It is early morning the sun is not yet breaking the eastern horizon… as I begin to write. Coffee’s been brewed… wheat toast eaten… firewood loaded into the woodstove to keep the chill at bay… Mow Mow Tat is celebrating mama (that would be me) being home and is dashing about playing… the Pominators and Mastiffs are howling their desire to go outside and do their business… just as soon as they have they will be howling to come back inside with the cold chill in the air… it seems my internet connection is down… hmmmmm… will reset the modem again and see if that helps… if not will call them when their office opens. (internet connection is back up…yay!) The phone rang… yes before the sun was up… some miss-dial from a soul in Virginia …
When the phone rings early or late it still puts me on alert… so many years of either calls for David to go out on the trains… emergency calls regarding my mother… and/or the constant wariness of a call from the railroad when David was out on a train… with dread news or some emergency regarding him…
I remember more than one emergency call … crisis regarding David… crisis that could have been avoided had the side effects of one simple blood pressure medicine been caught… either by David’s doctors… or by me… all of us missed it until it was too bloody late. I wonder now if the information was even available when the drug was prescribed… I don’t know. The blood pressure med that David was prescribed had a side effect of increasing blood sugar levels in type II diabetics.
We fought and fought to bring and keep David’s blood sugars in line… failing again and again… all the time the blood pressure med he was on was in actuality increasing his sugar levels… while the insulin was dropping them… resulting in wild and erratic blood sugar swings… from very high to very low…
Who’d a thought a blood pressure med was the culprit… obviously not the doctors because they never did catch it… I saw the information on the drug’s website after he had been on said medication for years… I missed it too… until then… I wonder now if the info was there all along… or if it was a recent addition… I don’t know…
I do know that the extreme sugar swings took a serious toll on my beloved husband… I am so sorry I missed it… I did my best with what I knew at the time… and I failed…
The sun has since risen… although you can not see it shining in the sky… all is overcast…cold…wet and gray…
Woke up with a swelled throat and a monstrous headache…twisting through waves of panic and grief. This was a morning exercise that I could have seriously done without.
Ya think that the storms have faded into calm… or passed to a point… then wham… here we go again… gale force emotional winds… hailstones as big as houses made up of lost time and frozen regrets… of what could have been and never will be…
I am but 53 years of age… well until February 2014 … and perchance I am wrong… but I believe I have received a bit of insight as to why there is so much sadness and depression in nursing homes. Strong vibrant souls… others exhausted seeking rest… trapped in failing bodies… looking back over the years… missing those that have gone on before… rehashing choices… thinking what if… or what could have been…
Of course this activity is not limited to those in nursing homes… or even near the end of their days in this life… seems to run rampant through our minds from near birth to the end of our days in this life…
Pointless exercise in futility… the what if’s… the coulda woulda shoulda’s the mourning of paths not taken… if this or that had been done differently would there have been a different outcome… perhaps a kinder outcome… perhaps not… if I had understood then … what a difference it would have made… or would have it…
The.. oh I understand now… when a realization comes to fruition… and that person has since passed out of this life… and the ensuing grief over the lack of understanding … over what could have been…
Or the sadness over years lost to misunderstandings…
The dog laundry just finished washing… put it in the dryer… looked outside again… the sun is peaking through… yay! Water droplets glistening on the fence wires…
May you have a blessed day…
Mary E. Robbins
Gratitudes:
1. the sun is trying to shine through the clouds
2. warm fire in the wood stove
3. coffee...
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