After a pretty crappy month with Charlie's health crisis and a couple of weepy weekends, I can finally report that I had a good weekend. Yeah, I'm as surprised as you are!
I wish I knew what the secret was, what made this weekend pleasant and fun with no tears. If I knew, I'd bottle it and drink it every Friday because I certainly don't enjoy crying. I actually cried myself to sleep on the couch at 8:30pm last Saturday.
But this isn't about that, this is about the good weekend I just had.
Saturday I traveled 50 miles south to attend The Fancy Flea, a flea market/vintage fair. I love these kinds of shows. The first time I attended one, back in California, I literally walked into the show and exclaimed "I have found my people!" I love the lace and the rust and all the beautiful wooden furniture, farm equipment, bunting, cow skulls - all the shabby chic loveliness.
You put French on anything and it sells like hotcakes!
I walked all over the show and enjoyed every single minute. Although Mr. T and I have been to this show many times together, it didn't feel especially weird to be there by myself. I know vintage stuff wasn't his cup of tea and he just went to make me happy so it wasn't so bad to wander around, sometimes going to the same booth several times, knowing that I wasn't dragging anyone else along and boring them.
It's no fun to go to a show and not be able to buy anything so I gave myself a budget of $20, which isn't much at a show like this but I scored. I found this cabinet door which had been turned into a picture hanger for only $18. I'm going to paint it pink and print out some really nice pictures of Mr. T and me to hang in the kitchen. Even if I'd had a larger budget, this still would have been my choice. I walked away from the show happy.
On Sunday I attended Dapper Day at Epcot in Disney. This is a twice a year event that encourages people to dress up (either vintage or modern) as an homage to the early days of Disneyland when people visited the park in their Sunday best.
Mr. T and I attended this event 2 years ago and had a fabulous time. Honestly, we both had big smiles on our faces the entire day. He always loved dressing up and he had this new jacket so he was thrilled to be able to wear it there even though I feared it would be too hot. It was Florida, after all. He swore he wasn't hot the entire day. I'm so glad he had a chance to wear it that once.
We had such an awesome time that I knew I wanted to go back this year. But, as usual, I almost talked myself out of it because I knew it was going to be a bit daunting to do it by myself. However, on Sunday morning I got up, got dressed and headed to Epcot without giving myself too much time to think.
My dress was a Valentine's Day gift from friends, from the Disney Dress shop and featured pictures of all sorts of Disney movie dogs, including Mr. T's favorite character, Stitch. My hat was from my favorite hat shop in Carmel, purchased on our vacation last September. I was supposed to wear it at our vow renewal in February and it's not the sort of hat you'd wear on an everyday basis so I was thrilled to wear it for Dapper Day. I added a band of pink flowers to match the dress.
One of the best things about Dapper Day is that everyone is very complimentary of everybody else's outfits. Since I've been feeling pretty low these days, it was a balm to my soul to get so many compliments. I wish every day was Dapper Day!
After lunch outside of the park with friends, I went back in for ice cream from France which was delicious. I ate it in the shade in Morocco and for a few minutes, with my hat and fancy dress in that exotic place, I felt like a character in a book or an Audrey Hepburn movie. It was my favorite moment from the day.
I look forward to the next Dapper Day in November although I must admit it was a little lonely, kind of felt like I was the only one participating by myself. Most everyone else was coupled up, some even had matching outfits - so cute. The people that weren't couples were in groups, laughing their way through the park together. That stung a little but it didn't take away from my enjoyment of the day. I hope I'll have a partner in crime in November but, if not, I'll go by myself again and still have a good time.
I've tried to figure out what made this weekend better than the last 2 and the only thing I can come up with is that I was busy with outings that were totally my choice. I attended two events that I have a history with and that I would look forward to whether I was alone or not. But practically speaking, it's not going to be like that very often during the year so I have to figure out other ways to keep the tears away.
Wish me luck.
I live in a vacation house neighborhood which means most of the houses around me are rented to tourists on a weekly basis so I don't know most of my neighbors, but I do know the owners on either side of my house.
On one side I have permanent neighbors, that's the guy that offered me his "friendship" and a kiss a few months ago. The least said about him the better.
