“So long”
Linda Button Hughes, 1944-2012. (Long-ago photo by BobbaLew. [She’s probably 25.])
—Today’s the day: April 17th.
Seven long years ago, April 16th, 2012, I took my beloved wife to Hospeace House near Naples (NY), a hospice.
My wife gave up — although I should say she gave up after I solved an immense hairball on-my-own. I left magazines and papers in the rear pouch of her wheelchair at faraway Strong Hospital, actually Wilmot Cancer Center (“will-MOTT;” as in Mott’s applesauce), where we decided to stop medicating.
Solving that meant finessing the vaunted Strong Hospital answering-machines, which kept running me in circles.
“I guess I can check out,” she probably said to herself. “He seems able.”
She wanted to remain alive because I was always messy communicating due to my heart-defect caused stroke in 1993.
Her cancer was winning; her legs were swelling again.
Cancer-swollen lymph-nodes in her abdomen were restricting circulation.
She’d already been hospitalized once — due to swollen legs.
Chemo stopped the lymph-node swelling, but we were limited in the amount of chemo. We tried a hyper-expensive alternate chemo, but it didn’t work.
All it did was dangerously reduce her white blood-cell count.
“She’s on fire!” I said looking at her CAT-scan (I think it was a CAT-scan). Cancerous metabolism shows up yellow and red in a CAT-scan.
I wheeled her into Hospeace in a wheelchair; I don’t think she coulda walked. This was the BEST, and only, friend I had until then.
People are amazed we really didn’t have any outside friends — just the two of us.
I could tell stories about my dreadful childhood, and how she reversed it.
My stroke made my speaking somewhat wonky. Particularly phonecalls, and solving extreme problems.
We were a TEAM. My wife was always the one solving problems involving phonecalls.
That ride to Hospeace was our last together; one of many. All the way to the Pacific Ocean in 1980, then Montana and Yellowstone in ’87. Cajon Pass and Tehachapi Loop in CA. Mulholland Drive Overlook in the Hollywood Hills.
And how many times to Horseshoe Curve in PA, especially after my stroke?
I probably got more difficult as I aged, but she always hung with me. She probably hurt, but she wouldn’t tell me.
“Don’t forget,” I told her during that last ride. “You always had what matters: what’s between the ears.”
She still seemed fairly lucid — I think she understood. But her fabulous mind was fading as death approached.
Yet for some unknown reason I felt I’d eventually be taking her home. No one ever escapes hospice alive.
“I had a pretty good life,” she said earlier. She claimed she was happy, yet she also had a difficult childhood. Her mother raised her to be a frump.
And here I came along thinking she could be pretty. “You get rid of them bat-wings (glasses) and you’ll look a lot prettier.” Her mother was appalled.
She coulda done better than someone like me who’s half-insane. But she probably felt I was what she deserved.
She always liked me; what attracted her in college. The fact I thought so independently, making cogent wisecracks and snide remarks that skewered conventional wisdom.
I also could make her laugh = something I delivered to other young honeys. “*****, yer gonna get married some day. Whatever ya do marry someone who makes ya laugh. Do that and yer in it for the long haul.”
“I have wonderful news,” I told my wife once. “Of all the places on this vast planet Santa could visit, he’s coming to tiny West Bloomfield.”
“This is why I married you,” my wife said. She always told me the reason we made 44&1/2 years is because I could make her laugh.
Her mother was convinced we wouldn’t last a year.
And now our time together was drawing to a close. She was the one good for 100; her mother made it, outliving her daughter. I might make 100, but I kinda doubt it. Neither of us smoked, drank, or did drugs. Plus we ate healthy, and used to run.
I visited the following day, April 17th. I also took our dog. My wife was so drugged on morphine I’m not sure she knew I was in the room. Our dog was in there too.
I was told she might awake, so I put our dog in the car.
Finally I left; she never awoke. “So long,” I said, touching her hand.
Hospeace called that night to say she “passed;” hospice-speak for “died.”
We’d already made funeral arrangements: She’d be cremated; her ashes scattered around a sugar-maple her father bought us years ago. Her father was long-gone, but she always liked that sugar-maple. She felt she was her father’s daughter — her mother was a pill.
So now it’s seven years. And finally I feel like I’m returning to the real world. A grief-share I attended said a year-and-a-half, a kid brother suggested two years. A co-leader of that grief-share, who I now am friends with, said she’d never tell anyone seven years.
