Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Sister, Daughter, Wife, Then...

Who am I now? And no, I don’t think of myself only in terms of others, but still, when my friend Lizzie pointed this out to me recently, I realized I’d never thought of it this way - up until 2015, I was someone’s sister, someone’s daughter, and someone’s wife. Now, just 10 years later, I’m an only child, an orphan, and a widow.

It’s weird, it’s only been two months, but it’s like there’s a veil preventing me from understanding that he’s really gone. It hurts to even write the word “dead”. I don’t know, maybe if I could have a do-over, just the last few weeks, maybe it would be easier. Not easy, but less guilt and regret…. But I don’t get a do-over, which is what I want more than anything. I don’t get to make it up to him, or to myself, and I will have to live with that, which is one of the worst parts. I just have to live with missing him and wishing I had been better, and praying that, in the end, he knew. I know he heard me in the hospital, I saw his tears and I hope he forgave me, and still loved me at the end. I would have understood if he didn’t.

I’m now facing, or accepting, or whatever you want to call it, a life without him, missing him every day - mostly the little things, the rituals – calling him on my way home from work to let him know I was on the road, then continuing to talk about mundane things until he would pause and say “So, you’re calling me because your bored.”… Tea waiting for me when I got home…the little things that were actually big. There are things we said to each other that I won’t share, not because they’re intimate (they’re not, they’re mostly funny, at least to us) but because then it becomes someone else’s story.

I would tell him stories about clients, and he would sympathize (with them) or laugh, but he kind of got to know them, and I liked sharing the stories, and letting him know how they were doing. So now at the end of a day I still can’t wait to talk to him about Sonny, who is 102, living in assisted living by herself, and how she finally accepted that she needs a caregiver. Or the elderly client with minor hoarding tendencies and even with therapy doesn’t see it, and continues to lament the state of her apartment, all the while not wanting my help but having me come in anyway. Then there’s the client who is afraid of her file cabinet, and, well, I could go on, but it’s not the same.

I have pictures, audio, and video, but I want the real person – those first two weeks, it helped seeing him on the screen, but now it just makes me immeasurably sad.

I was asked, do you feel better? Or, I hope you’re feeling a little better every day. I’m not better, there is no better. But there is different. I don’t know how I feel, for the first time I can’t articulate it, and I’m not able to write much these days…just a lot of disjointed thoughts that I’m trying to corral here.

I feel like I’m collapsing in on myself. The days are a blur, work helps, but if I thought I was lonely in those last weeks with him, this is worse, facing a life without him in it, without us.

I feel like I’m done, if it all ended tomorrow, I’d really be okay with that. In big bold letters – I am not suicidal, I am not going to do anything, I don’t want anyone to worry. I’m not going to do anything intentional or passive, and if I’m in danger, I’ll protect myself. (Although, if someone tries to steal my purse, I’m not going to follow the “just give them what they want” advice, instead I’m going to unleash all the years of rage inspired by arrogant useless doctors and beat the crap out of them.) But I think I have a better understanding of what my mom and my aunt said in their 80s; they never said outright that they were okay if they died tomorrow, at least not to me, but that they, too, were done, and they were okay with that. “Okay” feels insufficient, as far as words go, but it’s also the most appropriate.

For me, there’s nothing left to look forward to, the only thing looming ahead of me is more loss, as everyone I know ages and conversations focus on ailments and aging. I don’t remember my parents talking about aches and pains and annoyances, and I never imagined that my friends and I would spend so much time talking about just that. It’s kind of funny, though, and I appreciate that we’re mostly able to laugh about it. And that’s the thing – I can still laugh, and make other people laugh every now and then, but still, if it all ended tomorrow, well, there you go. Or rather, there I go. And once again, no, I have no intention of doing anything that would hurry that along, so please don’t worry. A part of me still hopes to find some way to write more and have my work seen by more people, a dream I’ve never fully let go of, but also never really worked toward.

It’s been said, or asked, don’t you feel at least a little bit of relief, no longer being his caregiver? And no, I really do not. I feel exhausted. I still tend to eat over the sink much of the time, but I’m showering whenever I want, even first thing in the morning, which is something I have to get used to being able to do again.

I’ve been a caregiver in one way or another for nearly 10 years - first, long distance with my mom, and then within two weeks after she passed, with Jim. It wasn’t full-on caregiving until 2 years later, but I still took on the responsibility for his health when it was clear that doctors were not only useless, but making him worse (more on that in the next one).

When it came to my mom, my aunt (her sister) and I would sometimes field as many as a dozen phone calls in a day, tearful, or angry, or both – my mom was living with unbearable grief, in pain, and suffering from the long-term effects of a traumatic brain injury. She lost everything within a few months – after the sudden death of my brother, the worst loss of all, she fell and suffered a severe head injury, ending up in a nursing home (her worst nightmare come to life), which mean that in quick succession she lost her son, her home, her independence and her ability to walk.

The rest of the family took care of her physically, for which I will always be grateful. She didn’t want to move to CA, which I understood, and I couldn’t move to NY, but I was either calling or texting or e-mailing with staff on a near daily basis, putting out fires and trying to make things even just a little more bearable for her, which we all were doing, but could never really make happen. If my brother had been alive, he would have found a way to do all the things I could not.

There’s no one who knows what it was like to grow up in my house. That may sound ominous - “No one knows the horrors!” but that’s not it at all. Now that my brother and my parents are gone, there’s no longer anyone who remembers life at 3 Coventry Road…. Saturday or Sunday brunch (even I don’t remember which day it was) at the breakfast nook, how if one person had to get up, everyone had to get up. (Which is why we always ate dinner in the dining room, and I never understood why we didn’t have brunch there, too.) Or cut up fruit for dessert; running down the stairs at Christmas long after the idea of Santa had run its course, gifts wrapped in red and green tissue paper (red was me, green was my brother, with my mother making sure we had the exact same number of presents); sitting down to dinner with me, my mom and my brother just about finished by the time my dad got his plate ready (salting and peppering, etc.); sitting on the porch in the dark on a summer night; listening to my mom curse whenever the dishwasher flooded or caught fire (okay, each only happened once, but still…)

My cousins Bob and Karen who grew up around the corner, the Frickes next door, Nancy Camarda whom I’ve known since I was five (the same with Janet Fricke) - we all have shared memories of our childhoods, and each other’s parents and houses, but it isn’t the same.

It’s comforting and fun to look back, but it isn’t complete.

There is no one else who remembers it the same way, and there is no one left to ask. I’m the keeper of memories that are just mine now, wishing I could share them all again with Jim, who loved hearing stories about my family, almost as much as he loved my family. The first time he met everyone all together was Thanksgiving, 1991 - he came to Aunt Carol and Uncle Lou’s for dessert, and when he arrived, Uncle Lou asked, “Did you have any trouble finding the place?” To which Jim replied, “No, I just followed the din”, making everyone relax, because we knew that even though there were only seven of us, we could be heard throughout the neighborhood, down the street and around the block (you think I’m kidding.)

That din has faded, but I’ll always remember that night, knowing even then that no one else will ever understand or really know me, in the same way. I will miss that more than anything.