Tag: glioblastoma

This morning I am exhausted….and maybe a titch hungover…but I’m grinning ear to ear as I’m sipping coffee out of my new red Santa mug.

My Baby Girl is on her way home from school this morning. She made a point to leave early enough to be home in time to go out to Saturday breakfast with the boys and I. We all love our new Saturday breakfast tradition. Once she is here I think she’ll help me get a little more Christmas spirit going in the house.

Last night my grief counseling group met for a Christmas party at my friend Terri’s house. Oh my goodness! It was so much fun! It was almost 3am when I got home. In a lot of ways we are the oddest mix of women. And it’s so strange to me how quickly we have become so close…and also that I have all of these really good friends that Jason has never met…yet he was the one that brought us together. We just all take emotions as they come. We laugh. We cry. We listen to each others stories and get to know each other’s loved ones through them. We all understand the need to talk about our people…to keep them alive through memories and stories….to say their names often.

I have a lot of hope for a good day today.

Tonight I went to the Empty Chair service at River Valley Church. It is a special service that they have for people who are missing someone this Holiday season. Jeremy and Cheryl were there as well and I think the three of us would all agree that it was a very worthwhile experience. It was moving. It was touching. It was healing. I’m already planning on going again next year. I sobbed like I haven’t sobbed since Aug 4th at 8:22am…but I felt like I was surrounded by love…and like it was a cry that was a long time coming.

A few things that the pastor said that stuck with me…grief is the result of losing great love…there is a time for grief…grief cannot be rushed…grief will come and go…people who have not experience grief cannot understand it. Many of those things I already knew or had experienced, but it was very validating hearing him say it.

The next few days will be busy! Tomorrow night I am going to a Christmas party with my grief counseling group. I am looking forward to that so much! I haven’t seen the majority of the ladies in person for months since all of our meetings are over Zoom. I really am looking forward to it. Hugs…tears…laughs…it will be great.

Saturday Anna is coming home! I can’t wait to squeeze that girl!!!

Well, it’s official. Seth was accepted to North Central Technical College in Wausau, WI and will be pursuing his Associate’s Degree in Software Development. His first day of class will be Jan. 24th. We’ll move him to Wausau the weekend of Jan 15/16.

This feels so much harder on me than it did when Anna started her Freshmen year in Aug. 2020. A lot of it has to do with Jason being gone now, but it is also just a difference in kids I think. Seth is my Peter Pan kid. The one who I know would be perfectly happy living in my basement and not growing up. He’s the quiet one. The sensitive one who feels so deeply and holds his cards so close to his chest. The one I worry about.

He is also the one that worries about me. Who says to me point blank, “But Mom what will you do when I leave? Will you be okay? Who is going to help you get Levi where he needs to go?” I just tell him how proud his Dad would be of him right now and how proud of him I am…even if I am sad…and that he needs to spread his wings and not worry about me. I can tell he’s excited and that makes me happy.

Feeling frustrated, defeated, vulnerable, sad tonight. I’m trying to do all the right things…getting things put in my name, etc…and it is hard. It’s emotionally draining….and I’m finding that some companies really don’t seem to give a shit about you and will do everything they can to make the process harder. I don’t have the energy for that. It makes me feel vulnerable and stupid…and angry that a company would take advantage of someone in my position.

People keep telling me I’m so strong. I don’t feel that way tonight….but I guess I’ll get up tomorrow…do all the things again…find some time to make more phone calls. It’s not like I have much of a choice.

I had a good day today. Sometimes when I have a good day it is hard not to feel guilty about it. How could I possibly have a good day without Jason? But, you know what? He wants me to be happy. You know how I know that? Because he is constantly still taking care of the kids and I. I feel that very strongly. He puts people in my path at just the right times. I get texts from people with the exact words I need to hear. I feel like I can’t go on and 5 minutes later someone is there to give me hug. I cry myself to sleep and than have a dream about him. It’s happened way too often in the last 4 months to be coincidental. My sad moments still completely outnumber the happy ones…but if I can have one good day that means there’s hope for more…right?

My good day started out with breakfast with my friend Vicki. Our Sunday morning schedules hadn’t meshed for a few weeks so we had a lot to catch up on. It was great and so relaxing. Levi and I went out shopping this afternoon. The stores/parking lots were a little crazy, but I managed…and had a good time hanging out with him. I went for a walk with my friend Jen this afternoon…hadn’t seen her for awhile either, so another fun catch-up. Then I stopped at Caribou to grab coffee and ran into a friend I haven’t seen in months…and that was the icing on my good day…even better than the coffee! Throw in some texts and phone calls with friends and my day was really good! I even managed to go through some more stuff in our bedroom and go through a box of outerwear. Packed some more bags of long out-grown caps, gloves, mittens, and coats.

