Friday Afternoon Think Aloud

This week, my spirits have been very good. It isn’t that I haven’t cried – – I’ve done plenty of that.

I’m sleeping well, taking care of myself, eating well, healing well, reading a lot, and getting a ton of things done.

When things go awry, I’m finding I don’t get stressed and anxious like I did even just a couple weeks ago. I don’t overblow things in my head like I think I have for a long time. I have a renewed sense of “everything will work out.”

The images of Jim being ill seem to be minimizing. In retrospect, it has become clear to me that ever since his stroke in 2020 it was a long downhill slide that just got worse and worse. This was confirmed to me when I went through this giant stack of papers he had on his side of the bedroom. As I went back through the stack, I saw that the oldest ones were from 2020. That stroke probably did more damage than we realized.

So this afternoon, I started thinking about what the difference is now. Sometimes I wonder why I’m not feeling worse. I’m in grief. I have a million things to do, tons of stuff to figure out, and things I’ve taken on that I need to follow through on. Why am I not as stressed as I have been for so long?

And then I realized something very important. The major difference between now and before Jim made his transition is that I had to keep seeing him getting worse, in pain, uncomfortable.. I can see now what a huge stress that was on me. There was a lot of fear associated with it that never went away. And as things kept sliding downhill, and then I got ill, damn, it was just so much.

The other night I watched the Townhall CNN did with Kamala Harris. And there was a part late in the session where she was asked about her proposal to have Medicare pay for Home Healthcare (something I know is needed—it’s a huge issue). She talked poignantly about how when someone you love is sick and they pass away, you want to remember them when they were vibrant and alive, and not like they were at the end. 

It hit me in that moment how much I kept thinking about Jim the way he was these past few months. This last year, really. This was not pleasant, and the images kept popping up and making me sad. Understanding this has helped a lot. So now I’m doing my best just to remember him before the 2020s. It feels so long ago because, well, it was!

I feel I’m doing all the right things, and I believe everything will get done in time. As Annmarie pointed out to me recently, that’s all I can do. The next right thing.

Singing with the Elvis mic at Sun Studios 2014