On the other side the owners are a lovely retired couple from somewhere in England who visit twice a year, in the spring and fall, for 5-6 weeks at a time. The rest of the time their house is rented out.
The last time they were here it was October. I always see the husband outside, doing work around the house. The first question he ALWAYS asks me is "how's your husband?"
I've literally been dreading his visit for the last 5 months just because of that question. I knew it was coming some time after Easter because that's when they are always here.
There has been a lot of commotion over at his house the past few days, people from the rental company, the landscaping crew and the pool cleaners have been here so I knew it was just a matter of time.
Sure enough, there was a car in their driveway last night and this morning I saw him driving in from breakfast as Charlie and I were driving out of the neighborhood on our way to work.
So now I want to avoid running into the neighbors on both sides of me...something that's not easy to do when you have a dog that thinks she needs to go for a walk every 30 minutes.
Maybe it would be better to just get the question over with rather than try to avoid him for the next 6 weeks, but then there will be that awkward time after I answer the question where he feels bad and doesn't know what to say. People never know what to say. I certainly don't know what to say and I still can't talk about it without crying. That's embarrassing enough when it's someone you know but totally humiliating when it's someone you just have a passing acquaintance with.
Or, maybe I can convince Charlie to use doggie diapers!
Yeah, probably not.
In the beginning you cling to every little thing, each one becoming almost infinitely important in your mind.
the last email
the last caller id with his name on it
the pictures of the last fun day you spent together
a video you didn't know existed until a friend sends it to you
pictures, so many pictures
wearing jewelry that has sentimental value
the niggling little thought that's almost too far away to grasp that if you do everything just right,
if you're good and strong and brave,
if you turn left instead of right,
if you look up instead of down,
that somehow you'll hit on the right combination of things and you'll finally, finally, finally wake up and you'll see him smiling down at you,
telling you that he's taken so many pictures of you sleeping with your mouth open and that you drool,
and he gives you that mischievous little grin,
and you laugh,
but then the moment slips away without you figuring out how to bring it back and make it happen,
and you realize that no matter how many pictures you look at, or how many times you scroll to that caller id,
or no matter what jewelry you wear,
it's never going to happen,
he's never, ever, ever coming back.
This definitely wasn't my favorite Easter of all time. In fact, it sucked. I have a feeling all my holidays are going to suck from now on.
I had originally planned on taking Charlie and myself out of town for the holiday weekend. Not only was it Easter but the day before was an anniversary for Mr. T and me. But my plans changed and I was in town. I probably won't make that mistake again, from now on I will try to find a way to remove myself from reality on all birthdays, anniversaries, and holidays.
Not only does it hurt to remember how we used to celebrate and know that it will never be that way again, it also makes me sad to be completely alone. I don't want to feel bad when I see people post pictures of their family celebrations but I'm afraid I do. It would be better for me to remove myself from the situation.
I did make the 40 mile (each way) trip to visit my mother on Easter morning but she is declining mentally and didn't even realize it was Easter at first. She thought it had happened the day before. She wasn't in the mood to have company so, after going out to buy her some supplies, I left her to go back to sleep. I know it makes me a horrible daughter (don't judge, nobody knows what I've been through with that woman) but I wish I hadn't wasted the money on gas for the 80 mile trip.
After reading outside and watching more TV than I should, I finally decided to treat myself to a meal out at Cracker Barrel. I waited until 3 in the afternoon so that it wouldn't be too crowded and I wouldn't feel like such a loser sitting there all by myself on a holiday.
I ordered a LOT of food, probably because I was feeling just a teeny bit sorry for myself. LOL But, I assure you that most of it went home in a takeout box. I really only ate the eggs, a little bacon and the apples. I figure the pancakes, hashbrown casserole (loaded!) and the rest of the bacon will make at least 2 or 3 more meals so that's less groceries that I need to buy this week. I'm glad they were open on Easter. I would have loved to have gone to Cracker Barrel for dinner when I was all alone on Christmas but they were closed. It was never Mr. T's favorite restaurant but I love the whole comfort food aspect of it. It's like a big food hug when you're feeling down. Wherever I take myself next month for Mr. T's birthday, I hope there's a Cracker Barrel. Although I imagine he would prefer sushi as a tribute on his birthday.
