Didn't write yesterday. I did finish battling my way to the back of the garden. The area where Bob tossed everything that might have been useful - like old plastic pots, maybe that once held plants, sheets of corrugated plastic the remains of weed cloth, all covered in weeds and brambles. I have filled the back of the truck with junk. Then came the clearing. Oak saplings. Feral bamboo in the grip of masses of equally feral Virginia creeper. I hacked, dragged, eventually burned.
So too knackered to write last night. Fell asleep on the couch - which I've been doing lately. Sort of sleep until 1 or 2 and then go to bed. When I first came home from Gainesville I slept on the couch for two months because I couldn't stand the emptiness of the bed. Even when I tried sleeping there again I would pile his side with things like laundry baskets. Now I'm reliving that emptiness. Last night I didn't even try. I had the comfort of the back of the couch at my back, and Hamish (normally not a snuggle kitty) stretched out at my side. And I slept for 12 hours.
Also did a different thing for me yesterday. It was Saturday, so I went for my weekly treat at my little food truck. The guy behind me was talking to Rhonda. (I keep making typos - NokoMarie is not quite sharing my lap with the laptop). Talking about having done his regular job, and then having been able to pick up a little demolition work. I was listening - there is an old shed behind my cottage. Once Upon A Time is was the goat shed. Then it became the repository of anything that wasn't good enough to store in the barn. Then sometime in the last few months it fell over. It's going to take a ton of work to take it all apart and haul it off. But this guy sounded like he wasn't against getting some extra work - so I asked him, and he came and gave me a quote, and we shook hands, and that little guilt trip should be gone in a week or so.
So back to 2020. Yesterday was Week Three, and no change. No change again this morning. It must have been sometime this past week when Bob looked at me, with a strange confused look in his eyes and said "I can see you. I can see you talking your walk, playing with the cats, going to a party at Rob and Jeff's. I can see you. But I can't see me." All I could do was hold him.
So yesterday, March 26. I was on my knees on my couch, head on my arms. looking down on the parking lot where I could see our little blue Honda, and thinking "I just want to go home." An odd thing to think, because I would only be able to do that after Bob was dead. Then I went over to be closer to him, and we talking about putting his ashes in his artificial reef, and that's when I asked him if he would like to also have Fiona's ashes go with him. "I can have Fiona with me? I would like to have her with me."
I looked him in the eye. "Tell me you love me. Because I'm going to have to go an awfully long time without hearing that." "I love you." I would repeat that request many times over the next two days - our last two days.
Today, March 27, 2020. The damned alarms keep going off (they're not allowed to disable them). I'm packing up our stuff, because I think it's fairly obvious that he's going to be heading to intensive care again and I'm not allowed to leave anything in the room. Dr. Farhadfar comes in to talk with him. God bless that woman. Usually doctors skirt around the issue of a patient dying; it's their job to prevent that. He asked her if he should request a DNR. She sat beside him - I think she had her hand on him. She looked at him gently, gazed into his eyes, and said, softly "If you were my husband, or you were my father, I would tell you to request a DNR." She waited a moment, then repeated it. A few minutes later, when she was leaving, she looked at me. "I don't understand. He was so strong."
I wonder how I handled this last year - I didn't write anything. Sometime later, maybe June, I wrote that I had to relive every single goddamned day. I'm hoping, that by letting myself go through this, that maybe it won't be so bad in 2023. This is for you, 2023 self. I hope you've had a good year.
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