I Miss My Best Friend Who Died
I had been divorced and living a single life for many years when Caryn came into my life. I have my second wife to thank for our meeting. In 1980, Donna, my second wife called me and asked if I wanted to go to an Astrology class. Her new client was a professional Astrologer and a class was starting the next week. I quickly agreed, as I had been interested in astrology since I was a teen. To make this part of the story short, we went to the classes, by the third class my ex had dropped out and I continued on to graduate and continued to study in advanced classes with some great astrologers.
I met Caryn in beginning astrology. After getting to know her, we found we were attracted to each other. She told me her marriage was at the point of being roommates and friends. In order for us to spend more time together, I had to become gay, at least to her family. That way, I didn’t appear to be a threat to her relationship and marriage. We loved each other and continued our affair for quite a few years. Because I really wasn’t a threat to the marriage, over time I became part of the family; house sitting when they went on vacations, babysitting their daughter at times, etc. I even moved into their home as a lodger for a few years.
As with any relationship, our relationship matured and changed over time. We still loved each other but we did find that our wants and needs were different and because of our living arrangement, we had toned down our affair. It seemed to work for us, after all, we were living together and we were family (although there was this other husband in the house). Then in the late 80’s Caryn decided to divorce her husband. For a short while, I thought we would continue our living arrangements and our family would remain the same. That is when Caryn told me that she had met someone on the internet and had fallen in love with him.
Now this next part may sound even kinkier than our living situation had been up until now. Caryn married Bob and he moved into “our” home. He knew about our affair and that it was over - which it was. The “thing” about true love is that when you really love someone; your first thought is for their happiness. I loved Caryn so much that it was more important for her to be happy than for her to be with me. I was truly part of Caryn’s family and we both worked very hard to make sure her marriage worked. After a year or so, they sold the house and I moved back on my own, into an apartment. Our relationship had gone from being lovers to family and then best friends. And she really was my best friend. Through my being with her, I had learned the true meaning of love and hopefully how to make my next relationship work.
Now, in comes to play, another truism; that when you look for something and can’t find it; when you stop looking for it, you find it right in front of you. I had lived in my new apartment for a year or so and had come to the conclusion that I probably wasn’t going to have another relationship, other than an occasional one night stand maybe once and awhile (I hoped). Well, I found out that the Universe had other plans for me.
I woke up, about 1am one morning, to the sound of water in my bathtub, a pipe in my bathroom ceiling had sprung a leak, again. I walked to the Manager’s apartment and informed her of the problem. She called the plumber and came to my apartment to see the damage and wait for the plumber. Fortunately, the leak was directly above the tub so almost all the water was going into the tub & not on the floor. The ceiling was still open from the last leak and the change in managers had delayed finishing the repairs. While we waited for the plumber we talked. Her name was Evelyn and she had only been managing our building for a few months. She was about 12 years older than me and was married but he was in a nursing home; he had Alzheimer’s. She had raised five kids and had two husbands and several careers. We marveled at how close we had lived to each other over the years, living in the huge L A area. The plumber came and made the needed repair and we went back to sleep, glad that the leak had brought us together for that short time.
When the Universe really wants something to happen, it doesn’t always just nudge you. It can shove you or sometimes even knock you up the side of your head. I had two more leaks in my bathroom in the next couple of months; we had several more pleasant conversations. After discovering a mutual attraction, we finally ended up making love one night, which was the beginning of the happiest 16 years of my life. Not that we didn’t have our ups & downs, over the years. All of those had to do with outside issues; nothing ever came between the two of us. When I lost my longtime job in ‘93, I helped her with the maintenance our building. I didn’t know that then but it would come in handy later.
Living in Chatsworth, the Northridge Quake in ’94, damaged the buildings all around us but our building came through it just fine but the aftershocks became too much for Evelyn. I had always resisted the idea of moving from the Valley but when Evelyn said we needed to move, the only question was, “Where?” I wasn’t about to let her go.