Today I decided to pack up what’s left of Jason’s clothes after having the the awesome quilt made out of his shirts and putting aside a few other things. One of my friends has connections to a homeless shelter for men that is always looking for clothes, especially in winter, and I like the idea of them going to people that can really use them. They aren’t doing anyone any good sitting in drawers in our house. I packed up five bags of clothes!

Then I started going through other things in our bedroom. His nightstand, piles and piles of papers, lots of “stuff”. That was harder than the clothes for me. Jason always had a little bottle of lotion and chapstick in his pocket. I never had chapstick and was forever asking him for his. Those were on his nightstand….along with a bottle of Tums…which he popped like candy at night.

One drawer of his nightstand is full of all the cards the kids and I ever gave him. Right on top of that drawer was an anniversary card that he had gotten for me at some point and had never given to me. I wonder when he got it? He passed away a few weeks before our 21st anniversary and I don’t think he remembered our anniversary was coming up and wouldn’t have been able to get out and buy a card by himself. Unfortunately, he hadn’t written anything in the card. It was still in the bag from the store. It hit me hard though.

Jason is a packrat with other things too. I found lots of papers from when we volunteered with Cub Scouts…must have been 4ish years ago. Lots of papers from various tennis he helped with. I went through a box of personal things he had in his desk at Boston Scientific….pictures of the kids and I…pictures the kids drew him.

It felt good to see some progress made this afternoon. Our bedroom floor was getting so covered in piles of papers and “stuff” I could barely walk in it. It is far from “done”, but it looks and feels a lot better. Of course, it also made me very, very sad. Every time I get rid of something of his…no matter how small or “worthless”…it is just another reminder of him not coming back ever again.

The boys and I went to Jeremy and Cheryl’s for dinner and to hang out this evening. It was really nice to be there. I was having a bit of a hard time picking myself up from the sadness of the afternoon, but it was relaxing and we had fun playing cards together. My mama heart loves to see my boys smiling and laughing…and I always feel like Jason is smiling down on us extra big when we’re with his family.

Writing is hard tonight. Too much crying…everything’s blurry. I was actually having an okay day today. Then after dinner I was talking to Seth about his plans for next year. That turned into him talking to my brother-in-law and applying to the tech school in Wausau for SPRING semester…as in he would start at the end of January. After he went downstairs the tears came. I am so proud of him and want him to be happy and spread his freaking wings…but damn…it will be so hard on me when he moves out. A 5 person household down to just 2 in less than 6 months…makes my heart hurt…so much. It is absolutely the best thing for him though. He did of course have to check and make sure there is an indoor tennis option in Wausau…there is.

Then Anna called. I don’t even remember why and I told her about Seth applying to school and of course got teary again. And she’s great and telling me she’ll be home in just a couple weeks. And then we start talking about Christmas…which is just going to be lowkey at home for us this year…and I say something about not buying slippers this year. Jason got slippers for Christmas so many years in a row I don’t even know. It was always what he wanted and he just loved the comfort of a new pair of slippers. And then I’m just crying on the phone. Which I hate because I want her to think I’m fine while she’s at school….but damn.

Everything feels hard. I’m tired of being “strong”…keeping all the shit together…things changing right from under me constantly. I just want my husband back. Ree and Jas together were an awesome team that could handle anything life threw at us. Now I’m just Marie and I suck at this shit….and every fiber of me just misses him so bad.

One of my very favorite ladies was at work today. She is a spunky older lady that comes in once a week for a tennis lesson and is always redecorating something in her house. Today she brought in some wallpaper to show that she was using in her bathrooms. I decided that I’m just going to fill the walls of my house with words. That way when people come over they will be so busy reading my house they won’t even notice that I don’t dust…ha!

There will be lots of poetry…ee cummings, Sylvia Plath, Emily Dickinson, Pablo Neruda, Walt Whitman, Shakespeare. Song lyrics will also be plentiful from artists like Ed Sheeran, Andy Grammar, Aerosmith, Imagine Dragons, Maroon 5, Snow Patrol, Keith Urban, Garth Brooks, Ben Platt. And of course book quotes…”Alice in Wonderland” for sure, the Harry Potter series, Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, the Bronte sisters, AA Milne

I feel like it would be comforting to be surrounded by all those words. All those poets, artists, authors that in some way are like me. That feel like me. Maybe then I would feel less alone. Of course, it would also give visitors a very scary look inside my head…might lead to short visits!

We got our first snow today in MN…so here’s a winter picture 🙂