The Runaway Bunny

"If you become a sailboat and sail away from me,"
said his mother, "I will become the wind and blow you to where I want you to go."
                                                             -Margaret Wise Brown

I read this book tonight to the kids and i seriously had to stop frequently to hold back the tears. Dorian asked if i would follow him forever. Arwen asked if i would take care of her if she got "the dementias" like daddy.

My God, have i been so absorbed with Jim that my kids would even ask if their mother would be there for them? 

At times when I would ask Arwen what she thought if we put daddy to live somewhere else she would say "if we help each other we can do this a little longer momma" and that is all i would need to find the strength to keep going. then, things got really bad and i had to send them to live at my mothers. 

Thru this whole thing i tried to teach them about endurance, love, acceptance, respect, faith...but i feel at times that all i taught them was that their daddy's needs trumped theirs. 

Today is so unbelievably fucking hard! If I'm able to stand it's only half way and I'm clutching my stomach in one hand and covering my mouth with the other. It started when I was making Dorian lunch, a memory invaded my content day that had me dropping everything I was doing and brought on the heavy anguished sobs.
It was of me crying and using all the strength I had to not make audible noise. I was stroking jims head and kissing his forehead. He had his eyes shut tight and was struggling to get out of the leather straps that held him to a gurny. 4 feet away 5 or so security guards were laughing and telling eachother the story of what just happened. The guy who took my husbands punch was the star speaker, the other 4 were there to help wrestle Jim down on the gurney. At the time I just wanted to calm Jim down and not let him pass out from the meds with a feeling of confused rage. But now I have the rage, why wouldn't those guards SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!! they worked in a goddamn hospital! Did they not understand that my husband was sick, working with half a brain, that he was trying to escape and flee from them because he was afraid! Now they are standing around him laughing while he is strapped down like a frightened animal and his distraught wife is trying to comfort him! Had they no fucking compassion! Fuck!
I think of the broken glass and being picked up by my neck by Jim or the rape attempts or the hits in the face or dining room chairs flying me way; and none of those memories hurt like the ones that came from other people lack of compassion or respect for my husband. He was still a FUCKING HUMAN BEING! He had a wife and 2 small children who loved him.
I feel defeated,...shit.

Our Children

I was so out of it on the day of Jim's service that i was wondering how we all looked. We meaning the kids and I, well Jim too, but he was in the casket. So I took a look at the photos taken from the day.

this is jim, in the same spot where he had died a week before.

this is me, looking at jims body leave our house for the last time.

this is arwen watching the pallbearers carry her daddy's casket across the front of the house

and this is dorian watching his fathers casket being loaded into the hearse for the last time.

I couldn't actually witness jim being put in the hearse and driven away from our house. i quickly ran inside searching for my pills. but the kids watched, as the pictures show.

 They were even present at Jim's work service, i had to leave the room i was so overcome with emotion, i just sat in the hallway sobbing. But my six year old stayed and listened to the eulogies being said and even took condolences from everyone. Her father would have been proud. 

At night Dorian asks to see the picture of him kissing daddy goodbye. Right after jim passed, dorian climbed on top of him and told him goodbye and gave him kisses. Now the picture of him doing this brings him comfort. But it makes me cringe.

My children were acting so brave that day and in the ones to come, and here i was running away from reality or sobbing in a hallway or cringing at a picture.

I am glad i involved them in every step of this experience. Children can be very poetic in their words and actions when you seem to need it the most. Although they don't fully understand the finality of death, or do they, they have shown me what courage should look like when you are dealing with it.

trudging back down the mountain. again, and again, and again,...ad infinitum.

I read my blog tonight trying to find some meaning in all of this. I can't find any. Am I Camus' absurd human?
There is a reason for the pills I am prescribed to take at night. Now is a good time to take them.

what remains.