Here's a favorite Easter-ish memory - a visit to Asilomar, our favorite place in California - was always a treat. We first discovered it the weekend before Easter in 2014 and went back to spend a wonderful Easter Sunday there the next weekend. We had no money so Mr. T packed a lunch for us and we spent the day on their amazing back deck just reading our Kindles and enjoying the view. It was like taking a vacation just 15 minutes from home. It was a tradition we kept up whenever we needed a break from prosaic reality. In the picture above we are visiting near Easter (don't you love Charlie's bunny ears) without knowing, at the time, that a little over a month later we were going to move away to Florida.
Not the best pictures but that's Shifu and me (and Mr. T too) enjoying the beautiful view at Asilomar on that first Easter in 2014. Such precious memories.
I fear this has been rather more rambling than usual and not the least bit funny. I used to be funny but I don't seem to have the knack anymore. I think the holiday kicked my butt. I'll try to do better next time.
woke up this morning to see a blue light flashing on my phone. a blue light means i have a missed call. is it another reach out from the great beyond? turns out a blue light also means another creepy guy from Instagram, whose feed consists of shirtless pictures of a highly muscled guy who is almost certainly not him, wants to send me a direct message. delete. sigh.
So something a little weird happened this morning...well, really last night.
I got up this morning checked my phone and there was notice of a missed call...from Mr. T!
You can only imagine how stunned I was to see that. It actually took my breath away for a moment.
How?
I now use his old phone number and the call came from that number so essentially my phone called itself.
I've never actually seen something like that happen. My only explanation is that it's a junk call that spoofed the number. But how weird.
I posted the picture on Facebook, because I pretty much tell my friends everything these days because I have no one at home to talk to, and the general consensus is that it's Mr. T sending me a sign.
Yeah, I had thought about that too and you don't know how much I would like to believe that. But, at the same time, I don't want to let myself believe it because it would hurt too much to eventually find out there's a much more prosaic explanation.
But there's a part of me that will always want to believe it really was a sign from him. If anybody could find a way to get around the rules of Heaven and send me a sign - it would be Mr. T!
Since I really don't think anybody is reading this damn blog, I'm going to be very honest right now.
I want to die.
Now don't worry and there's no need to call emergency services to intervene and perform a wellness check. I am NOT about to harm myself, that's never going to be a problem.
But the honest truth is that I really don't want to be here. The idea of years and years of this just makes me want to...heck, I don't even know what it makes me want to do. It makes me want to cease to exist, I guess.
In a way, I feel like I've already ceased to exist. I feel useless, like an invisible nobody. I feel like I have no purpose, just someone taking up space, wasting oxygen.
I was watching a movie this weekend and one of the main characters made a vision board to see what she really wanted out of life. It made me realize that, for the first time in my life, I have no clue what I want out of the future. I have no plans, no hopes, no dreams, no projects, no little obsessions.
I guess I'm fully entering the depression phase of grieving and it really sucks.
I do realize that I didn't have the best of weekends so that might be adding to this feeling but it's not the first time I've felt this way. I've been feeling this way for the past 5 months (yes it's been 5 months) and I've tried to distract myself with weekend plans and mostly it's worked. When I'm out doing something, either by myself or with friends, I don't feel hopeless about the future. I don't feel anything about the future, I'm just living in the moment. But when I'm at home, the moment is sad and kinda boring so living in it isn't a help. But I don't think constant distraction is healthy either. Oh bother.
Of course, I know I could distract myself at home by cleaning up rooms, going through and throwing things out, in general getting ready for whatever is to come regarding the house. But doing that just makes me very, very sad so I don't think that's a good idea right now. I've decided not to worry about all that stuff until after Mr. T's birthday next month.
And yes, getting through his birthday next month is going to be hard. He never made a big deal about birthdays but I always did. I practically made May 19th a national holiday. I can't decide whether I should distract myself that whole weekend or just crawl into bed with the covers over my head until it's over.
Until then, here I am wanting to die. It's not like I don't have friends and I know they care about me but it's just not the same as having that one person that you have an eternal connection with. I have friends who have been single their whole lives and maybe they'd roll their eyes at me because they don't have that one person either but I can't help but feel that it's different never having that connection versus having had that connection for decades and then suddenly it's all over without warning.