After living many years in the L A area it was time for a change. We talked and decided to move to Las Vegas. The joke was that we didn’t want to move somewhere too cold or too hot, so we moved to Vegas for the casinos. We both went into property management, I became a maintenance man for one company and although she had “walk-on-water” recommendations from two management companies, she finally had to accept a leasing agent position, rather than a manager, for another company. It was age discrimination but nothing you could prove.
Evelyn did her job well. So well in fact, that because of her experience, the head of her management company would have her fill-in, whenever they had a manager leave, suddenly. If the truth be known, they considered her too old for their corporate image, but her experience as a manager made her the perfect person to rely on in any kind of management emergency.
In ’95, Richard, Evelyn’s husband passed away. It was like the other shoe finally dropped. He hadn’t been there for quite a while. I took to going with Evelyn, when she visited Richard. The last couple of times it was very hard to see him. It was dinner time the last visit. The orderly fed him but to us it looked like someone feeding a robot. The body moved but no one was home. The image sticks in my mind, even now. We had made the pre-arrangements, so it was only the family that needed attention, when he passed.
Evelyn was very lucky that Richard had been a Union member. His medical bills had been taken care of and she had received spousal support while he was in the nursing home which now turned into monthly pension benefits. We had talked about what would happen after Richard’s death and decided we didn’t need to get married, although we weren’t opposed to it. We were committed to each other already, we didn’t want to complicate the pension. At our age, pieces of paper with dollar signs were more important than a marriage certificate. It wouldn’t have made us any more married than we already were. We had already said our vows to each other years before. We both had adult children(and weren’t going to have more). We didn’t have any property or wealth to divide or protect, so to us, not being legally married didn’t bother us.
By ’97, she was tired of being used. She was good enough to handle any property, in an emergency, but not good enough to have her own property. She found that the only way she could stop them from using her was to reduce her availability, so she went to part-time work only. Working three days a week, they couldn’t use her as a floating Manager. About four months later she suffered a stroke. Fortunately it was a mild stroke but it was the end of her working days. She had trouble with her balance after that so there was no climbing stairs or doing the other things that were a normal routine on properties. One downside of working part-time is - no health insurance coverage. And in Evelyn’s case, another problem, she made just enough to be over the max earning limits so - no help with the hospital bills. I would have had her on my insurance but we weren’t married. The only good thing that came out of her stroke was that she finally quit smoking - but the damage had already been done.
Not being able to work again was much harder than the stroke. Although Evelyn missed working, missed feeling productive and was pretty much house bound; life went on. After that, her health was where we kept our attention focused. That and making sure we got out as much as possible to relieve her boredom. After a few years, she seemed to be having trouble with her breathing, running out of breath when walking any distance and being tired all the time. She went into the hospital to be checked out and was told she needed a triple bypass. That was September 10th, 2001.
With all the tension and frenzy, nationally, that accompanied the next couple of weeks, my attention was one place, on the woman I loved. She went into the surgery with a positive attitude, committed to pull through this. Although it was difficult, Evelyn recovered quite well from the surgery. She even seemed to be able to do things that, in the last couple of years had been difficult for her. As with many people who come close to death, she suddenly decided to do things that we had been putting off. We bought dishware to replace what we had lost in the ’94 Quake. We bought a couple of pieces of furniture we had been eyeing. And most telling, we spent New Years Eve on the Las Vegas Strip, watching the fireworks. We had talked about doing that ever since moving here.
She had a small surgery about a year later and it was after that when she was finally diagnosed with COPD. In the next few years, she became more and more dependent on the oxygen to breath. We tried to keep her spirits up and keep her occupied. In late ‘05, we moved from the apartment we’d lived in for more than 7 years, to kind of a cottage, that gave us more room and no upstairs neighbors. Unfortunately by then she was too weak to even help pack for the move. Ten months later, just 7 days after being put on hospice, she peacefully passed away, at home, in her own bed. Which is how she wanted to go.
