I haven’t posted in a while. There are so many reasons but mainly I haven’t felt like it. Lack of time. Lack of interest. But primarily it’s exhaustion because for the past 5, almost 6 weeks, I have been in and out of hospitals & rehabs trying to help my mother who in mid-May fell ill. It’s been a frustrating experience not really knowing for sure what was wrong with her, having countless doctors poke & prod and none of them giving a correct diagnosis. She’s been shuffled to and fro and not once has she been able to understand what was going on with her. Her frustration has turned to fear and in the interim it has spiked her blood pressure, then dropped it. Spiked it. Then dropped it. It was a cruel trick played on the body and the end result has put her yet again in the hospital and this time enduring the effects of a stroke that has pretty much shut down the part of her brain that provides her her memories. Oh, it’s only the most precious part, if you ask me. Sure we can sit back and say that at least she’s not paralyzed. For the most part her debilitation could be so much worse and I guess it could be. But it’s heartbreaking to see this. A few days ago, as frustrated as she was with this process she was still MOM. I could talk to her and she could look me in the eye and talk back. When this all started she would tell me how upset she was that her body was failing her and I told her, “Yeah, but you still have your mind! That is so much to be thankful for.” I can’t help but resist the urge to shake my fist at the sky and ask “Oh yeah? You think losing this last thing would be a fun challenge too, eh?”I don’t do that of course. What’s the point? I KNOW that no one brings on these things. They happen. They happen because the body is designed to do it. It fights off what it can and succumbs to what it can’t. They also happen because our lives, however they end up are consequences for the choices we make. It seems to be human nature for people to blame others for their misfortune. On so many levels this is wrong and makes me mad. It goes with the saying, you have nobody to blame but yourself. Could Mom had taken better care of herself? Of course. Hindsight, ya know? I reflect on my own life and as difficult as the past 2.5 years has been, I wouldn’t change the decisions I have made because I know that I wouldn’t have what’s most important if I didn’t make the decisions I had made. What if I hadn’t pursued Mike when we met online? Well, I may have not moved to Tennessee. I wouldn’t have married him. I wouldn’t have my daughter. Would my life be better without those things? NO! I am sad he’s not here but I am more HAPPY to have known him, had him in my life, even if it was for a short time. As much as it’s easy for us to second guess, we shouldn’t.As a bystander watching this happen to Mom is frustrating. It’s maddening and to be honest, for me it’s deja vu. I understand how people could think that dying quickly is merciful. Yes. I do believe it is. Usually the person doing the dying doesn’t know what hit them and those who have to endure the aftermath don’t have to go through the process of watching the suffering. The suffering is terrible. Some could argue that Mike’s death was a quick one and to those who weren’t around him on a daily basis, I would say that yes, it probably was. But the reality is that I had been watching him slip away for quite a long time. I was seeing his choices pull him further away from his family. His choices, in the end kept him from making the ultimate choice and that was the choice to seek help, accept help and admit responsibility and the consequences for his past choices. In many ways he had reached the point of no return – the point where hope is overcome by fear. Mom is quickly approaching this point, too.Let’s get real. What has happened to her is scary. To all of a sudden have virtually no eyesight, to be told that a fall could kill her and to not remember yesterday is frightening. She has strangers coming in and telling her what to do, when to do it and how. It is oft times painful. It is frustrating. It is frightening. She is, I am sure thinking that none of this is worth it. Perhaps it’s time I just give up. I am heartbroken to think that this could be so. I remember so vividly Mike telling me that he didn’t want to even try – that he couldn’t do it. In the end he said he would but I could tell his heart wasn’t in it. I see the desperation in my Dad’s eyes as he looks for any glimmer of resolve from Mom. I used to have that look in my eye too. It hurts.This may sound like a foreshadowing of what is to come. It’s not meant to be. I am not predicting an end to the road. This will certainly be a long and bumpy journey. Mom’s still here. She is resistant to facing the difficulties ahead but she must. And just as I didn’t give up on Mike, I won’t give up on her.
Ya know when you’re watching a movie and the main character is either desperately looking for something that is like RIGHT there in plain site or they’re sitting on a ticking time bomb and haven’t a clue and you’re sitting there yelling at the screen (as if they could hear you). “It’s RIGHT THERE, you dummy!!!” And then you start to wonder how anyone could be such an idiot and not see what’s right in front of their face.Yesterday I spent several hours compiling music for the big 50th Wedding Anniversary party that we’re having for my parents in August. I was working with literally over 1500 songs and trying to find certain ones that would do well for the dance soundtrack as Mom has told me that she wants to see people out there on the dance floor getting jiggy with it. I’d think of a song and then go see if I could buy it and it wasn’t long that I was just chipping away at the ol’ bank account. Every once in a while I would think of a really cool song and I’d be like DOH! Mike would so have this song! But I’m a moron and melted our harddrive. This is so depressing! This went on for hours… Then I started to wonder if he actually WOULD have the songs I was looking for and instinctively reached over and grabbed his silver iPod that sits on my alarm clock. When he died, I vowed to NEVER take what was on the iPod off. I was going to leave it exactly as he left it. I began to peruse the files that were on there and discovered that he had over 5000 songs on this iPod. Crap. I just found the Holy Grail. It’s all right here! But how am I going to retrieve it all??Google is my friend. I Googled instructions on how to pull music OFF of an iPod. As many are aware you hook an iPod up to a computer and iTunes launches and starts to synch. I didn’t want that to happen and was very paranoid about erasing Mike’s iPod as he had spent hours compiling his music library on it. I found a freeware program that will pull the music off and organize it according to the settings you give it. Not leaving anything to chance, I set up a new account on my computer and made sure to turn off the auto-synch in iTunes. For the first time in 2.5 years, Mike’s iPod was attached to a computer and I started up the program. About an hour later I had restored his library on a new external drive. I may have lost some photos but as for the music? I’m back in business….I have a feeling that maybe someone was watching a little movie called the Life of Kris and yelling at me to find this. What do YOU think?