Hopefully I'll look back at this blog months/years from now and think I'm being overdramatic right now. Who knows. I'm too emotionally hollow to even care.
It's not like I'm morose every moment of the day. At least once a day my niece (who is like a little sister to me) and I exchange snapchat photos to make each other laugh. I'll share one with you.
"Part of the challenge of living according to other people’s
expectations is that they are subject to change without notice. I was
too sad for some people; I was not sad enough for other people. Somebody
could catch you on a day when you are truly struggling, and they really
don’t want to see that. They want to be able to give the world the
report that, “She’s doing great. Wow. What an inspiration.”
Today is a bad day. I guess I'm too sad for at least one person. My mother, who has never been a very supportive person in my whole life, told me that it was time for me to move on with my life and to stop being sad. This was right after I told her that, because of Charlie's presence with me at work all week, I had been able to drive to work without crying for the first time in 5 months.
It made me mad when she said it but after getting home and thinking about it, I can't stop crying. I guess all that crying I didn't do this past week has built up and has to come out somehow.
I don't want to be an inspiration to anyone either. I think I put on a good front when I'm in public but I know how well, or not well, I'm handling all this. I've noticed I'm taking more naps. I get home from work or from going out with friends and it's like I've used up all the energy that I have.
Of course the nap thing could also be because I have to keep the temperature in my house so high because I can't afford air conditioning. LOL It's been really hot here in Florida. I hate to think of the summer weather coming back so soon.
I miss the way I used to feel. I don't know how to get back to that girl and I know that I just have to walk my way through this, that there are no shortcuts but, oh how I wish there were.
And just because I hate ending things on a down note, here is a picture of how I looked taking Charlie out at 6 this morning. I put my shoes on in the dark because I didn't want to wake up too much so that I could go back to sleep. I laughed when I looked down at my feet under the streetlight. Luckily nobody else was stupid enough to be out at that hour.
I think one of the hardest parts about all this widowhood stuff is doing things I never would have to do if Mr. T were still alive.
Like, one of the first things I had to do was take care of his LinkedIn account. Normally I wouldn't have to do anything with that but he had a premium account which meant we were paying $69 a month for it. His company was reimbursing him for that but once he was gone, the reimbursements stopped and I certainly could no longer afford it so I had to contact LinkedIn. They ended up fixing the problem by deleting his entire LinkedIn account which wasn't what I wanted (I kind of liked looking at it) and something inside me screamed when I realized what they'd done but, I had to tell myself it wasn't hurting him, he really no longer needed it. But I HATE the fact that it (and he) no longer exists on LinkedIn.
And that realization just about tore me up inside.
There's all the big things you have to do - remove his name from financial accounts, from joint property in case you need to sell, even something as silly as Disney passes so you don't have to keep paying for the pass that will never be used again.
Then there are the silly, little things that no one ever thinks about. Somehow I think these are the worst.
Such as, I've promised myself that this is the weekend I'll clean out the refrigerator and freezer of all the foods that haven't been touched since November since they were ones that only he liked. But I hate even the idea of that because it means he's really never coming back. Of course my head knows this but my heart is being quite stubborn.
Or here is a silly one. See that broken bread tie up there? Mr. T put that on the cord of our toaster because the toaster and toaster oven sit next to each other and we were forever plugging in the wrong one. So he put a bread tie on the toaster cord so that we could easily identify it. It broke a few weeks ago and I actually cried .
I put another bread tie on the cord so his idea lives on but the one he actually put on himself is gone...well, not completely gone, I can't bring myself to throw it out and hellfire will rain down on the head of anybody who accidentally does it while they are visiting me.
I know there are much bigger "erasings" coming up. I haven't moved his shoes from the front hall and all of his clothes are still in the closet (and scattered on his side of the bedroom as he left them) and eventually I will need to go through all of them and give some away and box the rest up. I won't be able to bring myself to throw any of them away. But I just can't face that right now because that would be the ultimate erasure. To face that empty closet every day would just kill me. It would mean that he's really gone, that he doesn't need any of those clothes any more because he's not coming back.
