Margm

Well, we all take things different. You all can go ahead and laugh, but I bought one of those giant (I mean big) cheesecakes from Walmart. I have one piece left. There must have been at least 12 slices, maybe more. If I buy pineapple sherbet, I eat the whole half gallon in a couple of settings. I have to run past the ice cream section to keep from buying that salted caramel ice cream. Sounds terrible, but I think it has something in it as addictive as speed. I went where I could not eat for the first few months to having gained about 15 pounds. Mama used to talk about mules let out in a clover patch would eat until they died. I had all my lab work done a week or so ago and they have not called me, and they told me the doctor calls the patients themselves. So, either I am okay or doomed and they just cannot tell me. Since falling and hurting my foot, I have been more careful, too careful. Hey, this big butt fell on my size 7 foot all ??? pounds on that one foot and I did not break anything, so that must mean something. I am limited in healthy foods and unlimited in unhealthy ones. I would really like to have a real salad, but never again. It seems there are other things besides just grief I have to get a handle on. Brad, I loved Barbra Streisand. Yeah, I would have to have someone pick me off the floor. Don't know when I will ever be able to listen to music. I recorded the CMT awards, 50th anniversary and I have got through about half of it and had a roll of paper towels with me. I cried through the whole thing so far. I am gonna finish it, alone. I would love to listen to Journey, Air Supply, The Band, and would like to listen to Elvis. Billy hated Elvis so I was sure I could listen to him. Nope, cannot at all. I think it was Andre Boticelli that I listened to Broadway songs and it was okay for awhile. I listened to CCR till I got tired of them. I leave my radio off in the truck. The numb feelings I used to have are just now disbelief, so I try not to think too much, and I am letting myself do that today, so I will finish. George, I guess Billy's "I am you and you are me" will always live in my heart and soul. I honestly believe that the harder you love someone, the harder you grieve. But, I have been having more "good" days than these past couple of bad ones. I don't feel like we were cheated too much. Not many people have 18 years of retirement and we had a good life, a bunch of bridges to cross, but we did it. We had many milestones that others did not have, but I don't miss him any less just because of this. I know I have read how the younger ones feel they were cheated out of a lot of years, and they were. I was lucky, Billy and I both were lucky, but that does not lessen the pain. I just wanted to go first. I am selfish.

Karen, I have had all (or most all) my old friends want to make time for us to get together. After I make excuses for awhile they quit asking (thank goodness.) I don't do good in crowded restaurants, or any place where there is loud music and lots of people. Our small city has a Mexican restaurant that has the best Mexican food around. I am never hungry enough to put up with the loud music. The last time my family ate there I was in my own vehicle and I let them put my food to go and left for my family to bring me the food. My granddaughter plays her music on all those contraptions that they have ear buds for, and actually, I like some of her music. Cannot understand the words to a lot of it so it does not make me cry. I loved "Purple People Eater" because it was sung by Sheb Wooley, and he was a western character actor. Probably sang with a band in younger years. I got out for our class women's get together. It was nice and after all these years, it was like I was 17 again, and they had gotten old, not me though. I will go to the whole classes Christmas party on December 3rd, heavily medicated. First one I have been to in all these years. Billy and I were always somewhere else when they would get together. Karen, I have found that I don't want attachment with friends yet. Maybe one of these days. And, strangely enough, I know they will still be there (unless they have departed otherwise). One of my friends and I have seen each other 2-3 times in the past few months. It's enough.

We each have different triggers, different things we can do, and there are so many things that others can do that I cannot do. Some find solace from gazing at his/her pictures. I have not reached that point yet. Some find peace in music. I would probably cry through that old song "Purple People Eater." Most will not remember that one. I tried journaling and then when I went back and read the place I was in when I wrote that journal page, I was right back at day 1, week 1, month 1. I thought I was doing good. Well, doing good for me, maybe not someone else. I got through all the important dates and found out they were just plain days like every day since he left. We never were ones for celebrating, but who in the world would have thought that the time change day would so destroy me? Billy always said "that's my job" about changing the clocks. I wrote this somewhere else, I am going to cut and paste into my "going through hell" site. I get carried away and then you all get my word salads.

Love the pictures, love the concept. Good girls!!!!!!

