Somethings change. I still garden but have gotten old. It comes so fast. I still have things I said I'd get to do one day. Then you realize the time has come and gone.
My husband has been ill this past year. He spent more than seven months in the hospital. I've had him home for a couple of months. He's on prophylactic antibiotics to try and keep him out of the hospital. I am his caregiver. It is daunting. Healthcare in America is lacking. I won't send him to a nursing home if at all possible.
It is nice to see all of my regular friends still posting. It's comforting to know you are well and carrying on. I guess we keep going down the same roads we've always traveled. My best to all of you.
7 comments:
So lovely to see your post update Donna. I'm sad to learn that your husband is still plagued by health issues, I can only pray he will get better. My days are not near as full in the garden yet I am determined not to give up. Grandchildren and great-grandchildren give me a reason to keep plodding along.
My very best wishes to you and yours my dear friend.
Hugs,
Jo
Xx
Thank you so much for this post. I wondered, I worried.
Look after yourself dear friend.
Good to hear from you.
How good to hear from you, Donna. I love you for being your husband's caregiver. Not an easy task.
To Jo in Tennessee, Elephants Child down under (I hear it's very cold), Rachel always learning and striving in England and dear Joanne, still up and at it, it really did make my day to hear from you. All of you impacted my life in many ways. Love you all. Donna
long time no see. sorry to hear about your husband. mine was going to let himself die from pneumonia, refusing to go to a hospital or doctor. I finally gave him an ultimatum and took him to the emergency room. he was in the hospital for 15 days. fortunately he eventually completely recovered but it took months. I was so angry that he cared so little for himself and for me that he let himself get that sick. At one point they were saying he was going to have to be on oxygen for the rest of his life. great, he not only changed his life, he changed mine. but that turned out not to be. I would have been his caretaker and was not happy about it. does that make me a bad person?
Dear Donna!!!
What a lovely treat to have you "pop to the top." I think of you so often and am so sorry to hear of your husband's health and your year of so much worry and work, and I'm so glad to hear that y'all are home and doing better.
That was our life for several years, and beginning 2019, the struggle intensified, and we spent the first half of 2020 with home hospice. After what was actually a seventeen-year valiant battle, Chris whispered away from us in July, just twelve days after our thirty-fourth anniversary.
I've been sort of in Covid-Limbo for most of this time since, with all my shots, but DD hasn't, and is an at-risk, so I go out masked and gloved, and walk in, stripping to shower as I go downstairs with the groceries. Our lives have been so circumscribed with the quarantining and the home-care, that I count my days by little things---the evening to gather the trash, and the morning whish and clunk of the truck gathering its bounty before I'm up. Mouthwash and coffee and a spritz of Shalimar on the back of my neat bun, a little smick of Love That Red Revlon, and I'm good for the day.
Fridays are punctuated by the town siren just down the block, and set my phone for 10:55 to be out on the back porch with my last cup, saying a little prayer of "God Bless all near it, all who hear it, all who heed it, and all who need it." It's kind of a little silly meditation/sermon to graduate to the weekend, which is calls from the kiddos and whatever little hobby project we're determined to finish. Today it's a framing of a picture I got DD for Christmas. It is one of those silly/you-gotta-love-them Rayyan portraits of a little girl and a monster in her arms, and a flower on his horn that tells you he's gonna have his feet under a fancy tea table in about five minutes.
We have our own little (?) monster, as well---a tee-ninecy matchbook-sized desert tortoise---Christmas gift from Chris in 2018 because I missed our Grand-Tort when they moved away. Well, that bitty-babe is now a thirty-pound leather-and-steel TANK with the ugliest feet and legs in the animal kingdom. Look up spur-thighed tortoise. We love her SO much, but she gets a bath every day and is almost too much for me to lift anymore.
Please give a shout sometime when you can---I still look longingly at my beautiful blue mailbox on the kitchen wall and sometimes I go look hopefully in, thinking you might have magically sent a note my way. It FEELS magical, anyway---that perfect replica of my childhood dreams. Until the spell works, you can find me at LEAH HALEY on FaceBook. I do a bit of writing on there, for I somehow lost how to get into my blog when Chris was so sick, and just never picked it up again. My e-mail is
ganjin042@gmail.com I'd love to correspond again, and if you have any questions or cares or midnight weeps or plain old wanna-throw-something-out-in-the-yard and yell---I'm your girl. I know a lot of cuss words in several languages, but I'm open to any new ones, if you need to let 'em loose. I'll send you my phone # if you need it. That's a zero up there in the e-mail address.
Do take care of YOU dear faraway friend---you're still very precious to me.
rachel/jan
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