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Preamble to the Beginning of the End
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A week before Thanksgiving, I came home from work--my kids were upset, my husband was blacked out, once again, and I packed and left. My children, 14 and 11, were glad to leave. My mother took us in, and I found a job within two weeks; a house within two months. Neither of us wanted to divorce, I just wanted to be in control of my own destiny and provide a stable environment for my children. He called us daily, and sent money. He was so sweet during those phone conversations. He missed us. I missed him. On the phone, there wasn't evidence of any problems, just his wonderful personality, the voice I loved. I had to remind myself he'd be drinking after he hung up. I let him visit the children, and since he was sending me all of his money and was broke, that provided an excuse for me to let him spend the night. He was finishing his BS in Computer Science, and getting therapy by grad students at the university. He said he wasn't drinking. Any idiot could tell me this made no difference, he was a chronic alcoholic, but I couldn't bear to be away from him.
My high school boyfriend had looked me up and we spent a lot of time together. I went to his house plenty of times (he's a guitarist, and I loved to hear him play), plus I was desperate for a connection with someone I'd known, since I was stuck back in my hometown--a wasteland of cow pastures. When he'd ask me out, I'd agree--but then when time came, I'd cancel. That happened about four times. So, I was sort of seeing my old boyfriend and my husband; my husband was rotating between me and a new girlfriend every other weekend.
I had never had sex as hungry and as wild as we did on those weekends. Actually, it had never been that good with anyone, any time. He asked me what he had to do to have us back. We agreed not to uproot the children again, and I said I'd have to control the finances, completely, and he must go to AA and continue therapy. I knew this wasn't reliable, but I hoped maybe he'd learned what it was like to lose his family, and maybe that was what he'd needed. My children loved their dad, but still said I was walking back into a disaster, and advised against it. My extended family practically staged an intervention to convince me to divorce him.
I thank God I did take him back. This period of our lives was the one we enjoyed, finally. I was in love with my husband. He was taking care of his family. We both had good jobs and enough money to enjoy each other and the children. He called me all day at work. I walked around with a smile on my face all the time. I don't know how anyone could stand being around me. I was excited every day to go home and get my kiss. We enjoyed going to our son's football games together. He had a hard time sitting on the bleachers, though. He had to get up alot and stretch. I thought he was getting early arthritis, but there were over the counter meds for that. Sometimes, my knees were stiff, too, so I didn't get overly concerned. I'd also noticed he had indigestion almost everyday. He was taking otc meds for that, as well. I didn't think this was anything other than getting older.
He began to have daily digestion problems, pain in his abdomen and joints, high blood pressure, and assorted maladies. He went from doctor to specialist to laboratory. He couldn't eat meat any longer. Some days, he'd have to go without eating anything. We were scared, but I still thought it was something easily taken care of. They knew something was wrong, but it took the longest time to get a diagnosis: Rheumatoid arthritis. That was a relief to me, compared to the frightening thoughts of cancer. Still, the more I found out about rheumatoid, the more scared I was. It can branch out into other serious ailments, and it can be fatal. They said he did have an aggressive case of RA, but there were several promising treatments.
When they called him in for more blood tests, I had a sense of foreboding. He hadn't wanted to scare me, but when I read back now, over the doctor's notes from this period, he had already experienced frightening spikes in blood pressure, he'd passed out at work twice, and his pain was worse than he'd let on to me. He'd been in the Army for a couple of years in the late seventies, and had two notable experiences: a blood transfusion, and a couple of heroin injections, when sharing needles wasn't regarded as dangerous. The first time I mourned him was when they called him and said he also had Hepatitis C, which seriously complicated treatment of RA.
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I can't seem to write much more. This part is very difficult. I don't want to add new threads, so I'm just going to add on bits as I can. Nothing I say can possibly describe what I'm trying to say.
When I heard the diagnosis, I knew life was over. It may drift, but it would never be the same. I knew I would be here, as I am now: a widow in an empty house, my secrets, nuances, and passion gone from the earth. He had them, he knew them. Those things died with him. There's no getting any of it back. There's no replacing it. I went through several periods of mourning like that, each one harder than the one before, because we were closer to the end. I would fight back to hope each time, though. Practice from being a hopeful fool re alcohol, I guess... I couldn't understand how he was so steady. He rarely complained. I'd had insurance for me and the children, but he was uninsured. His parents had more than enough to get him good medical care. They suggested he get care through the VA system. They could have saved him had they wanted to. I can't really say much about this. He'd be with me now if they'd given a damn about him. Nothing I say here will be right. This is one of the things I haven't come to terms with. He died broken hearted because of his parent's indifference to the horrible quality of his life and his approaching death.
I keep noticing, when I proofread, that I write in terms of how his death affected me. Thinking about how it affected him is too painful to contemplate for more than a few seconds. I blur it out. That's probably why someone mentioned that I seem detached. I am.
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