I know he's not coming back but I don't *know* it, know what I mean? I don't want to know it.
How can someone be here every day for 55 years and then - poof - it's like they never existed? It just isn't fair.
I hate all of this but I hate creating a life without him in it the most.
I am a bit weird.
That's not quite accurate, I'm a lot weird. I prefer the word eccentric but most people would say weird. I'm ok with that.
I'm not really interested in the things that most normal people are interested in.
I tend to get obsessions about odd things and then I research them and dwell on them, immerse and surround myself with them. Such as, at any given time when I lived in Virginia I was obsessed with either the Victorian era or the American Colonial period. Poor Mr. T. I completely decorated our living room in the Victorian style even though I know he really didn't like it. Of course we never really used our living room so that might have been why he put up with it. He was a smart one.
And I can't even count how many times I dragged him down to Colonial Williamsburg and insisted that we stay in the restored section even though those rooms weren't up to the luxurious standards that he usually enjoyed when traveling.
But, bless his heart, he not only tolerated my quirks (now that's a much nicer word than weird) but he celebrated them. I think he thought all my little passions and collections were adorable even though he could rarely keep up with them because I tend to switch from obsession to obsession with the speed of a cheetah. Ah yes, I used to have a thing for cheetahs.
Then there was the time I loved seals and sea lions, and the time I thought I wanted to learn the autoharp, or how about when I wanted to collect all things Little House on the Prairie and dragged him all around the Midwest visiting museums. Of course we did get to see Mt. Rushmore and the Badlands of South Dakota so I know he enjoyed that part. Or the time when I was obsessed with the American Southwest and decorated the whole house in that style...that came before the Victorian redecoration. Or the time when I fell in love with anything vintage - clothing, makeup, music and we had to go to all sorts of vintage festivals and antique malls. Mr. T wasn't fond of antiques, he liked new, modern stuff but he learned to appreciate my aesthetic.
There was also my complete obsession with a house builder from the 1920s in Carmel so we went all around the town having him take pictures of all the houses and I spent hours in the library reading microfilms of 1920s newspaper or the lengths I went to to learn everything I could about the WASPs from WWII. Mr. T was supposed to take me to Texas this summer so that I could do more research about them. Anybody out there fancy a road trip to the middle of nowhere Texas?
And the poor guy never knew what color or length my hair would be when he came home. I experimented with my hair for years before finally settling on a style that suited me. In the beginning he might have had a confused look on his face when suddenly my long hair was short or my blonde hair was red but eventually he got used to it and nothing could phase him.
My longest lasting obsession has been with hats. I love hats and wear them often. Mr. T loved this obsession, he often said I had a "hat head" which meant he thought I looked good in most any hat.
He loved for me to get new hats. On our last trip to California he insisted that I buy 2 new hats at my favorite hat shop in Carmel. It would make him happy to know that I wear one of them often and the other, bought for a vow renewal we never got to have, will make its first appearance at Disney Dapper Days later this month.
I'm also weird because, unlike most girls, I don't give a crap about wearing the latest styles or buying expensive purses and shoes. Actually, Mr. T loved me to have designer purses and the only ones I have are ones he insisted on buying for me. But nobody can make me spend hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars on shoes.
Instead, and this is what makes me definitely weird, I have fallen in love with a style called Boho which is part vintage, part hippie with a dash of cowgirl thrown in for spice. I started dressing this way in 2012 and it was like a light bulb went off in my head. This is me, this is who I am. Mr. T used to call it my hobo style just to tease me but I think he really respected that I marched to my own drum when it came to style even though it wasn't his favorite style. Although I'm not interested in current designer fashion, I am very interested in fashion and style and I spend an inordinate amount of time putting together just the right looks. Mr. T appreciated that I cared about how I looked and the style I presented to the world. He loved to pick things out for me that contributed to that style. He had great taste in clothes and jewelry.
