I Am Flooded With Memories, Memories, Memories
Commenting on @SwampFlower 's report of the first morning of physical rehab following surgery, yet another memory of my late husband walked into my mind.
Always active and busy, both his mind and body, he was not good at being an invalid. He had places to go, people to see, things to do.
It is astonishing how fast the muscles weaken when a person is bedfast. I would have thought it a matter of months or at least weeks - but it is a question of days.
On Wednesday my husband seemed quite himself, on Thursday he admitted to feeling 'a little tired' and on Sunday he was being transported by ambulance to Pittsburgh to keep a date with a neurosurgeon. A brain tumor had crept in like a thief in the night.
Brain surgery did not lay him low. Surgery Monday, released from hospital on Wednesday, and Thursday he insisted we go out for breakfast, argue as I might - and did.
We did not know that Thursday in July that a firestorm was waiting for us just a couple of days away.
It was a series of disasters - and any of them would have been manageable singly - but combined, they were too much. Tim fought hard and bravely, and now and again, a victory was his.
In late August he fell hard on the parking lot of a grocery store and sustained a broken wrist and a subdural hematoma. Back to the hospital.
In late September, the hospital again for lung surgery, because that was where the malignant cells that ended in his brain had originated.
It would be several months before Tim saw our little house again - the house where he had lived for decades before he and I met.
Two days before Thanksgiving, he came home. Pale, thin, quiet - but home. The dining room had become his bedroom, with a hospital bed and IV poles and all the accoutrements of illness.
The young man who came to guide him through physical therapy told me, "He's a savage. He will not give up."
Then in the days between Christmas and the New Year, Tim announced a goal. He was going to ring in the New Year in his own bed - only feet away from where we sat. Thirteen narrow steep steps - and a world away.
The therapist and I eagerly offered to take him up, but Tim was adamant. "That's not the point. I have to do it."
And, because he was Tim, he did. Just he and I, on New Year's Eve. I knew he would fall backward and I followed close behind, gripping the handrail fiercely so I could protect him from catastrophe.
Those thirteen steps were more like miles. Shaky, precariously balanced, each lift of a foot took forever. He reached the landing and stretched out full length, and literally crawled to the bed. The journey up the steps took almost an hour.
He allowed me to help him up. He collapsed back on the pillows and was very quiet. Then his trembling hand reached out for mine, and tears started from his eyes. "It's kinda poignant," he said in his exhausted thin voice.
Then he slept in his own bed while I kept watch, in the bed where he had slept thousands of nights, and he was smiling when he fell asleep. Triumphant. At peace.
Always active and busy, both his mind and body, he was not good at being an invalid. He had places to go, people to see, things to do.
It is astonishing how fast the muscles weaken when a person is bedfast. I would have thought it a matter of months or at least weeks - but it is a question of days.
On Wednesday my husband seemed quite himself, on Thursday he admitted to feeling 'a little tired' and on Sunday he was being transported by ambulance to Pittsburgh to keep a date with a neurosurgeon. A brain tumor had crept in like a thief in the night.
Brain surgery did not lay him low. Surgery Monday, released from hospital on Wednesday, and Thursday he insisted we go out for breakfast, argue as I might - and did.
We did not know that Thursday in July that a firestorm was waiting for us just a couple of days away.
It was a series of disasters - and any of them would have been manageable singly - but combined, they were too much. Tim fought hard and bravely, and now and again, a victory was his.
In late August he fell hard on the parking lot of a grocery store and sustained a broken wrist and a subdural hematoma. Back to the hospital.
In late September, the hospital again for lung surgery, because that was where the malignant cells that ended in his brain had originated.
It would be several months before Tim saw our little house again - the house where he had lived for decades before he and I met.
Two days before Thanksgiving, he came home. Pale, thin, quiet - but home. The dining room had become his bedroom, with a hospital bed and IV poles and all the accoutrements of illness.
The young man who came to guide him through physical therapy told me, "He's a savage. He will not give up."
Then in the days between Christmas and the New Year, Tim announced a goal. He was going to ring in the New Year in his own bed - only feet away from where we sat. Thirteen narrow steep steps - and a world away.
The therapist and I eagerly offered to take him up, but Tim was adamant. "That's not the point. I have to do it."
And, because he was Tim, he did. Just he and I, on New Year's Eve. I knew he would fall backward and I followed close behind, gripping the handrail fiercely so I could protect him from catastrophe.
Those thirteen steps were more like miles. Shaky, precariously balanced, each lift of a foot took forever. He reached the landing and stretched out full length, and literally crawled to the bed. The journey up the steps took almost an hour.
He allowed me to help him up. He collapsed back on the pillows and was very quiet. Then his trembling hand reached out for mine, and tears started from his eyes. "It's kinda poignant," he said in his exhausted thin voice.
Then he slept in his own bed while I kept watch, in the bed where he had slept thousands of nights, and he was smiling when he fell asleep. Triumphant. At peace.