Polly, when it was all over with, October 17th was just another day Billy was gone. I bought a blue lighted wax burner to put below the shelf that holds his urn and it is really my alter of all the things that were dear to him. I retired my Kindle and wrapped the cover tight around the Kindle he loved. (I did buy me a bigger Kindle, cannot give it up, I have all the books on it that he loved, some I have to read yet.) I put a cardinal cup holding his softball from when he coached one of his teams. He coached softball for our son and daughter and football for our son. I keep even the cape and hair cutting equipment in a bag on one of the shelves. This is all at the end of the big hall leading into my bedroom. I put lavender smelling wax in the warmer. Hate that stuff, going back to apple cinnamon. But then I remember, after over 50 years that boy told me he did not like cinnamon. So, I will put the forest smelling wax. He certainly loved the forests, any of them, all of them. It has been over a year for me now too. I don't cry as much as I used to, but I learned, like putting a rubber band around your wrist and popping yourself, when your thoughts turn morbid, reroute yourself. I will never quit hurting and sometimes I wish I was not here, or anywhere, but I still have one task I have to finish if the good Lord lets me. Then, I won't mind leaving at all. Somehow or other though, Billy pushes me to try to set things right with our granddaughter. It is what he would have wanted. It is what I have to do. Then I can rest. I do tell myself sometimes, I have to remember what he told me when we all thought I was dying from the oddball cancer I had, "you will be gone and you won't have all the pain, and you will have none of the worry." My Billy does not hurt anymore and all this worry I have, he does not have it anymore. (But I damn sure would like to share it with him). Okay, addendum: Stupid daylight saving time. Plain old bothersome thing, turn clocks back. I have pulled myself around all day. Had to go take my son's girlfriend to work, go get her after work. Just once a week, no big deal but I'm by myself in the truck part of this time. So, she and my son are going to be apart three more months. Can people do that? Billy and I separated once for six weeks and still saw each other every day. These two have been together for 10 years. Am I judging or just grieving. She could be with him, but won't go. He is learning a new job. She just does not want to go. He is fine with that. I told her it was none of my business when I let her out of the truck, you can be separated for that long and it is not necessary. But, I guarantee you one thing, when they die you are separated forever. And I drove off crying all the way home. You see, turning the clocks back and forward was what Billy always called "that's my job."

You started exactly where you needed to. You said exactly what you were supposed to say. I always feel my Billy led me to this place after only three days. I can remember being in shock at the hospital. I was not going to let him die. I was going to have a miracle. Somehow or other, at 7:30 a.m. on October 17, 2015, I stopped playing God. I learned I was not in control and now over a year later, I am still not in control. But, I did learn to not scream into pillows so no one would hear me. That just hurt my head. My heart hurt enough, and I tried the screaming twice. Neither time did it bring him back. I cried until I could not breathe, and what a peaceful feeling that not breathing was, but I did finally breathe. There are no set patterns. There are no rules. They are gone and we cannot bring them back. But, they are us and we are them, so even if we cannot see them, we carry them with us. I still talk to Billy all the time. I do it more now when there are not people around. I think I might put that thing on that looks like I am talking into a phone that is not hand held. So many things, so many times we want to tell them something. Well, I still tell that shaggy haired, shaggy bearded lanky old man of mine, I still tell him everything. I think he is happy I learned to quit fussing with our daughter. I wish he could have seen it a few years ago instead of waiting this long. So, you go ahead, come on here, and you ramble all you want to. This is the only place that has kept me sane and that is up for grabs too. But, that was what Billy liked, he liked me being crazy and I am not going to change. You really don't even have to make much sense, I know I very seldom do. I cannot say welcome, because that is not really appropriate. But, you will find we all are in different stages of pain, sometimes worse than other times. You are understood here.

Marty, when Brianna was about 7-8 she saw me reading about the "wrinkle remover" creams and picking out one. She said "Mamol, why do you buy that, you know it doesn't do any good." (I still buy them).

So happy for you Kay. Wish I could go back and do it all over again (with the grandchildren).

Well, a real big smile. I love it. These girls really love their "Amps." Brianna always spelled Billy's "Dade" for Daddy, and he was the only Daddy she ever knew. I think sometimes that is why she wants to stay close to me.

More pictures Butch. It helps some of us smile to see such sweet miracles. Compliments to your daughter-in-law for such unique and sweet outfits and headwear.

October is no longer my favorite month. I wish you peace my friend, today, tomorrow, and always. That is all we can hope for. If you can find happiness, then more power to you. Sorry for this bad day, bad month, 2015 a bad year.

Patty, if they were estranged to begin with, losing them again is going to be like losing something you don't want anyhow. Sounds like she was trying to do some kind of stupid reverse psychology to make you see you were not the only one hurting. And she was estranged, why? Some things we don't need in life and sometimes estranged friends are some of them. She was not making you look at yourself, she was just being stupid. Her pain or grief, or her husband's pain or grief is not your concern. The only concern to you is your own grief. You handle yours and let Ms. Ignoramus handle hers. Please don't sleep on her futon again. I have a futon as a couch. For someone to sleep on it, I keep a three inch memory foam mattress hid behind it. I would not let family or friends sleep on it without it. Myself, I think I would let her handle her own "grief" and you handle your own grief, because we all know which is greatest. And the good Lord only knows we don't need estranged friends.