We had talked over those last few weeks about all the things that needed to be said, who to contact, what piece of jewelry goes to which grandchild and such. She reminded me that I was the love of her life and I know she was telling me the truth. In the end, as weak as she was, I had to give her permission to go, that I would be OK. She would have lingered on forever if she could have because she didn’t want to leave me. She was the love of my life and still is. I think of her every day, many times a day. And I always will.
Now you would think that this was the end of my story. Boy, would you be wrong. Now it’s said that the Universe has no sense of humor, but it does have a sense of irony.
One of the first calls I made after Evelyn’s death was to a family friend, Caryn. She had been part of our family all these years. Even if we didn’t see each other often, we often talked on the phone. We visited when we were in the Valley and when they visited Vegas. Evelyn & Caryn had become friends. Maybe not close friends because they didn’t talk too often but there were many times Evelyn would tell me, “Call Caryn and find out” about this or that. That was because not only was Caryn a professional Astrologer but she was also a Psychic; had been all her life. When Caryn heard of Evelyn’s passing she made sure that she called me every day, to make sure I was doing OK. Holding it together.
This went on for about three or four months but then Caryn seemed to be having problems of her own. Her marriage of about eighteen years, had been having problems for several years now. Recently, her husband, had started having what sounded like a psychotic break. A Viet Nam Vet, he was waking up in the middle of the night, yelling and shouting strange things at her. She was truly afraid for her life. He was denying that anything was wrong and wouldn’t go to a doctor. It sounded much like the news stories we had heard that had tragic outcomes. I told her that if she needed a place to go, I had a spare bedroom.
In January 2007, Caryn’s girlfriend, helped her escape to Las Vegas. After not seeing her for several years, I was shocked to see the condition she was in. She had been under so much stress that her body had started shutting down, preparing itself to die. She was grossly overweight from laying on her bed in her room with no place to go and her husband refusing to take her anyplace, the conditions confirmed by her girlfriend. If she had stayed in Camarillo, she wouldn’t have made it to Spring.
Under the heading of “The Universe Provides”(I guess); her arrival coincided with my last day of work, because the supply company I had been working for had been bought by another national company & my job was moved to Texas. I was able to spend the next four months bringing Caryn back to some kind of stable health. She lost some weight, was eating better & she was even walking about a mile a day. During the next few months she divorced her husband, moved her daughter & family to Las Vegas & finally convinced me that we needed to get married. Just before the end of the year, we were married near Red Rock Canyon, one of her favorite places.
It wasn’t easy the next year or so, with the economy in shambles, I ended up out of work for two full years. That doesn’t mean that I wasn’t busy. In addition to keeping an eye on Caryn’s health, I returned to the position I had many years ago, as Caryn’s astrological partner. I would run the charts & assist in the delineation of the chart and Caryn would give the client the reading. This allowed her to use her talents and bring in a little pocket money.
Actually, what we had high hopes for was our note card business. Caryn had found many beautiful photos online and decided that we should print them on cards and sell them. She discovered that she had a talent for embellishing things on the photos, like the edges of flower petals or the outlines of objects and create unique, eye-catching images. As with her astrology service, I seemed to become the staff. I worked the computer, printed the cards, came up with captions when needed and did quality control. Caryn, on the other hand, embellished the photos and got her name on the business - Caryn’s Note Cards.
As with most things in life , timing is everything. Unfortunately, timing wasn’t on our side. With the economy in shambles, our business seemed doomed. Although we received praise from almost everyone who saw our cards, the timing wasn’t right to spend money on custom made cards when the stores offered mass produced cards for much less. We didn’t make too much money from the business; in fact it cost us quite a bit, but both Caryn and I found that we had a lot more artistic talent than either of us ever thought we had.
When Caryn first arrived, I was fortunate to have the time and finances to care for her and not have worry about finding a new job, right away. Then the economy collapsed and no one wanted a 60 year old “new” employee. Not when they could hardly keep the doors open, as it was. The bank accounts went down, the 401K cashed out, the retirement funds depleted, and the credit cards balances went up. I know the Universe provides because although everything developed a negative balance, except the income, we never missed paying the rent or had anything turned off and we had food on the table. It was always amazing to understand that the bills would be paid when you couldn’t see where the money would come from.
