Billy drove him to college and went to get him each day. I went back to work. I hope you find him soon. I know it tears you up.

Nasotracheal suctioning aka Snogging I did not leave the whole thing up there. I thought I had already put this and if you see it somewhere else, just count it off as my repeating myself again. Anyhow, you can go to this and go to You Tube and a demonstration is on it.. When I worked for urology the boss-doc could watch the procedures being done in the operating room by the residents. (We were on the 7th floor, he was watching on the big TV). I admire the heck out of my daughter, out of anyone who works hands on. I typed words. I got to see a lot of stuff but what the boss-doc thought was interesting never interested me at all. I was never meant to be a hands on medical worker. Well, I guess I was "hands on" since I typed it, but you all that look at all this stuff all the time, you have my admiration. I am not that brave. ADDENDUM: This is one of those movies that play in my head ever so often and I can see my comatose dad, eyes closed, and this horrible sounding vacuum machine (done at close range, on top of him actually) and his eyes opened in terror.

Marita, I was so worried about both my kids and suicide which sometimes goes along with bipolar. My son telling me he did not want to live. (After he came so close to death in a drug gunfight, he never told me that again.) I worried about my teenaged daughter and talked to her doc who worked in my hospital. He told me if that was on her mind then I could do nothing about it. Don't tell a mom that. That same doc killed himself soon afterwards. I was hooked on amphetamines (legal) but they became illegal and I had been on them seven years by prescription. I hit Billy in the head, destroyed new furniture and hit a bleeder cutting my wrist before Billy could stop me. I wound up on psych ward. I wanted to follow Billy not many months ago, but you are throwing a worry on me I have not seen in awhile. Billy was worried by a young coworker whose own dad had committed suicide. Th 20-something boy called him at 2:00 am one morning and Billy ran to his apartment. He had shot himself with a shotgun in the stomach and was gone. Drugs are bad, We do not know if my only grandson is alive or not. He is somewhere in California lost to all his family. Drugs made me suicidal. Cancer made me fight to live Life is ironic that way. I hope you find a reason to live. My heart, hopes, and prayers are with you. So many of us have lost our will to fight. I hope you find yours.

Autumn2, we will never quit worrying about our kids. I don't know their relationship with their father, but they are at a loss also. Both my son and daughter want to do things that would make their dad proud. These are middle aged kids that Billy and I both enabled. We discussed it a bunch with each other and both of us knew, if given a second chance, we would raise them the same way we did. There was an old saying "how will they learn if they never hit the floor." Our job for the whole 54 years was to keep them from hitting the floor and my job now is to try to help also. Half my income goes to pay for what we have bought for them. They know this and are trying to help, but we have held them up for over 50 years, and I hope they can learn. They are as lost without their dad as I am. That is mine and his fault.

Martha Jane, I am going to Mount Ida Friday. I have business. I dreaded this happening. I will probably cry all the way up there and all the way home. I decided I would go a different route and then I remembered we lived 3-4 years out in those country mountains, sometimes going in the middle of the night back up those dirt country roads just to see wildlife. Thinking about it bothered me. When we lived there, it was a new house, mountains all around us. It would make a Class 8 wind tunnel sometimes. I think that is what it was called. One time it picked up a wheelbarrow and moved it from one side of the house to the other. These were mini-tornadoes. One time I was burning off brush and the wind the fire made blew up one of the wind tunnels and took part of the fire and set it down on the other side of the yard. I had the hose (long, long one) and put the fire out, but that was a phenomenon I had never experienced. Something to do with living between the mountains. I guess like those dust devils you see out west, only seem stronger. No, I cannot go that way. Billy lived his Jeremiah Johnson life there. All I could see was if something happened to him I would be left alone in a foreign land. So, we moved to town. He could just take off walking and walk up and over the little mountains, just exploring. Not hunting at all. Taking the dog out. No, I cannot go back that way. This is something I don't want to do but knew eventually I would have to. But, when we moved to "town" the little mountains were all around too, so he could just take off walking. Just like his hitch hiking from his home town to play American Legion ball in the bigger town. I thought I would feel his essence here. I'm really dreading going back up there though. No matter where I go, he is still gone.

And there it is. Mitch, it is summed up in just those words.

Kay, I did say that in jest. But, I'm sure you know that. I want to believe like I always believed. BIBLE SPOKE HERE Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13:12, "For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known" (NKJ). That last phrase, "I shall know just as I also am known" would indicate that we shall know others as well as be known by others. Billy helped me the most with my faith, but he also was the most questioning of my faith. I would always tell him I did not want to think any otherwise than how I was taught. I asked him, what would it gain me to start questioning what I was taught? Why would I want to question it? I am satisfied with what I believe, so why would I want to look into it scientifically? He was one who had questions. In the end though, I have no doubt that he knew. There are others who have looked into it broadly. They have questioned it over and over. And, some of those that do question it otherwise come back to the above. I cannot argue religion. We are not supposed to on this forum. Your belief is yours. My belief is mine. I cannot and will not try to change yours and if I am comfortable believing as I do, then mine won't change. We won't any of us know what happens after death until we experience it ourselves. Until then, we believe as we believe. And, you all know me as a very imperfect person, so no one is subject to believe like I do.