I just want to be invisible to everyone but family, and well, sometimes............I will leave it at that.

Well, I have a dilemma. We all know I don't cook. Oh, I do some small things ever so often, nothing inventive though. My granddaughter cooks for herself and I make sure she has the right things. My daughter has mentioned we all have the buffet at one of the casino's on the river. Sounded good to me until my granddaughter said "I want a traditional Thanksgiving and Christmas." She said "Daddy would want us to have this." Well, this is one part of family I will not take away from her although it sounded like a good idea to keep the memories away. I will get through it. I know how to cook. Southern corn bread dressing for me will be replaced with grits dressing. Corn bread for those others. I can fix the other for the rest of them and freeze the rest. Don't know how my daughter will accept this. She wants the "different" and so did I, but I can manage this for my granddaughter. It means family to her, even if she does not live with her mother. Hope we can pull it off.

Last night our apartment complex held a Halloween party in the park in front of my building. I had to leave once to take my son's girlfriend home from work, the complex was filled with Halloween characters. I saw one little girl princess that was so adorable, but I have no business being among a bunch of people. My daughter's friend wanted me to go to this town's city council meeting Monday night on the electric bills people are getting. Mine was down $30, I have no complaint, and I do not want to be around a bunch of people. Perhaps my reason for not finding a church home yet also. I don't suffer complaints from people.. The woman in the Walmart buggy that was waiting for her prescription. Her husband passed in 1999. My granddaughter was born in 1999. My two grandmother's born in 1899. (And, I am going nowhere with that topic). Anyhow, her husband (now husband) came and paid for her prescription (he had been shopping). He had been a classmate many, many years ago. She told me in confidence behind his back (but I think he probably heard), she said "it is not the same." Well, of course it is not the same. She had to have triple bypass surgery the first week of the newer marriage. What stress she must have had. One of them will suffer loss again, or for the first time. Life goes on, until it doesn't.

Marty, all I can say is "wow!" and one of the answers to the poem, "hold on, hold on, hold on."

That is so true Gin. Never heard it before. I am going to look this woman up. It is right on point.

My granddaughter won't watch the news. She said it is nothing but sad. It makes me wonder. We got the Shreveport Times and the Shreveport Journal when I was a child and I read the newspaper from front to back. Newly married, I got it from the grocery store in front of the apartment and the owner said he was impressed because most young people never read the newspaper. I still read the news on the local TV stations, but politics is not my center of interest. I wonder a lot of times about the rate of crime now and the rate of crime when I was a child. We did not have the fear that young people face now and I wonder if it is because the escalation of the news on every medium. I only read the newspapers. I did call the Shreveport Times once because they used a "fill-in" article of an actor dying that had been dead for nearly 10 years. I wonder how much of the reporting now is "fill-in" reporting. My head is not in the world's situation, only in my situation. If this is not normal, that's just too bad, again, it is what it is.

Gwen, thinking of you today also.

That part that says "I want to be like normal people again" really hits home. We just want our normal life back. Whatever that was. I heard that you see people that remind you of our lost ones but I have not seen that tall, lanky, shaggy haired, bearded old man of mine anywhere. Except in my memory. He always wanted me to cut his hair and he would tell me how to do it. So, he would wear a ball cap till it grew out. Then we would let it be shaggy for awhile. Once put it in a pony tail on back of his neck. I liked that, he didn't. That was yesterday wasn't it?

Oh Marty, thank you so much. I did have a supervisor that told me one time that I was crazy, but it was a really nice crazy. Still pondering that thirty years later.

Met my new doc today. A real, live MD, not a PA or nurse practitioner (though I would not change my nurse practitioner for a doc, but not going back to AR). She did not think I needed a shrink but will send me to a counselor. We will see how that goes. I think of all of you as my counselors, you have been there, not sure this one will have, but who knows.

I guess that hits us all, old, young, male, female. The first days we want death ourselves in the worse way. I enjoyed the breathless feeling at the end of crying, unable to catch my breath, but I did, some primitive part of me wanted to live enough not to leave.

Gwen, perhaps I don't say this enough, but I admire you very much for doing this. This is a big step I have not made yet. I mentioned volunteering to my mom after my dad passed and she said emphatically "and not get paid for it?!!!!!!" That was something she would not do. When she was in the nursing home for rehab, she thought she was working a job for money.

I like the way the Japanese do it. If I had been younger, I know I would feel the same.