In ’09, I want back to work in property management; and not a moment too soon. We continued to make a few custom cards and service a few astrological clients but both seemed to dwindle as time passed. During this time we continued to work on her health issues. She had been suffering from long untreated Diabetes, sleep apnea, and joint problems that contributed to her weight problems. When I went back to work things seemed to lighten up a little, but her health problems were always something we had to keep an eye on. Caryn seemed to be putting more of an effort into dealing with her health issues, even putting on the sleep mask for her sleep apnea, when she was very claustrophobic. She became quite brave in fact. But like I said, timing is everything.
Early morning on Mothers Day 2010, we found ourselves in the emergency room. Caryn had been having strange symptoms for several months but with her other health issues they didn’t seem connected to anything else, just something else to keep an eye on. We knew something was wrong but didn’t know what. When she went into the hospital, the ER doctors thought it might be pneumonia so they started giving her antibiotics because her white count was quite high. The next day they tried a different antibiotic but the white count still climbed. They finally did a bone marrow biopsy and told me the news. They told me that she had acute Leukemia and her kidneys were failing. The next few days were spent getting her on dialysis and discussing treatment options. But seven days after her diagnosis, my best friend passed away.
I had looked forward to my best friend moving to Las Vegas. Being able to show her my wonderful city with all its lights, sights & attractions. Unfortunately, when my best friend returned to me she was already broken; as much as I wanted to make it all better, I could only delay the end. Caryn had told me and many others, that I was the love of her life. I guess that I must be very fortunate indeed, to have had two women, in a row, who considered me to be the love of their lives. When you have to deal with the loss of two women you love so much; fortunate may not be the right word to use.
These two women have changed my life forever. They filled my life with the support and love I needed to endure life’s twists and turns and become the person I am today. I will forever be grateful for their love and devotion. And in return, I seem to have become a person that people look to for the love and support they need, in their lives.
Another quote:
You are always where you need to be in life. Your life is in divine order, and there is a higher power that is always guiding your way.
It is not possible to make mistakes or miss out on opportunities, because the things that are meant for you will always be given to you.
Ethann Fox
I met Caryn in beginning astrology. After getting to know her, we found we were attracted to each other. She told me her marriage was at the point of being roommates and friends. In order for us to spend more time together, I had to become gay, at least to her family. That way, I didn’t appear to be a threat to her relationship and marriage. We loved each other and continued our affair for quite a few years. Because I really wasn’t a threat to the marriage, over time I became part of the family; house sitting when they went on vacations, babysitting their daughter at times, etc. I even moved into their home as a lodger for a few years.
As with any relationship, our relationship matured and changed over time. We still loved each other but we did find that our wants and needs were different and because of our living arrangement, we had toned down our affair. It seemed to work for us, after all, we were living together and we were family (although there was this other husband in the house). Then in the late 80’s Caryn decided to divorce her husband. For a short while, I thought we would continue our living arrangements and our family would remain the same. That is when Caryn told me that she had met someone on the internet and had fallen in love with him.
Now this next part may sound even kinkier than our living situation had been up until now. Caryn married Bob and he moved into “our” home. He knew about our affair and that it was over - which it was. The “thing” about true love is that when you really love someone; your first thought is for their happiness. I loved Caryn so much that it was more important for her to be happy than for her to be with me. I was truly part of Caryn’s family and we both worked very hard to make sure her marriage worked. After a year or so, they sold the house and I moved back on my own, into an apartment. Our relationship had gone from being lovers to family and then best friends. And she really was my best friend. Through my being with her, I had learned the true meaning of love and hopefully how to make my next relationship work.
Now, in comes to play, another truism; that when you look for something and can’t find it; when you stop looking for it, you find it right in front of you. I had lived in my new apartment for a year or so and had come to the conclusion that I probably wasn’t going to have another relationship, other than an occasional one night stand maybe once and awhile (I hoped). Well, I found out that the Universe had other plans for me.