Our family is very emotional. We don't hide it. There are fights and whatever happens, we are always back together. (Not physical fights). Both my kids are bipolar and Billy and I both were enablers. Now, they have to make it with half a person for their mom. They knew mine and Billy's marriage, bad times, good times, and Billy was the world's best dad and granddad, except we both enabled our kids and they did not really learn to fly away from us. I talk to them every day. My voice just naturally shakes anyhow, but they know, they loved him too, so very much. I think sometimes they might hurt as bad as I do, in different ways. My granddaughter and Billy bonded from the time she was brought home from the hospital. He was the only "Dade" she ever knew, so she lost a dad and a granddad all at once. Maybe that is why she and I are so close. My daughter just left an abusive relationship and I worry about her in this Land of Oz she has moved to, but I know it hurt because she lost her dad, lost 10 years of an abusive relationship and her daughter does not want to live with her. But still, we talk more than once a day. (No fussing now). And, I took up the enabling that Billy and I left off when he left. We don't try to hide the hurt, but we all know we have to go on. And somehow, this child has to find a life, but I definitely won't put her out of the nest either. We probably all need family counseling, but somehow the bipolar gets in the way of that. We all share the grief. My daughter has a date tonight. I hope it goes well. I worry about her, my son, and my granddaughter.

Autumn2, sometimes I talk in a medical language I was part of for over 40 years. I checked on google and honestly could not come up with it. Not even a real acronym for SNOG. This was 1984. It was a loud sounding machine that they inserted, probably down his nose or throat to suction off the secretions that were choking him, smothering him. This kept the dying man from dying by suffocating from his own secretions. Like I said, we are kinder to our pets. The disease had hit that terminal stage that there was no hope except to make him as comfortable as could be, which was not very comfortable. (He was comatose for days, just struggling through the pain.) My sister-in-law had lung cancer. Billy and his nephew (both by now middle aged men) went out of the room. She was asleep peaceful. She was not struggling for breath, no agony, no machines hooked up anywhere, she was comfortably dying. (I wonder if that is possible). But, I was watching her. Never a grimace, no struggle, no movement whatsoever. Just like a clock that you wind up and it quits ticking. I noticed the sheet was not rising and falling with her breath. I got Billy and his nephew to get the nurse. The clock just quit ticking. I wish we all had that memory.

My cousin is our family genealogist. She has paid for every member in her family to have this done. No, it is not cheap. Each person is right at or above $100. Now they want me to have mine done. I won't. I took a Jeff Foxworthy quiz the other night about being a redneck and I only came up 75%. Hurt my feelings. Felt I was closer to 100%. I will pay to have my granddaughter's done. She is adopted and wants to know. It does not matter that my sister and I came from the same mom and pop, our DNA will still be different. Myself, I don't really care. They did. It was my Christmas gift to my sister. I have Factor IX in my blood which led to hemophilia in Queen Victoria's male ancestors. Female carries it, male dies usually from it. But my son was born with the X chromosome that made it where he did not have hemophilia. My daughter could not have children, so it stopped there, but I gave her a form of it, Factor VIII, which means she has von Willebrand's and is a bleeder. She has to take something before she has surgery. Having this has never made me a bleeder. Really, finding out where it came from does not help me at this stage in life.

None of us are at peace. My cousin and I used to argue (friendly) that her dad dying of a heart attack took away her chance to say goodbye. My dad being in such horrible pain that he would get ulcers on his heels from digging them into the egg-crate mattress. The morphine did not take care of his pain. We would go for days through his Cheyne-Stokes breathing, we would pray that would be the last breath, then he would gasp again. He was comatose but got to choking on his own secretions and they put a snog machine on him. The only time I saw him open his big brown eyes, he was only 64. The shock of the snog machine made him open them in terror. So, we had plenty of chances to say goodbye, but my cousin's dad was gone in an instant. She did not watch him suffer unbearable pain. Many on here got to watch, (had to watch) inhuman things being done to our loved ones. It was a part of life and death that I wish, that they wish they could forget, but the movie keeps playing before our eyes. Not the imagination movie, the real-life movie. I hope Billy's heart just gave out. He had been in such pain. That is something you do not ever want to watch or even imagine. You are never ready to say goodbye. There are some horrors that families have to see that they wish they could forget. Billy is not hurting. I am hurting. Our loved ones are not hurting. We are hurting. It was so true what Billy said, simple words, but true all the same. If you die your worries, your pain will all be gone and those left behind that love you are left with the worries and pain. My cousin's dad is gone. She did not get to say goodbye. He may have hurt for an instant. My dad is gone. His long goodbye was inhuman to witness. We do not let our pets suffer like we let humans suffer. But still, they are not hurting anymore. We are left with the worry and pain. There is no peace for any of us. It is what it is. We all have a hard time handling reality. That is why we are here on this forum.

