I like to listen to joe south’s song walk a mile in my shoes. I watch the red zone for updates on my team the Green Bay packers. I get up in the morning and do stuff during the day. Some days I can’t be bothered getting up. I talk to my dog Trevor. He agrees with everything I say and waits patiently for me to get up so he can chase squirrels. Sometimes I look at the dishes and I can’t be bothered. Sometimes I clean the house scrubbing from top to bottom. The rawness of losing him has dulled but my life is dull now I’ve lost him. I chase life affirming moments such as holidays, new groups, meals with friends, family gatherings. But in my heart I am so lonely for him. I want to talk to him. I want to feel his strong arms around me. I just want him to come home. He’s been gone 4 years and it’s time he came back home to me.
That mirrors so much to how Jay (my husband) went. I was sitting at his bedside holding his hand and watching the little TV in his room. I had gone down to the hospital cafe to get myself a sandwich and drink and went back up to his room. He was still making that horrible shallow breathing sound that gets made at the end. I was rubbing his shoulders but he kept batting my hand away. Then I suddenly became aware that his breathing had stopped so I shook him and got no response lifted his hand and it just flopped back down again. Other than buzzing in the nurses everything happened in slow motion and I just remember walking out the room and along the corridor to the nurses station and said `I think he's gone` to which two nurses then raced up the corridor and into his room shook him an checked him over and then one said `Oh James`! and she said `Yes he is at peace now` to which i was then ushered out into a side room and given a cup of tea and time to compose myself. That will remain with me for always. He passed at roughly 7p.m. on Friday 23rd June don't really know what time it was but know it was early evening. His death though was officially confirmed at 1a.m. on the 24th June.
It's so wrong and unfair. I seem to see couples everywhere. Ive seen everything on Netflix twice. Ive seen everything on the tele at least 3 times. Days are endless. Heading into town first time without him. This time last year we would go into town and walk for ages. Were away on holidays at Christmas market. Someone I know told me last year when I was worrying over something else don't worry everything changes and moves on. I had this years diary marked with all our plans and holidays and appointments right up to the end of the year. None of them happened. I put in every 3 months treatment changed Feb 2023 will he still be here for anniversary birthdays Halloween Christmas. He didn't make any of them. Once came off old treatment and onto new everything happened so quickly. I keep questioning should he have stayed on old treatment but looking back now I think the dizzy spells he was getting could have been the tumours in his brain. I'll never know and he wasn't really telling me everything about how he was feeling. Looking at photos now he must have been in pain but wouldn't take pain relief. Did not like how it made him feel when on morphine. So many what ifs and buts and maybes.i keep thinking I could have done more researched more. Questioned his medical team more. Why oh why.
I know how you feel seeing people holding hands hurts, although i do feel like going up to them and saying hold on tight as you never know when the hand might no longer be there to hold. Sometimes i feel what else could have been done, but it's hard as my husband was offered more radiotherapy, and it was his choice whether to take the risk and might have ended up more or less sleeping all the time not being able to do anything, or to live the last of what was left doing things he wanted to do. He chose the latter and we only had 10 weeks before he passed away. Maybe i should have researched other things that he could maybe have had for glioblastoma, but i think they would have all cost money that sadly we did not have. He was lucky in that he did not have a great deal of pain in his final days. It is now me that is left with the pain of not having him by my side I don't think we can maybe beat ourselves up to much as that makes things even worse, if that's possible, we will never know if we would have been able to change things, even if there had been an endless pot of money Take care.