I woke up, about 1am one morning, to the sound of water in my bathtub, a pipe in my bathroom ceiling had sprung a leak, again. I walked to the Manager’s apartment and informed her of the problem. She called the plumber and came to my apartment to see the damage and wait for the plumber. Fortunately, the leak was directly above the tub so almost all the water was going into the tub & not on the floor. The ceiling was still open from the last leak and the change in managers had delayed finishing the repairs. While we waited for the plumber we talked. Her name was Evelyn and she had only been managing our building for a few months. She was about 12 years older than me and was married but he was in a nursing home; he had Alzheimer’s. She had raised five kids and had two husbands and several careers. We marveled at how close we had lived to each other over the years, living in the huge L A area. The plumber came and made the needed repair and we went back to sleep, glad that the leak had brought us together for that short time.
When the Universe really wants something to happen, it doesn’t always just nudge you. It can shove you or sometimes even knock you up the side of your head. I had two more leaks in my bathroom in the next couple of months; we had several more pleasant conversations. After discovering a mutual attraction, we finally ended up making love one night, which was the beginning of the happiest 16 years of my life. Not that we didn’t have our ups & downs, over the years. All of those had to do with outside issues; nothing ever came between the two of us. When I lost my longtime job in ‘93, I helped her with the maintenance our building. I didn’t know that then but it would come in handy later.
Living in Chatsworth, the Northridge Quake in ’94, damaged the buildings all around us but our building came through it just fine but the aftershocks became too much for Evelyn. I had always resisted the idea of moving from the Valley but when Evelyn said we needed to move, the only question was, “Where?” I wasn’t about to let her go.
After living many years in the L A area it was time for a change. We talked and decided to move to Las Vegas. The joke was that we didn’t want to move somewhere too cold or too hot, so we moved to Vegas for the casinos. We both went into property management, I became a maintenance man for one company and although she had “walk-on-water” recommendations from two management companies, she finally had to accept a leasing agent position, rather than a manager, for another company. It was age discrimination but nothing you could prove.
Evelyn did her job well. So well in fact, that because of her experience, the head of her management company would have her fill-in, whenever they had a manager leave, suddenly. If the truth be known, they considered her too old for their corporate image, but her experience as a manager made her the perfect person to rely on in any kind of management emergency.
In ’95, Richard, Evelyn’s husband passed away. It was like the other shoe finally dropped. He hadn’t been there for quite a while. I took to going with Evelyn, when she visited Richard. The last couple of times it was very hard to see him. It was dinner time the last visit. The orderly fed him but to us it looked like someone feeding a robot. The body moved but no one was home. The image sticks in my mind, even now. We had made the pre-arrangements, so it was only the family that needed attention, when he passed.
Evelyn was very lucky that Richard had been a Union member. His medical bills had been taken care of and she had received spousal support while he was in the nursing home which now turned into monthly pension benefits. We had talked about what would happen after Richard’s death and decided we didn’t need to get married, although we weren’t opposed to it. We were committed to each other already, we didn’t want to complicate the pension. At our age, pieces of paper with dollar signs were more important than a marriage certificate. It wouldn’t have made us any more married than we already were. We had already said our vows to each other years before. We both had adult children(and weren’t going to have more). We didn’t have any property or wealth to divide or protect, so to us, not being legally married didn’t bother us.
By ’97, she was tired of being used. She was good enough to handle any property, in an emergency, but not good enough to have her own property. She found that the only way she could stop them from using her was to reduce her availability, so she went to part-time work only. Working three days a week, they couldn’t use her as a floating Manager. About four months later she suffered a stroke. Fortunately it was a mild stroke but it was the end of her working days. She had trouble with her balance after that so there was no climbing stairs or doing the other things that were a normal routine on properties. One downside of working part-time is - no health insurance coverage. And in Evelyn’s case, another problem, she made just enough to be over the max earning limits so - no help with the hospital bills. I would have had her on my insurance but we weren’t married. The only good thing that came out of her stroke was that she finally quit smoking - but the damage had already been done.
