The "After"

Weird Melissa'isms. 

The other night while driving home from Daytona, I had a profound and odd thought that popped into my head about Leone since his death.

The thought I'd had was that of him in the "after" looking quite like the Great Sphinx of Giza on the floor of our bedroom looking at us and around the room. His front legs stretching out in front of his body, head erect, and ears perked up watching and listening to life going on around him. His tail stretched out behind him casually, and back legs were tucked under his belly.

His body then became relaxed, like it was releasing itself back to the earth. The earth in this essence being the floor upon which he laid supported by soft warm things familiar to him and to us. He was at peace and I desperately needed to see that...

Short back-story: The night just a short time before he died, he’d had a few “beans.” Beans in this case are a case of the sillies, he'd zipped about a little bit while he was outside with the other dogs, acting like he'd acted when he was younger. I've heard of something called a "surge" and wonder if animals experience it, too.

Later on, Tim and I were outside enjoying the evening and we heard howling coming from the living room. We walked quietly up to the window and got to see him and the other two with their noses turned up high making sad mournful cries. Once they saw us, they immediately quit and came running to the door to try and see us. They never howl in front of us and anytime they hear us creeping up to see them, they immediately quit howling. 

Later still after dinner and watching some TV we made it into the bedroom to settle down for the night. At some point, Leone asked to be put down on the floor, presumably to go do a business. After he was done, he tottered back into the bedroom and asked to be picked back up on the bed, which of course, I helped him do.

Immediately after I got back into bed, he came over to my side and slumped over, looking like he was about to fall over the side. I grabbed him before he could fall and noticed he was limp in my hands. One part of me cried out knowing exactly what was happening and I should have let it happen, but the other foolishly jumped into action. I wasn’t ready, HE was, though.

I performed CPR on him and for about a minute, he came back but was struggling with every breath and it wasn't kind or peaceful at all. There was not a damn thing we could do, but we stopped regardless.  While we cried, we talked to him, petted him, kissed him, cuddled him, and let him go.

Maddie wandered into the room and curled up next to him on the pad with blankets and towels we made up for him on the floor. She was pressed up against him where she stayed for about an hour. His little body cooled off while she lay next to him, and his color changed as it does when a body no longer has blood pulsing through it. 

I’m anthropomorphizing here, but at some point, I think she felt he, the living being he'd been, was gone and eventually she got up and tottered off to find a softer warmer place to lie. Conall who’d been keeping watch on the goings on below him from our bed eventually got up and walked away, too. 

Moving along...

Back to the other night where I'd had my odd thought. Perhaps dumb? probably very odd to anyone reading this, I don't know, you decide.

I was in bed and heard what sounded like Leone's gait trotting through the room over to my side of the bed as sleep started to take me. I then heard the same sound wander over to the other side of the bed where Tim lay sleeping and pause for a moment or two. I then heard what sounded like his feet retreating quietly, almost purposefully out of the room.

It was probably a dream, but it seemed to me like he had come back to where he’d spent his last few minutes alive about roughly three weeks earlier to say, hey…Mum? Dad? I’m good. I am whole and healthy and I’m so glad I got to spend time with you for a while.

Cheers to you little fella, we love and miss you Mr. Broome, my little Sphinx in the sun. 

Defeat

 

Defeat

Today is Sunday, February 18. It’s raining in southern Florida, quite a match for my mood. I feel absolutely defeated and so freaking tired. How much can one take before they completely break?

I no longer know what to do or how to feel or how to act or what to think or…. If this were a movie this would be where my voice tapers off to silence.

It’s not a movie, however, it’s real. It’s as real as it gets. This whole thing is surreal but here it is, staring me down. There’s a target on my little fella and nothing I can do can prevent it from happening.

I lied, too. I know what I need to do, I just don’t want to do it.

I feel absolutely defeated; I feel like I am being punished. Not trying for the dramatic, it’s just how I feel. I’m about to lose one my little guys, a kiddo I’ve had in my life since he was 10 weeks old. It’s all happening sooner than should be “allowed” due to a most horrible disease.

Crazy thing? I was doing this around this time last year with another pup, Posey. She lost her battle in March. This time thirteen (?) years ago, I went through it with a 2-year-old Iggy who died in my lap in my car one mile from the house on the way to go camping.

Don’t even want to talk about this time two years ago.

Leone doesn’t know if he’s sick or how bad it is, but I do and quite frankly, it’s tearing me apart inside. My guts are a wreck, my head hurts, I’ve cried at the dumbest times and in the most inopportune places in front of people who don’t know me from Adam. It sucks. I feel quite alone in this whole thing. Tim is here with and for me and for Leone, but I still feel absolutely alone in this whole thing and that makes me feel like shit, too.

