So Far So Good

It is a typical weeknight and the house still has a quietness and more that lets me know a very wonderful part of this family is gone. A hole that cannot ever be replaced. Yet a strong lesson painfully learned is to love those around you. Do not take a second for granted. Despite the small things that cause people to get aggravated with one another, you have to ask yourself, "what if I were not able to see this person any longer?" It can really make the petty arguments and other things that we all get wrapped up in not matter that much.

Susie had been having trouble going up our stairs, which are straight up and not kind going up and down them. During the radiation treatments, Susie became a little feeble (thank goodness it was not permanent) and one day she fell down the stairs. We tried as quickly as we could to build a bedroom downstairs out of what kind of served as a game room in the past. So, as the room was just about completed, Susie moved all of her clothes and mine to the new closet. Sadly, the room got finished right about the time of Susie's last hospitalization. None of us knew just how fast this thing was happening... how little time was left. She only got two really good nights to sleep in her bed down here. It became too painful to get off the bed and back on, so she moved to the couch for the remaining days.

Anyway, my point of all of this was that of course after we lost Susie, I couldn't ask her little things. One of those little things was that she had moved every one of my ties and put them somewhere. With the funeral home and funeral and all that followed, I had to wear my suit and I tore this house up looking for one tie! Where on Earth did she put them? They had seemed to disappear. Thank goodness there was one tie that escaped and did not get included with the rest of them and that was the tie that I wore. I wanted to wear my Autism tie, but didn't get that opportunity. But it was as if I wished there were at least a phone line to heaven, where you could call your loved one and ask something totally as simple as, "by the way....where are my ties?" It took more than a month or more and there was a cardboard box in the bottom left corner of the new closet. It had been shut as if packing. I opened this box and inside was everyone of my ties. Maybe you can understand, but I sat down against the wall clutching this cardboard box full of ties and cried my eyes out.

Yet this post was meant to be about how this little family is still going. Both girls have been so good to their father. Maybe they can read me just as well as I can read them and they know how hard I want to be taking good care of them. How, despite my inability to posess that magic which Susie had with these girls, I still with a lot of help from family and friends have been able to keep it going. I know Susie was worried about that. Heck, I was worried about it! Scared so badly that it would all fall apart in my hands. But with that help I've been getting, my children are carrying on. It's not all perfect; in fact quite the opposite in that these two angels have lost their mother at such a young age. My dad lost his father when he was around 10 years old and it affected the rest of his life! So I know the same thing is happening right now, and time will bring challenges that I really wish these girls didn't have to face. But we are making it, and none of us were sure that we would or could! I'm very proud of that. It is hard work, but I do it with more passion than anything I've ever done. I cannot take Susie's place... noone can. But we are going to keep on. Its the most important thing in the world to me.

I just read about the Depression (I'm sure people are thinking..why don't you read something a little lighter?) Our economy right now is in a similar pattern and if you don't learn from the past, well you repeat it so I'm just trying to see parallel things from the thirties and right now. but they dedicate a lot of time to talking about President Roosevelt. He was a completely different person before he was hit with polio, causing paralysis of his legs. The book went into talking about how adversity toughened up this man, and that without that happening it is very likely that he wouldn't have been president AND he would not have the empathy that he learned for the plight of the average American hit hard by the depression. So it is the kind of stuff that makes you think. We in the end are a result of all the things that happen to us. Strange, isn't it? That some of the hardest things in your life make you who you are. If everything were always easy and you never felt pain, you would be completely different. It makes you think. Paul