I so appreciate that he loved my weirdness and never judged. I was lucky and blessed to have someone by my side that allowed me to blossom into the real me. Before him, I had never met anyone that made me feel so comfortable to just be myself and let my freak flag fly. He encouraged every research subject, complimented every new hairstyle or outfit, made me feel like I was the cutest, most adorable girl on the planet and he listened to my endless chatter on subjects he probably couldn't have cared less about. For a mostly quiet girl, I can get on quite a roll if I'm talking about something I love. Being a passionate person himself, he understood and encouraged passion in others.
When I get to see him in heaven, the first thing I will do is thank him for giving me the space and confidence and support to become my true self, for loving whatever version of me that I came up with each day. It was the best gift a slightly (very) awkward, shy girl could have ever been given.
And so, for him, I'm going to keep on being adorable and cute and quirky and just plain weird.
First of all - Charlie update!
She's doing really well. Her energy is up, she's not hyper/anxious anymore, she's my feisty girl again. Her back legs are much better, not completely strong but so much better than it was over the weekend.
For the last 2 days I've taken Charlie to work with me to keep an eye on her in case the seizures come back. Well, at least that's the excuse I use. Truthfully I have her with me because I can't stand to have her out of my sight and I'm getting more out of it than she is. I love having her there, it makes me calm. And, I've now driven to work 2 days in a row without crying - that's a record! It's a long drive which leaves a lot of time to think.
Which brings me to what I've been thinking about lately -
sex
Bet that got your attention. ;-)
Did it make you uncomfortable? It sure makes me uncomfortable and yet it's something I need to talk about. It's a big topic in my widow groups. I think a lot of people think grief is so big that it crowds out normal human emotions. Just the opposite, I think, it intensifies all emotions - the good, bad and the lustful. You miss everything about your old life especially the physical intimacy.
I think, going through all of the trauma of Charlie's health crisis has brought some of that up for me. It felt awful to be alone during all that, which made me miss the emotional intimacy of sharing the good and the bad with someone and then that leads to thinking about physical intimacy. Don't moments of crisis make you long to really connect with someone? It's like, if everything else is going wrong at least that one thing is going right.
Not that anything is going to change in that department for me. I certainly don't have the emotional strength for a relationship at this point. I can't even imagine having the strength for a new friendship, I'm not able to give even that to anyone right now. As one of the widows I read about said "I want someone to kill spiders in my house and I want intimacy but I
want you to want nothing of me. I want you to love me while I give you
nothing."
I suppose for some people the alternative would be a one night stand. Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's not for me, I'm blushing even as I write this. Let's face it, I was a good girl before I met Mr. T. I mean, I was a VERY good girl. As much as I sometimes, over the years, regretted that I wasn't more experimental before I got married, I very much suspect that deep down I'm still a VERY good girl and nothing is going to change that. In this brave new world of sexting and booty calls, I'm a dinosaur...a VERY good dinosaur.
So all of that leaves me pretty much screwed (or actually not screwed LOL) so I guess I'm doomed to just be "thinking about it" for the rest of my life.
Charlie is home!
And I'm so grateful that she is...BUT
I feel totally broken.
I'm angry that it even happened. I know that's the wrong attitude and I am working on it but WTF?
How could the one thing that is keeping me grounded be almost taken away from me? What sense does that make in the universe? What have I done in my life that was so wrong that I'm being punished like this?
Something inside of me has broken. It's brought back all the FEAR and vulnerability that I had back in December.
I only have 2 things left of my life with Mr. T - my house and my Charlie and both of them are being threatened and I just can't get past this right now. Maybe with time I will put this in perspective but not right now. It's smashed any confidence I had in the future into a million pieces.
So Charlie has epilepsy (most likely) and she's on daily anti-seizure medicine for the rest of her life. That part I can live with, I grew up with an epileptic dog, but Charlie's seizures have left her with some damage - she has weak back legs and falls down while walking sometimes. She also has tremors as if she had Parkinsons but I'm hoping they are more a side effect of the medicine that will go away with time. They are already lessened from when I brought her home on Thursday night.
What makes me the most sad is that Charlie's spirits are down and that's not like her at all. Again, I hope this is a side effect of the medicine that will change in time but her depression is not helping with mine.
They had to shave Charlie's legs to put in the IV. They also shaved her butt because all the treatments messed with her system and gave her diarrhea. Earlier today I was telling her that she got a FREE grooming but then I remembered the vet bill that was as large as my mortgage payment so I realized that grooming was nowhere near free. That was a grooming that came with a big, horrible price.