I’ve asked “why.” I’ve asked how come, what if, what else, when…

People always say, oh the animal will let you know. That is bullshit. YOU must make the decision. This isn’t one of those things where you let it happen. You must balance quality vs quantity. Right now, his quality is slightly okay. The quantity is pretty much out the door, his days are very numbered, and I have to say “when.” That part tears me up. When is the right time to let them go? Obviously before they start feeling worse than they may be feeling now, it’s a horrific balancing act.

I just never want to do it too soon or too late. This is where you doubt yourself, where you listen to every breath, where you feel for a heartbeat, where you are so tired, you begin to wonder if you can even go on for a single minute.

It’s now six something in the morning of Monday, February 19. Neither of us got a lot of sleep; Leone’s breathing is harsher, audible. When he’s standing up or propped up, he seems “normal.” But now I do know and honestly, I probably let it go longer than it should have. I was feeling very selfish, I AM feeling very selfish and that makes me not the world’s best dog momma.

I’m making a call in a little while and probably this time tomorrow, I’ll be without my little fella who by now has wormed his way into Tim’s heart.

Leone Broome (he has a marking on his neck that looks like a broom), Leoneski, Leone Broomstick, Broom, my little fella, Tim’s sidekick. You will always be my little guy, my little prancing fella.

Why does life have to hurt so much? 

New Beginnings - Phase I

 

New beginnings Phase I

Life is surprising and ever evolving. It can be scary, it can be stressful, it can be sad, it can be happy, it can be a multitude of things you never in your wildest imagination ever dreamed of happening but does.

Look at me and all the surprises life threw my way. I caught them all and doing the best I knew how, tackled each and every hurdle, every surprise. Hopefully with aplomb and grace.

Backtracking – when I was a young 20-year-old, I met the guy I am with now, Tim. I met him before I met my husband. He was 26 years old and ran sound for a band whose bass player lived in the city I was working in, Prattville, AL. They had come into the restaurant I worked in and when I first laid eyes on Tim, I felt like I had been hit by lightning.

We had a short little “thing” that lasted a brief time but left a huge impression on me and every guy I ever had feelings for afterwards. Life happened and we lost touch. I never forgot him, though.

I met the guy who became my husband, and we started out as best friends first for years, then dated a while after which we married and had an awesome 23+ years as husband/wife. Then, life decided to play a cruel trick on us.

I will never forget that day, that call; I was not quite 49 and I looked in the mirror as I was putting my hair in a ponytail and cramming a baseball hat over my head and said out loud, ‘your life is about to change’. My instincts screamed at me that the outcome was not to be pleasant.

Fast forward from the day of that call in May of 2021 to June of 2022 where I lost my best friend in the early hours of the morning on Monday, June 6 to a horrible cruel disease, cancer. It literally ate him alive, having spread from the primary tumor in his esophagus to his entire skeleton; broken ribs, broken spine, broken collar bone, etc., then started eroding away at his soft organs namely his lungs, then his brain.

All of this happened during covid, so for almost all of the journey, we were on our own. Family lived 2.5 hours away and they had their own shit they were dealing with at the same time we were dealing with our own.

Life can get lonely when your support group is unable to help. But, after that day in June of 2022, I resolved to keep my chin up, keep plodding along and find trivial things to in which to relish life and living. Hence, all my goofy posts with memes or photos; sunsets, birds, plants, flowers, trees, pictures I’d taken of me and my silly face at an attempt to show happiness even when I felt so fucking empty and alone that sometimes I lost my shit so badly I would have to sit and wait for it to pass if/when it hit me when I was out driving.

I did not forget my husband, I figured out ways to live without him.

See Phase II coming shortly.

A New Day

 November 8

One year and 6 months "after"

A new day has come…

I woke up this morning like every other day.

I went to the closet and selected from all the shirts hanging in there the shirt I wore the day/night/morning that my husband breathed his final breath. I looked at it for about a second and had a weird thought of, I wonder if today will be the day his ashes will come in the mail.

Why? I don’t know. Whatever it was just compelled me to put it on. My mom called it the word I’ve always used but never said to her – feelings. I went ahead and put it on and didn’t think another thing about it until several hours later.

Fast forward to my regular work weekday. Meetings, domestics, etc. At around 1:30, I took my lunch which involved me taking a nap instead of actually eating.

I’ve still not eaten.

