synergy

After a Break

I've been gone for a while from here. Last week, I went to visit my mother and help her deal with accumulation of old stuff from the family house. When my parents divorced and the house was sold, everything was put into boxes with no attention paid as to whether it ought to be saved or not.

I realized that I am incapable of carrying on a conversation without talking about K at some point. The illnesses are this omnipresent feature in my life. I'm tempted to compare it to a black cloud, but that isn't accurate. More like a shadow following me. Maybe someday it will recede, but it hasn't yet. My family and friends have fortunately shown no impatience with my need to constantly talk about the past year and a half. I'm sick of talking about it, but . . . I can't help it.

A point of closure was reached in the past few days. Prior to K's heart attack, we had begun to redo the living room. I was stripping the woodwork of over a century of paint, which appeared to be permanently attached to the wood. Stripping sucks. The rest of the woodwork is going to be replaced by custom cut replica wood instead of being stripped. And K was painting. All work stopped when she had her heart attack.

The living room has been an eyesore for 18 months! 90% painted, woodwork bare to the elements, but we could not manage to find the energy to finish it. (And this isn't even the worst.) The dining room looks as if the paint cans exploded in it. We've put over 10 colors on the wall to pick one out and still have more to put up and haven't made any decision.

Regardless. . . the living room has been finished. I came in on Sunday and it was within minutes of completion. We gave up and hired a friend to finish the painting and it looks great! It is also an emotional closure to one of the undone tasks, left from the heart attack.

K continues to be stable. She's suffering from some sort of infection so on Tuesday, we went to the urgent care. Initially, doctors never quite know what to do with the two of us. K's memory remains spotty enough, so I have to remember her medical history for the past twelve months. He handled it well, but I think he was disconcerted that I provided the information. Unfortunately, he wasn't able to solve her problem, so she's off to the vampires to have blood drawn for analysis.

Today she's at the office, despite her fears regarding the increase in the terror alert. Those increases don't help. But she's learning to control her fear and not respond to the ups and downs.

posted by synergy @ 10:08 AM