Sharon and I

About 6 months after our wedding Shar had a massive heart attack.
Luckily we were in the hospital when it happened. She might not have survived
otherwise. She is doing well now and I am so glad.

.

quick update

It has been 5 years since my beloved Miriam died. The time has gone fast, maybe too fast.

One of my daughters suggested I look online to see about some female company. I did. I saw and I fell in love! I asked someone if it is possible to be in love with two women at the same time!
It has been four years since widow Sharon and I were married. Her husband had been sick for 12 years. We are veteran caretakers.
 She has 3 daughters and I have 4, so we had 7 bridesmaids and one groomsman, my brother, at our wedding. She has a good family and I have come to love and treasure each of them.
I had a  house she did not want to live in and her house did not have room for a garden and/or a shop. We sold her house and rented mine and  bought a house for us.
I have an art studio, a small wood shop and a good sized garden, complete with a small greenhouse.
Love in the 70’s is a bit different. After being alone for a good while, it was so good to have someone to share life with.
It is good. I love Sharon and I still miss Miriam!

Re-start

Just as well make a real adventure of the rest of my life. Life with Miriam was a great and I enjoyed it, but now is time for a re-start and that is the subject of the new blog.

Live well on a tight budget. I'll win some and I'll lose some, oh well.

Come over and join me.

dave

http://davesnewstart.blogspot.com/

Front of "the Villa" my tiny house daughter Arline's place.
300 square feet works for one person.
The shakes used to be on the neighbor's roof!
The windows were left over from remodel projects, the front door from Craig's list.
Still not cheap to build nowadays.

My girls.
I am so proud of them, it is amazing that I have any buttons left on my shirts.
Birth order names: Arline Marie; Lora Lea; Deanna Cheri; Linda Glee. The first was named after her two grandmothers, then we got the idea of making them rhyme!
In the picture, left to right Lora, Deanna; Arline and Linda/Lia.
The background is the corner of my tiny house in Washington State.

Happy New Year

I am back in Idaho in our house.

It is lonely at times, but the quiet and the aloneness is healing.

Snow on the ground. Many winters here the cold lasts a week or so, but this has hung on since before Thanksgiving. It will break, but not really soon, I fear!

Sunday I fell and tore my Rotator Cuff once again. Doc says to do some exercises and I like that.

Someone has been reading the Obits. Suddenly I am getting email and popups from Match.com. Even if I were ready and willing, I think I'd be a bit leery of sites like that!

This will be a good year. I am sure!

we lost her

Last night a little after 9 pm we lost her.

She put up a valiant fight against this horrible thing we call Alzheimer's. Of course, we knew who would win from the beginning, we did not know the time schedule.

I had not planned to be there at the end. But in late afternoon I decided to stay very late, maybe close to midnight if necessary. Daughter 1 was there with me and together we saw it happen.

The day before I could say: "Miriam I love you." She would answer in grunts. I could read what she was saying, we had a decent conversation. Yesterday there was no response at all.

Her breathing was labored, but she kept going. I went out of the room to call a friend and when I returned Daughter said; "mom is not breathing the same." I went to find the Aid who was in charge. She put her ear against miriam's chest and then went to get a stethoscope. When she came back and listened she just said: "She is gone."

The Aid, who is a wonderful woman who has seen and experienced much cried with us as we put the last details together.

We stayed until the funeral home people came and picked up her body.

This part is over and I am glad. Miriam did not need to suffer more, but now I am really alone and that grief will take a bit longer.

"I loved you Miriam. You were the light of my day and night."

sack cloth

Miriam is still with us.

When I get up close and tell her I love her, she grunts two or three grunts and I know she understood and replied to my statement. We have had some fairly good conversations that way.

She can not eat nor swallow, but her heart is strong. The schedule is hers, but she is not getting better, and we will lose her.

Today I began another mourning stage; I had my hair cut very short and I shaved off my mustache and beard.  In some cultures the man cuts off his hair to demonstrate his mourning.

The Big Book talks about putting on sack cloth and ashes. This is my version.

not tonight, most likely

When asked, the nurse said that the odds were that Miriam would not die tonight.

There is a degree of comfort there, but her struggle with this damned disease is about over. She won't make it to Christmas most likely.

A week from Sunday the family is gathering here for a "Mom Celebration." Whether Miriam will be alive is doubtful, but it is the family getting together to remember this dear person.

My emotions are all over the place. I am not sure of much of anything. When the Nursing Home requested that we make arrangements with the funeral home for the remains, it hit pretty hard that they, the professionals in this stuff, know our time is limited.

So we signed papers and made plans and now we sit and wait. I spent several hours with Miriam today, Daughter Arline spent more. Tomorrow we'll do it again.

She has been a wonderful person, a great wife and a sterling mother and grandmother. She is loved and cherished.

Once I gave her a note: "If Love were fattening, you would weigh a ton." She was loved and she loved in return.

It's OK to sleep my precious.

With my brother Ben and sister Joyce. 

Joyce and I have both parents in common, but our father was killed a few months after Joyce was born. We all have the same mother.

The graves are of our parents on the right (Thatcher) and our maternal grandparents (Wilson) on the left.

I've posted this picture before.
Josh is now a Junior at the University of Southern California. I am exceedingly proud of him. I had  Thanksgiving dinner with Josh and his family. It was good.
Miriam was such a beautiful grandmother!

update

I am in Portland now with daughter 4.

A week  and a half ago I was in SanFrancisco and then LosAngeles with daughter 3. It was a week trip that we had planned a long time ago. 

Last weekend i spent many hours with Miriam. Not pleasant hours to be sure, but a good bit of time.

Since I saw her last she has forgotten how to feed herself. She will eat whatever is put into her mouth, and she swallows good. 

When I was with her she spend most of time slumped over in what seems like a coma. Her eyes were often open a bit. She looks like she is sleeping, and she sleeps a good bit of the time, but sometimes she looks asleep but she is not. In the 10 to 12 hours I spent with her she rallied enough to talk to me a little. She said she loved me. I told her I loved her and that we had had a great life together. She agreed, then put her head down and went out again. That happened two times. 

Sometimes those few seconds are all we have to live for. They are pretty precious. Mostly she does not talk, and when she does it is very quiet and impossible to understand, but her words make no sense either. 

I am told she will soon forget how to swallow. That is about the end. We absolutely will not have a feeding tube put in, there will be no major effort to keep her alive. Keep her comfortable and out of pain and let her go.

That is as hard to write as it is to live.