Close to the end of my “lunch”, my phone started ringing and I almost didn’t look at it or answer it, but again, a compelling thing had me pick it up and see who was calling me at 2:11 PM EST and saw the words University of South Alabama.

Thud. Another thing I “knew” was going to happen before it did.

I answered and the voice on the other end of the phone asked if I was Melissa – Yes.

This is so and so from the Anatomical Body Donation program.

Me – another thud.

She went on to say that they’d completed their study with my deceased husband who had asked that his body be donated to science after he died in the hopes that someone, somewhere, somehow could hopefully find some answers to cancer and helping prevent/heal/resolve it. Anything, even miniscule.

She continued in the conversation and said they’d just cremated his remains at which point, I kind of lost my ability to contain my eyes from watering profusely and from keeping my voice from cracking uncontrollably. The finality of it was like being in a car rolling at about 100 mph, no seatbelt and suddenly you are violently stopped by the goddamn wall that popped up in front of you like a stupid cartoon that you laugh at when you’re a kid and know no better at that age about pain and despair.

She went on to say that she needed to verify my address and be present to sign as they were packaging up his remains, his ashes, to mail to me.

Another thud.

Stupidly, I felt, this is so fucking final. I mean, it was final literally a year and six months ago, but to have to “go through it again” hurt so much that I can’t describe it.

It is closure and I need it. I need the closure of this chapter of life, and I’ll finally have it.

I should have the end part of his life back home with me this coming Monday after which some trips need to be planned; some excursions to places he adored and treasured. Camping spots, motorcycle destinations he loved and visited. For now…. I’m having a toast to the person he was.

Touch

Monday – August 28, 2023

I went to sleep last night absolutely exhausted. I'd come home from a two-week trip to Sarasota visiting Timothy.

At one point in the middle of the night, I drowsily reached my hand out expecting to feel his hand slowly grasp mine and squeeze gently. It literally woke me up to not feel his hand in mine. I’d felt his touch for two weeks.

Constantly, casually, silently, absently even at times but with purpose.

Constantly – walking down the sidewalk or into a store or restaurant – one or both of us would reach for the other. Our hands would grasp, and we’d walk together, touching.

Casual – sitting on the couch at home or in a restaurant or driving down the road, touching.

Silent type - Hmm? You there? Yes, here’s my hand. You okay or feeling anxious? Yes, here’s my hand. Whispers and murmurs but always a touch. You are not alone, feel my hand touching you. 

Absently but with purpose – middle of the night rolling over, a hand would reach out from either of us to pat, soothe, ease back to sleep. Squeeze fingers, more murmurs but always a touch.

I miss that and it’s not even been 24 hours.

Almost a year

 06-02-2023

Anyone who knows ME knows this upcoming week may prove difficult.

I've taken the whole week off and am planning on laying low. I will have "therapy" in the shape of a very dear friend who will do anything for me should I need it therapy-wise and another very special person in my life who is a call or a text away. 

Tuesday will be a whole year since a heart shattering shit storm happened early one Monday morning and began back in the early part of the year, 2021. The bittersweet beginning to the end a year ago on June 3rd started with a very fast ambulance ride to a different hospital and wound up terminating early in the morning on June 6. 

June 6th is the day I'm trepidatiously waiting on being "over" if I'm being frank. Heh. 

To say I'm not looking forward to it is putting it so mildly I don't even know how to describe it. I.Will.Be.Fine. I am a warrior. I am a fierce entity. I will be fine, but again I'm just not looking forward to the feelings that will arise. I will greet that day with swords out, fangs bared and a deep seated scream to anyone who dares cross me that day. 

There may be tears.

No, there will be tears.

There will probably also be utter and sheer panic, but that too will be met with a ferocity from deep within that only one who's gone through this would understand. 

Hug your loved ones, tell folks you care about that you LOVE them. Fuck shyness, fuck fear, fuck anything that stands in your way...

Love, Live, Lust, Learn, Let go and accept things you cannot change even if they scare you so much you can't breathe....

Just live. 

Maps and continuing to move forward...

 

January 22

Just sitting down – got some stuff done this weekend. Nothing major; more or less aesthetics. Worked on the house and worked on me (that’s the aesthetic – hah!).

Seriously though – I did do some painting in one of the bathrooms, tidied up in areas needing tidying, I gathered some more things to donate, did laundry – one my least favorite things to do is putting away laundry, and got groceries. Then, forgot I needed a few things, so I ventured back out and had to get those forgotten things. I also worked out twice this weekend but, I took today “off” to just go have fun and do “nothing” stuff. Didn’t get all my steps in today much to my chagrin, but hey, tomorrow.