I suppose one never gets over something like this. But for a long time I felt like I wasn’t living in the real world. Such that I notice things seem more real now than before.
My stroke also took away reality — that lasted 10 years.
And now I am no longer who I was while married. Far more sociable than I was then, when I didn’t need to socialize already having someone who liked me.
And females no less. “No girl will ever talk to you,” versus all the female friendships I’ve made since my wife died.
I always consider my wife Step-Two in leaving a dreadful childhood. College was Step-One.
Now I’m onto Step-Three: mind-blowing success at making lady-friends.
My wife had to die for me to get to Step-Three. If she hadn’t I’d still be at Step-Two.
• I had a stroke October 26th, 1993 from an undiagnosed heart-defect since repaired. I pretty much recovered. Just tiny detriments; I can pass for never having had a stroke.
• The only chemo that succeeded was hyper-strong, and might cause heart-problems. It also took away her hair.
• Cajon Pass and Tehachapi Loop in CA, and Horseshoe Curve in PA, are all railfan pilgrimage stops — I’m a railfan. Cajon Pass is Santa Fe Railroad’s climb out of the Los Angeles basin up into the high desert. The railroad is now Burlington-Northern Santa Fe, plus a second railroad is now in the pass: originally Southern Pacific, but now Union Pacific. Tehachapi is where the Southern Pacific railroad climbed the Tehachapi mountains south of San Joaquin Valley. A loop was required to get up to Tehachapi pass — the track passes over itself. (Santa Fe has trackage-rights.) Horseshoe Curve, west of Altoona, PA, is by far the BEST railfan spot to which I’ve ever been. The railroad was looped around a valley to climb Allegheny Mountain without steep grades. Horseshoe Curve was opened in 1854, and is still in use. The viewing-area is smack in the apex of the Curve; and trains are willy-nilly. I’ve been there hundreds of times, since it’s only about five hours away. “Tuh-HATCH-uh-pee,” and “Kuh-HONE,” (not “Cajun”).
• I live in the small rural town of West Bloomfield in Western NY, southeast of Rochester. (Adjacent is the rural town of East Bloomfield, and the village of Bloomfield is within it.)
—Today’s the day: April 17th.
Seven long years ago, April 16th, 2012, I took my beloved wife to Hospeace House near Naples (NY), a hospice.
My wife gave up — although I should say she gave up after I solved an immense hairball on-my-own. I left magazines and papers in the rear pouch of her wheelchair at faraway Strong Hospital, actually Wilmot Cancer Center (“will-MOTT;” as in Mott’s applesauce), where we decided to stop medicating.
Solving that meant finessing the vaunted Strong Hospital answering-machines, which kept running me in circles.
“I guess I can check out,” she probably said to herself. “He seems able.”
She wanted to remain alive because I was always messy communicating due to my heart-defect caused stroke in 1993.
Her cancer was winning; her legs were swelling again.
Cancer-swollen lymph-nodes in her abdomen were restricting circulation.
She’d already been hospitalized once — due to swollen legs.
Chemo stopped the lymph-node swelling, but we were limited in the amount of chemo. We tried a hyper-expensive alternate chemo, but it didn’t work.
All it did was dangerously reduce her white blood-cell count.
“She’s on fire!” I said looking at her CAT-scan (I think it was a CAT-scan). Cancerous metabolism shows up yellow and red in a CAT-scan.
I wheeled her into Hospeace in a wheelchair; I don’t think she coulda walked. This was the BEST, and only, friend I had until then.
People are amazed we really didn’t have any outside friends — just the two of us.
I could tell stories about my dreadful childhood, and how she reversed it.
My stroke made my speaking somewhat wonky. Particularly phonecalls, and solving extreme problems.
We were a TEAM. My wife was always the one solving problems involving phonecalls.
That ride to Hospeace was our last together; one of many. All the way to the Pacific Ocean in 1980, then Montana and Yellowstone in ’87. Cajon Pass and Tehachapi Loop in CA. Mulholland Drive Overlook in the Hollywood Hills.
And how many times to Horseshoe Curve in PA, especially after my stroke?
I probably got more difficult as I aged, but she always hung with me. She probably hurt, but she wouldn’t tell me.
“Don’t forget,” I told her during that last ride. “You always had what matters: what’s between the ears.”