I wish I didn't have to worry about money but the fact is I didn't have that much in savings so this trip to the emergency vet has put me one month closer to homelessness and I don't understand why that had to happen either.
One thing I do know, I'm done going to those Meetup things, trying to meet new people. I'm done trying new things, done going on solo adventures. What was the point of all that? I think I was trying too hard to prove to myself that "I've got this" and I don't "got this" so I'm done.
And, of course, the biggest thing was having to go through this alone, without Mr. T by my side as he's always been. The horrible drive to the vet clinic with Charlie having a seizure the whole 40 minute drive, having to go back all alone the next night and see her looking so sad, watching her every minute of every day afraid she'll have another seizure and knowing that I'll have to deal with that without Mr. T. It's hard enough to be alone through the good times, it's devastating to do it through the bad times.
I know I'll bounce back eventually, I always do, but I'm going to stop pushing myself to be "all right" and just let myself feel whatever I'm feeling even if it means doing nothing but sitting on the couch for the next year.
Of course I'm grateful for my friends. I texted 2 friends while I was waiting at the emergency vet clinic and they were right there texting me and keeping me calm while I was waiting to hear if Charlie was going to be ok and that made the situation slightly less terrible. I know they wish they could do something to help but there's nothing anybody can do to change any of this.
It's just something I've got to get through on my own.
And I will...just not today.
If anybody is out there reading this blog, please say a prayer for my Charlie girl. She is in the hospital tonight.
She had a seizure around 7:30 pm. That's not completely unusual, she has seizures every 4-6 months but this one was different. Usually she snaps out of it within 5 minutes and is back to normal.
This time she didn't snap out of it, she continued to shake and her back legs were weak so she couldn't walk normally. After a bit of this I called the emergency vet clinic and was told to bring her in.
Then her tail started wagging so I thought she was getting better but then she started shaking and I knew it couldn't wait until morning to see our regular vet.
The emergency clinic is 40 minutes away from our house and I'd never been there before. I loaded her up and started down the road. Then she started having another seizure so I drove the entire way one-handed because I needed my other hand to keep petting her, telling her she was a good girl and that she was going to make it the whole way to the clinic.
She was still in a seizure when we got there so they took her back immediately and started working on her.
Eventually the doctor came to talk to me to tell me that she probably had epilepsy, which didn't surprise me. But then he came back and said she was still having muscle tremors (although she wasn't in a seizure anymore) and that surprised him because he'd given her a lot of medicine. He started asking questions about things she might have gotten into, thinking that we were dealing with a toxin rather than epilepsy. But I didn't have any good answers for him because she hadn't gotten into anything that I knew of.
Hours went by and all I did was worry. Then the door opened and they brought her to me. She had stopped trembling, no tremors and apparently she was barking a lot back in the ER so they decided it might do her good to spend time with me. They left me with a "doorbell" to push in case she seemed to be in distress.
She was hyper, walking around a lot. Her back legs were still a little weak but other than that, she seemed her normal self. Once she barked because she heard a dog and when a cat meowed loudly she had a puzzled look on her face. She really wanted out of the examining room so I picked her up and we went for a walk around the waiting room. It was 11:30 by this point and we'd been there for over 3 hours.
Finally she got sleepy so I scrunched myself onto the little bench and let her fall asleep in my lap. And that's how the doctor found us. He said that her tests had come back normal so he was now inclined to believe that it wasn't a toxin and that she had just been so hyped up and anxious, it took a long time for the epilepsy meds to kick in.
So it was back to the original plan, Charlie was going to stay overnight at the hospital and be pumped full of epilepsy medications. Because she had several seizures, he didn't want to take 2 weeks of pills to get her to the level of medication she needed to stop seizures. So she's loading 24 hours of meds to get to that level. He said she'll sleep through it all.
Of course I won't relax until she's back home and normal and I won't relax even then. My childhood dog had epilepsy and had to take 2 pills a day throughout her life. She lived to be almost 15 so the idea of epilepsy doesn't scare me, I just want to get to the point where the meds are doing their job.