The gamut of emotions are all over the place these days. A lot has happened of the course of the past couple of weeks. Mom entered the hospital 2 weeks ago quite sick – VERY sick. It was scary. She’s not totally out of the woods yet but at least she has gotten better and at least she is more like herself now. She remains in a rehab facility working through her weakness issue and trying to get enough strength to come home. I don’t know when that will be. I am grateful that she is in a facility closer to home and even more grateful that she has taken the bull by the horns and is giving a sincere effort to improve. This would have been a lot harder if she had just given up. But she hasn’t. I know it’s hard on her but I am proud of her for the bravery that she is showing.Yesterday I learned that the hard drive issue that I mentioned in my blog a couple weeks ago was not going to be resolved in a positive way. The company that I sent the drives to could not recover a single file. The good news is that I won’t have to pay $2400. The bad news is that I lost pretty much all of my photos from the past 15 years. I do have access to a small fraction of them because I had pulled some of them for a project two here and there. But the majority are lost forever – wedding pix, birth photos, birthdays, vacations…Michaela’s whole life has been documented with digital photos. The thought of this loss makes me sick to my stomach. I feel like in some ways I mourn even deeper now because now it’s all just memories. In many ways I feel like I have let Mike down by letting this happen – especially with his music collection. He spent so much time digitizing all of it. I no longer own the CDs. His whole music collection is GONE. Devastating doesn’t even remotely describe how it feels.So, as Michaela would say “Isn’t there any GOOD news to talk about?” Yeah…there is. The ray of sunshine in all this doom and gloom is her. Michaela just graduated from the 2nd grade. She had a very good year! It ended on such a high for her and I am so happy that she got to experience what she did. When Mike died I felt an even bigger responsibility. I am not sure why it should be even more important than before but it’s just how I feel. I had made a promise to myself when this happened that I would do what I could to give Michaela experiences. I am happy to say that in the past 2 years she has been able to go to many places, see many things and meet different people. I am not sure if that resonates with her but I suppose later on it will. One of her most recent experiences was our trip to Washington DC.This is a place that for many 7 year olds may not be all that exciting. But it did leave an impact. She was able to tour the White House, see George Washington’s farm, see all of the monuments and museums and visit the capitol and one of our Congressmen. In doing so, the Congressman offered to come visit her school. Of course when these things happen, the likelihood of follow through is small. But it couldn’t have worked out better. We returned from our trip hopeful that Congressman Matheson would actually be able to visit the school. I told the school of the possibility and within a day the congressman’s office was calling the school to set up the meeting. A couple weeks ago I gave a presentation to Michaela’s class about American Ingenuity. I told them that many great things were developed in America – from the chocolate chip cookie, to flying the first airplane, to the creation of Disneyland to the very foundation of our government. It was an interesting segue but it worked. The kids were intrigued and it offered a good preview into the Congressman’s visit. To top it off, Michaela was asked to introduce Congressman Matheson at the lower school assembly on June 1st. She did fantastic! And I am really proud of her. It isn’t easy getting up and talking in front of people but she did it in front of all of the K-5th grade students. I am guessing that was about 400+ people. She did it mostly memorized too. I knew she could do it but I think even the school administrators and the Congressman, himself was impressed. I don’t think words can adequately express the depth of pride I felt in watching her do this. It was AWESOME.The rest of the assembly went great. I was happy that the Congressman didn’t turn it into this boring thing for the kids. He briefly introduced himself and explained what he did and then let the rest of the assembly be a time for the kids to ask him questions. The questions were hilarious. They ran the gamut of what is his favorite place to visit in Washington DC, to what he thought of Obama’s healthcare bill, to how much the president weighs (he doesn’t know), to whether or not he likes cheese. He got participation from all of the kids – even the little ones and it was a wonderful experience. All I can say is he ain’t bad for a democrat. LOL. 
Check out the introduction here:
So, yeah….there IS good news to report. The other good news, in case you were curious is that despite the stress of the past few weeks, the lack of exercise and eating crap, I haven’t gained anything…the loss is minimal but at least I still fit into my new jeans. Yay!