She still seemed fairly lucid — I think she understood. But her fabulous mind was fading as death approached.
Yet for some unknown reason I felt I’d eventually be taking her home. No one ever escapes hospice alive.
“I had a pretty good life,” she said earlier. She claimed she was happy, yet she also had a difficult childhood. Her mother raised her to be a frump.
And here I came along thinking she could be pretty. “You get rid of them bat-wings (glasses) and you’ll look a lot prettier.” Her mother was appalled.
She coulda done better than someone like me who’s half-insane. But she probably felt I was what she deserved.
She always liked me; what attracted her in college. The fact I thought so independently, making cogent wisecracks and snide remarks that skewered conventional wisdom.
I also could make her laugh = something I delivered to other young honeys. “*****, yer gonna get married some day. Whatever ya do marry someone who makes ya laugh. Do that and yer in it for the long haul.”
“I have wonderful news,” I told my wife once. “Of all the places on this vast planet Santa could visit, he’s coming to tiny West Bloomfield.”
“This is why I married you,” my wife said. She always told me the reason we made 44&1/2 years is because I could make her laugh.
Her mother was convinced we wouldn’t last a year.
And now our time together was drawing to a close. She was the one good for 100; her mother made it, outliving her daughter. I might make 100, but I kinda doubt it. Neither of us smoked, drank, or did drugs. Plus we ate healthy, and used to run.
I visited the following day, April 17th. I also took our dog. My wife was so drugged on morphine I’m not sure she knew I was in the room. Our dog was in there too.
I was told she might awake, so I put our dog in the car.
Finally I left; she never awoke. “So long,” I said, touching her hand.
Hospeace called that night to say she “passed;” hospice-speak for “died.”
We’d already made funeral arrangements: She’d be cremated; her ashes scattered around a sugar-maple her father bought us years ago. Her father was long-gone, but she always liked that sugar-maple. She felt she was her father’s daughter — her mother was a pill.
So now it’s seven years. And finally I feel like I’m returning to the real world. A grief-share I attended said a year-and-a-half, a kid brother suggested two years. A co-leader of that grief-share, who I now am friends with, said she’d never tell anyone seven years.
I suppose one never gets over something like this. But for a long time I felt like I wasn’t living in the real world. Such that I notice things seem more real now than before.
My stroke also took away reality — that lasted 10 years.
And now I am no longer who I was while married. Far more sociable than I was then, when I didn’t need to socialize already having someone who liked me.
And females no less. “No girl will ever talk to you,” versus all the female friendships I’ve made since my wife died.
I always consider my wife Step-Two in leaving a dreadful childhood. College was Step-One.
Now I’m onto Step-Three: mind-blowing success at making lady-friends.
My wife had to die for me to get to Step-Three. If she hadn’t I’d still be at Step-Two.
• I had a stroke October 26th, 1993 from an undiagnosed heart-defect since repaired. I pretty much recovered. Just tiny detriments; I can pass for never having had a stroke.
• The only chemo that succeeded was hyper-strong, and might cause heart-problems. It also took away her hair.
• Cajon Pass and Tehachapi Loop in CA, and Horseshoe Curve in PA, are all railfan pilgrimage stops — I’m a railfan. Cajon Pass is Santa Fe Railroad’s climb out of the Los Angeles basin up into the high desert. The railroad is now Burlington-Northern Santa Fe, plus a second railroad is now in the pass: originally Southern Pacific, but now Union Pacific. Tehachapi is where the Southern Pacific railroad climbed the Tehachapi mountains south of San Joaquin Valley. A loop was required to get up to Tehachapi pass — the track passes over itself. (Santa Fe has trackage-rights.) Horseshoe Curve, west of Altoona, PA, is by far the BEST railfan spot to which I’ve ever been. The railroad was looped around a valley to climb Allegheny Mountain without steep grades. Horseshoe Curve was opened in 1854, and is still in use. The viewing-area is smack in the apex of the Curve; and trains are willy-nilly. I’ve been there hundreds of times, since it’s only about five hours away. “Tuh-HATCH-uh-pee,” and “Kuh-HONE,” (not “Cajun”).
• I live in the small rural town of West Bloomfield in Western NY, southeast of Rochester. (Adjacent is the rural town of East Bloomfield, and the village of Bloomfield is within it.)
posted by BobbaLew at 7:20 PM
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