Not being able to work again was much harder than the stroke. Although Evelyn missed working, missed feeling productive and was pretty much house bound; life went on. After that, her health was where we kept our attention focused. That and making sure we got out as much as possible to relieve her boredom. After a few years, she seemed to be having trouble with her breathing, running out of breath when walking any distance and being tired all the time. She went into the hospital to be checked out and was told she needed a triple bypass. That was September 10th, 2001.
With all the tension and frenzy, nationally, that accompanied the next couple of weeks, my attention was one place, on the woman I loved. She went into the surgery with a positive attitude, committed to pull through this. Although it was difficult, Evelyn recovered quite well from the surgery. She even seemed to be able to do things that, in the last couple of years had been difficult for her. As with many people who come close to death, she suddenly decided to do things that we had been putting off. We bought dishware to replace what we had lost in the ’94 Quake. We bought a couple of pieces of furniture we had been eyeing. And most telling, we spent New Years Eve on the Las Vegas Strip, watching the fireworks. We had talked about doing that ever since moving here.
She had a small surgery about a year later and it was after that when she was finally diagnosed with COPD. In the next few years, she became more and more dependent on the oxygen to breath. We tried to keep her spirits up and keep her occupied. In late ‘05, we moved from the apartment we’d lived in for more than 7 years, to kind of a cottage, that gave us more room and no upstairs neighbors. Unfortunately by then she was too weak to even help pack for the move. Ten months later, just 7 days after being put on hospice, she peacefully passed away, at home, in her own bed. Which is how she wanted to go.
We had talked over those last few weeks about all the things that needed to be said, who to contact, what piece of jewelry goes to which grandchild and such. She reminded me that I was the love of her life and I know she was telling me the truth. In the end, as weak as she was, I had to give her permission to go, that I would be OK. She would have lingered on forever if she could have because she didn’t want to leave me. She was the love of my life and still is. I think of her every day, many times a day. And I always will.
Now you would think that this was the end of my story. Boy, would you be wrong. Now it’s said that the Universe has no sense of humor, but it does have a sense of irony.
One of the first calls I made after Evelyn’s death was to a family friend, Caryn. She had been part of our family all these years. Even if we didn’t see each other often, we often talked on the phone. We visited when we were in the Valley and when they visited Vegas. Evelyn & Caryn had become friends. Maybe not close friends because they didn’t talk too often but there were many times Evelyn would tell me, “Call Caryn and find out” about this or that. That was because not only was Caryn a professional Astrologer but she was also a Psychic; had been all her life. When Caryn heard of Evelyn’s passing she made sure that she called me every day, to make sure I was doing OK. Holding it together.
This went on for about three or four months but then Caryn seemed to be having problems of her own. Her marriage of about eighteen years, had been having problems for several years now. Recently, her husband, had started having what sounded like a psychotic break. A Viet Nam Vet, he was waking up in the middle of the night, yelling and shouting strange things at her. She was truly afraid for her life. He was denying that anything was wrong and wouldn’t go to a doctor. It sounded much like the news stories we had heard that had tragic outcomes. I told her that if she needed a place to go, I had a spare bedroom.
In January 2007, Caryn’s girlfriend, helped her escape to Las Vegas. After not seeing her for several years, I was shocked to see the condition she was in. She had been under so much stress that her body had started shutting down, preparing itself to die. She was grossly overweight from laying on her bed in her room with no place to go and her husband refusing to take her anyplace, the conditions confirmed by her girlfriend. If she had stayed in Camarillo, she wouldn’t have made it to Spring.
Under the heading of “The Universe Provides”(I guess); her arrival coincided with my last day of work, because the supply company I had been working for had been bought by another national company & my job was moved to Texas. I was able to spend the next four months bringing Caryn back to some kind of stable health. She lost some weight, was eating better & she was even walking about a mile a day. During the next few months she divorced her husband, moved her daughter & family to Las Vegas & finally convinced me that we needed to get married. Just before the end of the year, we were married near Red Rock Canyon, one of her favorite places.