No, probably got it through mail trucks/cars/horse drawn wagons/horseback. It was the only place to buy bread and stuff for miles (I guess it was the country 7-11). And that might have been before a lot of ya'll's times. I did cry the last time I went by where it was though. One of the daughters (long gone) planted it in pine trees and the one who owns it now lives in Michigan (my cousin) and it is so thick, no trace of a childhood. The old house on the hill (grandparents house) is covered over with trees now too). Lots of living used to go on there. There were 2-3 houses down the road behind the house where sharecroppers lived and where there used to be a schoolhouse in the early 1900's. Life goes on.

Kevin, there will be plenty to disagree with you. But not me. My mom told me years ago, "don't question the Bible.' Okay, that might be dumb on a higher plane than my mom's belief's. There is so much I don't understand and if it hurts my brain to try to find a lost Walmart sack full of groceries, I sure am not going to start questioning the Bible. When my mom was lying in bed with her Alzheimer's she said she wanted to see her sisters. (She never mentioned Daddy). She said she was not scared of dying, she just wanted to be with her family, she was the last one left. I don't know what happens. I think everything is supposed to be perfect, and when I get there it will be because I will run off those three women. No arguments about religion or beliefs, it is what it is.

I can talk about stuff before Billy without it hurting so much. This tiny country store was my maternal grandmother's bread and butter while my granddad was ill and after he passed. Every day (except Sunday) she kept it open for all the farmers of the area, the kids after school. It was a crossroads store with the church right across the road. At a relatives funeral at that church I picked up a song book and they had all been given to the little country Methodist Church by my grandma. There was a big old wood burning stove and cracks in the walls that made you freeze on one side burn on the other. I don't know how they saved all the animal feed since there were rats. My little grandmother left each "child" money and land, and yes they did fuss about who got what. It was 7-10 miles from any town and about 50 or more from any city. This was southern country. They grew cotton, sugar cane, corn, and my uncle even made a motorcycle racing track in later years. The front of the store was tiled with Grapette, Big Red, Orange Crush, RC, Coca Cola, Dr. Pepper, 7-up tops. It was like a regular floor but it was completely tiled with the tops to the drinks. People that lived around kept company by playing dominoes, Rook, and probably poker, etc. There was always someone inside this small store. But the best to me were the moon pies. Not these little things in boxes. These where huge, as big as a sandwich. My favorite. There was a glass case full of candy. I remember when she had one gas pump and it was the old fashioned kind with gasoline in the glass top and was tall. (Of course anything was tall to a kid). Okay, just a few memories that were not sad. We used to crawfish in the little stream under the bridge close to the house. I wish all our memories were that sweet and innocent.

Well Kevin, my son wanted us all to be from Scandinavia, where ever that is, Sounds cold to me. We are what we are. I took one of those stupid quizzes and it came up that I was only 75% redneck. Hurt my feelings.

Well Numb, I have not read all of these, I know you are hurting as we all are hurting. And, I know this does not make a bit of sense, but three of Billy's old girlfriends have passed on and I guess they are where ever he is. I have to believe what the Bible says. But right now, this old widow that was never really jealous of her husband, is totally, unrealistically, insanely, stupidly jealous because they are with him and I'm not. If that is the way things work. And, I don't guess I really have to make sense of things, I never have before.

Kay, when I first got married I showed Billy the picture of my "squaw" great grandmother. I was so proud to be so much Native American. Billy really got a kick out of it when I found out she was almost totally Irish, no Native American. We didn't have Ancestry.com back in the early 60's. In fact, we did not have any "dot com's" at all.

I think we all are Kevin. My grandmother's grandmother was still alive when she was a little girl. Her name was Walker. She spoke no English, only German. She lived with her bachelor son who made a great business for himself on the very tip of Texas and Mexico. He was a lawyer and had a department store. My grandmother used to write to her grandmother all the time and he (the son) would interpret and write her back. I have seen their graves, very fancy, beautiful, but stone is stone. The Ggrandmother had a bunch of kids and only one stayed in the community they were born in. Our family genealogist finds them the most interesting. Not only that, she went to California, to the beautiful area in and around the Plumas National Forest where our ancestors, that branch settled. We (Billy and I) had the RV set up to go to that area to meet our distant cousins. My cousin had written to them. They were excited also. Unfortunately Billy got sick and the last thing I care really about thinking about is making a trip to visit my people. The things that used to be exciting, the daily mundane way of life that was exciting is like eating food with no salt. Nothing tastes the same. But, my cousin's DNA (ancestry.com) came back with less UK than we had. How could that be? Our ancestors on both sides did not commit incest, but they married 2nd cousins, some married brothers of brothers that had married sisters of sisters. Still, my branch had the most UK. (I've read too many history books) and never remember reading about a red headed, freckle faced Pocahontas. It is what it is.