What am I trying to do? Honestly? I have no clue. I have absolutely no map to use as my guide right this very second. But do we ever? Do we ever have a laid-out plan in life and say – here’s my coordinates of where I am right now and over there <pointing somewhere on an imaginary map>? There is where I want to end up.

Probably…maybe we just think we do?

At one point, I feel I had that map.

Now though? What about now? My map burned up well over a year ago and I’m just now starting to stop from floundering around taking unmarked exits, from running out of gas and having to get out and find my way, to rediscovering the lines on the road.

I’m seeing that the lines never disappeared, but just faded into the fast ride I’d been on in this game of life. I’m starting to see ways around traffic jams even if means a detour. Detours may be the part of life we didn’t know that would help shape who we will become.

So, my detour while I re-find my map? Learning the way of this new land I am now inhabiting.

I do want to improve myself. Me – physically and Me – Mentally. So…I really should re-create a map for myself. Even if all it is imaginary. Goal setting. That is where my journey is right now.

My new map is looking ahead, continuing to put one foot in front of the other, finding joy in minute things that may have otherwise been overlooked. I’m not moving on, I’m moving forward.

Seven Months in with Further Roads to Travel

01/05/2023 – The Eve of seven months in and I’m still kicking – Amazingly. There are still roads left to travel and my shoes are tied ready to go.

I re-joined a gym and went for the first time tonight. I walked on a treadmill for a bit to get warmed up, then hit the weight machines for some weight training. Still feeling goofy and new being back to a gym for the first time since Covid hit. What do I do first??

I feel I will be a little sore tomorrow morning – the anticipated feeling though? It’ll be AWESOME.

It’ll mean I am alive; I can breathe, I can continue on and live another day. I know Brandon would be proud. I am too even if I moaned and groaned on the way to and while I was at the gym. Good for me, though. He’d kick my ass if I didn’t do this.

This is for me. It’s also for him in a weird way. Don’t know if I can adequately express what I mean by that. I don’t think I want to try right now. Ask me later, maybe.

If I smile and kind of shrug, I’m still not sure I can explain it if anyone ever does ask. That’ll be okay, too. The answer may never make sense even if I was able to articulate it. I just know it does make sense to me in this now.

As I was driving home, I looked up and saw how full the moon was becoming and drove right past the hospital where we spent roughly three weeks of time before his final ride down to Fairhope. Thoughts were that of, I wish, if only, coulda’ woulda’, shoulda’ for a brief moment. Then, I shoved those thoughts deep down where they belong, now.

I’ve been learning to live in my own skin these past seven months, alone. Alone is a heavy word filled with a lot of doom and gloom. Honestly though? Alone is learning who one is; learning it’s okay to laugh at yourself and circumstances. It’s a learning experience. It’s saying okay – if I want to go get back in bed and NOT do anything after work? that it’s okay. It’s deciding to paint your patio and having to pick out the color and watch a video to see what you should do when painting concrete. It’s BEING. It’s moving with the ebb and flow of the thing called life and being okay. It is feeling comfortable in your own skin and rejoicing in that Hey, your past has helped shape who you are, girlfriend. Keep on doing that. Keep breathing in. Keep breathing out. You are alive. It's ( for me ) no longer feel ‘guilty’. (That’s another thing that at some point if anyone asks me what I mean by that, please, let’s sit down I'll pour us a wine and I’ll explain.)

A while back during a rough patch at work, I found a funny that I printed out and stuck on my wall at work. It’s on my fridge now that I work from home.  It says ‘Drink your coffee, Stay focused and positive, Don’t freak out, Remember – Stabbing people is wrong, Are you wearing pants? You are a magnificent sunflower or potato, whatever you like.’ It’s titled “Monday Motivation’. I scribbled through the word “Monday” and above it wrote “Every day” for Everyday Motivation.

These are the motivations I laugh at now, but seriously do say out loud a few of the lines to myself every now and then as I am getting ready for my day. Basically, what it means to me is, keep on even if it is just plodding along. Wherever you go, far from here or near to here, your life is important. Keep on kicking. Keep on screaming, Keep on living.

There’s still a lot of roads to travel and you, my dearest, will find so many wonderful adventures on your travels. Drink your coffee (or wine), keep your pants on, live, laugh, love. Just keep on doing it. 

Progress

December 23, 2022

These past six months have given me a lot of insight into me, my life, my “circumstance”. I realize I’m not the only person in the world to have lost someone who’d been in their lives for as long as they were. But I am the only one who is living my life and feeling my feelings so, bear with me please.

