Balance

Managing wrote:

This topic has nothing to do with your post I'm attaching it to. Since your experience has been so helpful in offereing some kind of "known" into our lives that follow your blog. . . I wonder if you will consider continuing your blog after your husband passes on?It sounds a little morbid and vouyeristic, but I suffer so greatly in two areas and one of them is I am sure I will never remember my husband as anyone other than who he is now; with all the anger and bad behavior. I don't want to remember him that way. So I wonder as you go through this process, if you discover that his earlier personality and how you guys felt together would come back to your memory as time goes by or right after his death, or just however that plays out. What do you say?

I don't know if I will continue to write....or for how long.  I think I will need to write through the grief.

In the past 3 weeks, 3 women that I know have lost their husbands.  One to diabetes, one to age, another to a 15 year disability.  All 3 men were on hospice.  And all 3 of these women have told me that even though they knew their husbands didn't have long, they were still "shocked" when they died.

It made me wonder - how do you balance the knowledge that he is going to die with the fact that he is gone after it happens?

Hubby burnt his finger quite bad today.  He said he didn't know it was resting on something hot.  He couldn't feel the heat.

And he has had a horrible amount of pain today with his sciatica.  So I googled that and it could be from his kidney disease.  He said he can't remember doing anything to pull it.

Will he go to the doctor?  No.  So I have to find balance between feeling bad for him and thinking that he is stupid because he won't even ask if there is something they can do for his pain.

Balance.  We have to find something positive and good to balance out the negative.

Art gives me balance.   I have just finished 4  classes over the past 6 weeks.   They have brought new friends into my life and I am grateful for that.  They have helped the creative side of my brain sort of wake up and I'm grateful for that.  I am having fun and one class is a never-ending class that meets once a week and that is turning out to be the most fun ever!  It's bringing some sense of balance into my life and gives me something to look forward to.

In all this, I have met a young artist.  Quite good.  He was in Iraq in the Army and hit with sarin gas and has developed MS.  He's married with 2 young kids.  Some mornings, he can't make his legs work.  Other days, he does fine.  I have been driving him to our classes and am so encouraged by him.  He says that his body is that of a 65 year old and I can see that some days.  Yet he gets up and paints a painting every single day.  He has such determination to create. And he motivates me to stick with my art and with my classes.  He brings another element of balance to my life.  Perhaps that's what all of us need.  Just an ounce of balance.  :)

DW