4 months ago today i lost you. 4 months ago today i lost myself. i go through these motions of life but there is no life in them. And it wasn't your death itself that brought me here, it was the journey to your death that has done it.
i can't get it out of my mind; watching you slip away. i felt at the time that i was trying to grab on to you and you were falling through my fingers like sand. i remember holding you as we lay down in your bed at the facility, it was a week before you died. you slept for hours and i held you as we both were soaked in your urine what ever else comes out in the messy business of death. you were so peaceful i couldn't bare to move you. that is all i could do for you at that point, try to give you peace. and i succeeded many times before you died. in your lonely confused tortured mind all i could do was bring you a sense of peace.
will i ever love again like i did with you...? i doubt it. i will not willingly do this again to myself. how can i? what remains of me to even do that?
 

memory

Talking to himself walking across the bedroom.
"i can't do it, i just can't. No. No."
laying down on the floor next to the bed in the fetal position.
"No, No. I can't do it."
curious and concerned.
"do what Jim? what can't you do?"
mumbling, distressed, twitching on the floor. covering his face with his hands.
sternly, "what can't you do Jim?"
"i can't. i can't stab that boy and throw him in the swamp. i can't, i can't do it. i can't kill that boy."

i'm stunned, everything goes quiet. i can't think. then i hear them fighting over some toy in the other room, "that boy" and his sister. i run to the door and shut it.

a week later i hear this episode being told to a room full of 20 doctors. i hear nothing but gasps and i turn to jim. the look on his face....
right after this meeting he tries to throw himself in front of a bus. he is so big. i hold him back at the first attempt. i can't hold him as he gets ready for the next one.
i let him go. i turn away.

a police car has pulled right in front of him.

that look on his face... at the time i felt guilty for holding him back because of that look.
i find no meaning in this memory. i want to leave.

p.clarke memorial concert '05

i was looking thru Jim's virtual folder that he kept on our computer. I found 3 documents that were titled; friends, women, and financial advice for Gayle. I browsed through them. (it's too hard to read them just right now)
anyhow i found this in one of them:
                    I plan to play another concert, solo piano material, on April 22, 2005, and I hoped he would still be around to attend.  I will put an empty chair on the stage, to symbolize Phil sitting there, watching my playing.  Current plans for content:  Schubert  impromptu Beethovenís Waldstein Piano Sonata #21 (which Gayle likes a lot), Schubertës Wanderer Fantasy; end of first half; second half:  3 works of Chopin: 1st Ballade (G Minor), 2nd Scherzo, and 6th Polonaise (Heroic); and concluding with Gershwin Rhapsody in Blue. Planned encores, if requested, will be Debussyís Clair de Lune (a favorite of Maria Avila), perhaps a Joplin Rag, perhaps Schumannís Traumerii (translation "dreaming", based on a Scottish lullaby).  Perhaps also a Gottshock work, for my new piano teacher Dr. Maria Goodman.  


Jim used to play recitals without the music in front of him so everything was memorized. That means that I would have to listen to these pieces almost every day for about 4 months. I used to hate it at times. Now i would do anything to hear them coming from our Steinway....  If i hear recordings of the Polonaise that is mentioned above or think of it i will start crying. I remember the last time jim played Clair de Lune, it was about 2 weeks before he forgot how to play. he played it for his friend mike. i was in the living room quietly sobbing. i knew that was the last time i would hear him play. and i swear i will never hear anything more beautiful in my life. anyhow, his writing goes on....


      Update May 2005; Dr. Goodman dumped me as her student; said she didnít have the time.
The concert went OK, though I got lost a couple of times in the Beethoven Sonata, the work I thought I had memorized well enough, so I didnít really practice it enough.  I used the music to play the Schubert Fantasy, so that went OK, even though having the music I still got lost a few times in that.   The 2nd half, 3 works of Chopin and the Gershwin Rhapsody went well.


I remember this recital, and he did use the music in the Schubert. i remember thinking that it was a little off. maybe it was an early sign of the dementia. the other mistakes were minor and he went right through them, only a handful of people at the recital would have recognized them. anyhow, reading all of the titles and his recap on the recital brought back some memories that i didn't want to forget.