When my journey began as a widow, a friend gave me a journal one day, right before we sat down for a lunch date with a couple other friends. It is a beautiful hardback journal with a cover colored in gold and simply, but aptly labeled “Thoughts”. I held it for a while after receiving it and stared at it a while, too, before I actually began writing in it.

I’ve since written many things in it; quotes from other people and lyrics from songs, doodles here and there and of course, there are also my own words and random fleeting thoughts, too. Some of it is just word salad, a group of words that for some may not make any sense, but for me, right then and there when I scribbled them down, the words meant everything. They still do.

One of the more recent topics I jotted down was on being okay. So, here we go.  

A friend of mine told me a while back that eventually, I would be okay. That time would be the healer. That time would also be the thing that would feel like forever and never seem to reveal the other side of the mountain. At that point in this journey, I doubted I’d ever feel okay again.

Yet here I am. I did get to the top of a proverbial hill the other day and saw the scenery around me and realized, I am okay. I AM okay. More quietly? I? I am okay. And I don’t know quite yet how to feel about that.

I didn’t stop living. This is my new chapter. I am learning what I like, I am learning what I don’t like and sometimes I feel guilty at this new-found realization of being okay; of being alive and seeking continued growth. That,  I’m sure, is common. But yet, I do feel at times I should quell those thoughts of feeling good, of feeling okay.

I know, weird, but hey, this is ME after all.

Approaching the holidays quickly now, just days away, I’m not feeling as “bad” as I thought I’d feel.

That is an odd sensation. Maybe this is the acceptance part of the stages one goes through when life tosses a grenade their way. It’s the Oh okay, here we are, this is the new you. You can accept it, you can deny it, you can scrunch it up in a ball and try to throw it away, but this is now your life.

I’ve chosen to live it and see where it takes me and yes, I do feel okay.

I am sure that I will continue to feel the ebb and flow of life; the ups and downs of hills as they come my way, but right now? I am okay.

Do we say enough?

Monday, December 5, 2022

Do we say enough?

Today is the day before the six-month mark since Brandon died. I’ve been keeping busy, but a song just came on in the background and I started paying attention to the words and reflecting. Now, that I’m thinking about the words, let me say the following…

If I’d known what I knew the day before, the day I left the hospital and went home for the last time as a couple and not a single which I became in the wee hours of the next morning, would I have done things differently? I wonder…

Do we say enough to those we love and care for? Do we share enough with people we care about so that they know unequivocally what an IMPACT they have on our lives? Do we speak the words clearly, slowly and with certainty so that people understand how much they mean to us?

We should.

Towards the end of the day, Sunday, June 5^th, I was getting tired, cranky; I still had to get stuff set up when I got home for the item’s hospice was bringing for Brandon’s discharge and then get some rest before getting back up early the next day to be there in advance of his surgery. It was almost 7 PM and I had at least 45 to 50 minutes of drive time. That meant I’d get home around 8, eat dinner super late. House stuffs were being neglected, but what do you do?

He'd had an agitated day that day and yeah, I was feeling a bit frustrated, too. Lots of things had built up to that day. Three weeks of hospitalization, his health was declining at an alarming rate, I was running out of steam, he was dying, and I couldn’t do a damn thing to stop any of it.

When I left that night, I’d started getting ready about an hour before so he would know clearly that I was leaving. I always started slowly so he had it in his head that I was leaving that last week he was alive. He’d usually start almost pleadingly asking me to stay longer, but the last two nights he was alive, he’d fall asleep while I was packing stuff up and tidying up his room.

I woke him up that Sunday night, the 5^th of June and said softly, ‘hey babe? I’m leaving, I’ll be back first thing in the morning though before your surgery’  (we didn’t even have a time for surgery at that point, the whole thing was a “cluster”) But, I said my piece and was waiting on his response before I left. 

He blinked his eyes open, focused on me, smiled dreamily, and said ‘Okay, love you,’  then slowly closed his eyes again.

I planted a kiss on his forehead, hugged him gently and told him I loved him, too and with my stuff, walked out.

That was the last time I saw my husband “alive”. A whole half a year ago. I cannot believe that it has been that long ago. It feels like a lifetime has passed, but at the same time? Like it was just yesterday.

Do we say enough? we should. Fool that I was, I thought I had more time. Now, I know there will never be enough time for things unless we do them or say the things we feel in our hearts and in our heads.

So, to all my family, to all my friends – new and old, to all the people IN my life, I do cherish you all. You’ve made a huge impact on these last six months. The few moments, the brief or long conversations, the time spent with me in person “after”? They all helped get me through this half of a year.

Say enough, say it all, say something, just say it.