It wasn’t easy the next year or so, with the economy in shambles, I ended up out of work for two full years. That doesn’t mean that I wasn’t busy. In addition to keeping an eye on Caryn’s health, I returned to the position I had many years ago, as Caryn’s astrological partner. I would run the charts & assist in the delineation of the chart and Caryn would give the client the reading. This allowed her to use her talents and bring in a little pocket money.
Actually, what we had high hopes for was our note card business. Caryn had found many beautiful photos online and decided that we should print them on cards and sell them. She discovered that she had a talent for embellishing things on the photos, like the edges of flower petals or the outlines of objects and create unique, eye-catching images. As with her astrology service, I seemed to become the staff. I worked the computer, printed the cards, came up with captions when needed and did quality control. Caryn, on the other hand, embellished the photos and got her name on the business - Caryn’s Note Cards.
As with most things in life , timing is everything. Unfortunately, timing wasn’t on our side. With the economy in shambles, our business seemed doomed. Although we received praise from almost everyone who saw our cards, the timing wasn’t right to spend money on custom made cards when the stores offered mass produced cards for much less. We didn’t make too much money from the business; in fact it cost us quite a bit, but both Caryn and I found that we had a lot more artistic talent than either of us ever thought we had.
When Caryn first arrived, I was fortunate to have the time and finances to care for her and not have worry about finding a new job, right away. Then the economy collapsed and no one wanted a 60 year old “new” employee. Not when they could hardly keep the doors open, as it was. The bank accounts went down, the 401K cashed out, the retirement funds depleted, and the credit cards balances went up. I know the Universe provides because although everything developed a negative balance, except the income, we never missed paying the rent or had anything turned off and we had food on the table. It was always amazing to understand that the bills would be paid when you couldn’t see where the money would come from.
In ’09, I want back to work in property management; and not a moment too soon. We continued to make a few custom cards and service a few astrological clients but both seemed to dwindle as time passed. During this time we continued to work on her health issues. She had been suffering from long untreated Diabetes, sleep apnea, and joint problems that contributed to her weight problems. When I went back to work things seemed to lighten up a little, but her health problems were always something we had to keep an eye on. Caryn seemed to be putting more of an effort into dealing with her health issues, even putting on the sleep mask for her sleep apnea, when she was very claustrophobic. She became quite brave in fact. But like I said, timing is everything.
Early morning on Mothers Day 2010, we found ourselves in the emergency room. Caryn had been having strange symptoms for several months but with her other health issues they didn’t seem connected to anything else, just something else to keep an eye on. We knew something was wrong but didn’t know what. When she went into the hospital, the ER doctors thought it might be pneumonia so they started giving her antibiotics because her white count was quite high. The next day they tried a different antibiotic but the white count still climbed. They finally did a bone marrow biopsy and told me the news. They told me that she had acute Leukemia and her kidneys were failing. The next few days were spent getting her on dialysis and discussing treatment options. But seven days after her diagnosis, my best friend passed away.
I had looked forward to my best friend moving to Las Vegas. Being able to show her my wonderful city with all its lights, sights & attractions. Unfortunately, when my best friend returned to me she was already broken; as much as I wanted to make it all better, I could only delay the end. Caryn had told me and many others, that I was the love of her life. I guess that I must be very fortunate indeed, to have had two women, in a row, who considered me to be the love of their lives. When you have to deal with the loss of two women you love so much; fortunate may not be the right word to use.
These two women have changed my life forever. They filled my life with the support and love I needed to endure life’s twists and turns and become the person I am today. I will forever be grateful for their love and devotion. And in return, I seem to have become a person that people look to for the love and support they need, in their lives.
Another quote:
You are always where you need to be in life. Your life is in divine order, and there is a higher power that is always guiding your way.
It is not possible to make mistakes or miss out on opportunities, because the things that are meant for you will always be given to you.
Ethann Fox