Please pray for Charlie and for me. It's 2 in the morning right now and I doubt I'll get much sleep before it's time to get up and go to work and worry until they call and tell me I can come pick her up.
One of the pieces of advice everyone gives a grieving widow is that you need to get out and meet people.
I'm not really a "meet new people" kind of person. I'm pretty shy and a complete introvert so the idea of making small talk with strangers is probably right up there with jumping into a volcano on my list of things I really never want to do.
For as long as I was married I really didn't have to meet new people. I had a best friend right there with me. We did everything together. We traveled, we went out to eat, we went to movies, we went shopping, we were always doing something and it was always together.
Fast forward to now and everything has changed. If I want to do something I either have to ask my friends if they want to join or I have to do it by myself.
I can do things by myself, I have done things by myself but I don't want to live my life that way, doing everything by myself.
So I guess I have to do the thing I dread - I have to meet new people.
My sister in law told me about this thing called Meetup. Not that she's ever done it, the big chicken. But it's a free thing where people start groups for different interests and they schedule events and you can sign up and meet a bunch of people.
Sounds fun, right?
Well no, to me it sounds like torture. But I didn't really have a choice.
So last night I went to my first Meetup event. It's a group that meets at various Disney parks and hotels to walk around. It's actually a walking group in most cases but last night the event was centered around a concert at Epcot. That seemed like a safe first event to attend.
I got there a little early so I decided to find the Leave a Legacy picture that Mr. T and I had taken back in 2000. It was a promotion Epcot was having back then, they etched your picture on this metal tile and then all the pictures were permanently displayed on marble stones at the entrance to the park. I hadn't seen the tile in years (Mr. T and I only looked for it once) and I had no idea where it was - there are thousands of these little tiles. Luckily Epcot has a computer to help you find your tile. I knew we'd done it in 2000 but had no idea of the date but the helpful cast member eventually found it for me.
That's the original picture that we had taken when we purchased our tile. I had never seen it in color before. It was thrilling to see this picture (taken on May 26, 2000) but it was also hard.
The nice cast member gave me directions to find the tile and with just a couple of stumbles I eventually found it.
There we are for all time and eternity. I want to try tracing it one day.
Eventually they are going to move all the marble bases to another location in the park but they will be at the entrance for a few more years. Now that I know where we are, I'll go visit every time I'm at the park.
So, once that was done it was time to meet up with the group. Of course, me being me, I considered just walking on and seeing the concert solo but I ruled that out, knew that I needed to take this first step so I walked up to the 2 ladies that were waiting and introduced myself. They were very nice, as were the other 5 people that eventually joined us. We walked to the concert venue, waited in a very long line and finally found really good seats.
Now I'm not a huge Rick Springfield fan, in fact I only know a couple of his songs, but I enjoyed the concert a great deal. He sang a song he'd written after his mother passed away. It clearly made him emotional and boy, it made me emotional too but I kept it together, didn't want to cry in front of my new stranger/friends.
I especially enjoyed when he came down from the stage and sang all around the audience. We had great seats for that moment.
It was a short concert so after 30 minutes he finished up and we were free to go. We took a group photo and then some decided to stay for a second show and others broke off to do other things or go home. I was one of the going home types. One other woman was walking my way so we went together. She kept me entertained the whole way by telling me about how she lost her husband 9 years ago and how hard it's been and how difficult it is out in the dating world. Apparently, much like teenage boys, men are only after one thing and, unlike the teenage boys of my past, they are pretty aggressive about getting it. Oh so much to look forward to.
I got home and although I did enjoy the concert, the whole experience made me sad. I posted about it on Facebook and everybody was posting words of encouragement, saying it looked like fun, etc. and that made me even sadder because nobody seems to get that it was hard to make myself go and even harder to know that I HAD to go. None of them have to find groups of strangers to hang out with. None of them need to "make new friends." None of them need to survive or move on with their lives.
Well I'd better stop with that line of thought because it's just making me angry and bitter and that's not me. That's not who I have always been. Of course who I've always been always had a partner right beside her for all the fun adventures.
And so, even though I kind of hate it, I'll be back out at another concert tomorrow, meeting new people. Because that's who I am now.
