kvetching up

I was so exhausted last night, as I seem to be every day now. That whole, "It's marathon not a sprint" expression is true, but only half so. It's a marathon all right. But I am sprinting all the way through, at least it feels that way. I was so tired, I barely described what was a remarkable meeting with our friend, a therapist yesterday, whose h usband died in 2020 from PDAC.  Imagine sitting with a friend who just went through almost the same trauma you went through. She is spilling her guts about the disease. She is telling Jenny that she is dying, that she knew there was a turn when Jenny got her stent. She is telling stories about her husband's final days. She is sitting two or three feet from Jenny Willow always makes things better . on the ottoman, her legs crossed, Willow constantly jumping on her lap. Jenny is perfectly positioned in the corner of the sectional, playing with the remnants of her childhood blankey (caressing her blankey is a habit that she...

 

Entry 1 Woke up at 1.  Almost 3 now.  Can't sleep.  Looked at her CA 19-9 results.     37746.0

We went to a funeral today for the mother of the husband of Jenny's best friend Amy.  It was a sweet ceremony.  The attendees sang " It Is Well With My Soul ," a favorite protestant hymn of this atheist.  Penned in 1873 by a Chicago lawyer who first lost his wealth in the Great Chicago Fire, then his four year old son, then his four daughters on a ship that sank in the Atlantic.  He was inspired and wrote the lyrics as he neared the place the ship sank that took his girls' lives.  It puts things in perspective.  I may need to stop kvetching.  If only I had faith in something. I may be wrong, but it felt entirely like Mark, Amy's husband, was utterly rude to me when we interacted. I suspect Jenny's lies to Amy have changed the way he feels about me. We had always been warm and friendly toward one another.  Jenny went to the funeral without covering her head.  She is so brave.  I want that fortitude.   Looked at some homes last n...

"What The Actual Fuck?" Entry 1     10:06 a.m. I reached out to the care team over the weekend via email, given Jenny's current state of pain.  I want to stress, before I describe the latest event, that this suffering is happening to all of us, not just Jenny.  She is experiencing horrible pain and lethargy.  The kids and I are dealing with our inability to help, standing by helplessly watching as she doubles over in pain, crawls on all fours, begs for death.  Her lethargy makes it hard to plan anything. So, at 10 AM, the nurse from the palliative care team calls in response to my e-mail.  They would like to see Jenny, they tell me.  I go to Jenny, who is just out of the shower and toweling off, and tell her they would like to see her at 12:30 or 1:30.  She, annoyed with me says, "I didn't know they were calling. " I remind her of the email I sent, and that she read.  She told me she has scrabble with friends today and can't go....

  And then the other shoe drops.  .  . Jenny went to Jennifer Murray's after therapy ended at 1:30.  Murray had another friend over, someone else with stage iv cancer.  When she arrived home, she was, not surprisingly given how the day has been going, morose.  She rushed to her bedroom and threw herself on her bed, sobbing.  Not unusual.  Happens weekly.  I have no answer to this.  I do my best to first give her distance, and then give her comfort.  I followed that pattern.     Prone on the bed, she tells me she wishes she were dead now.  What is the point, she asks. "I am just going to die anyway."  She then begins a list of lamentations, of which I am not unfamiliar.  She is completely overwrought as she lists them: She is going to die; there is no point; she gets no affection.  She sleeps in the bed alone.  Exeunt Geoff, who retreats back to the couch. Glum I begin entering the above, and h...

“And some things that I want to say Aren't survivable Or advisable Like, "Happy Birthday heroin But God, how I loved you And how I still do." -Lucy Wainwright Roche  The Ever Burgeoning Day Its Wednesday.  I want to remember these good times, from back in July 2009, in our family home.  By now things were a struggle.  Leiney was well older here than when she suggested to my mom that Jenny and I get a peace table like she used at Giddens.  Still, this was clearly a happy day.  I have to say, I wake up every day with a growing sense of doom.  I know that in a month, six months, a year or more, the foundations of this family will be shaken.  What we are experiencing now is like living in a house full of gnats.  We will be living in the center of a hornet's nest soon enough.  I would like to think that life is a farce.  But, that is true only insofar as much as The Joker is a farce. There is nothing funny or humorous about losin...

Jenny text from Dec 9, 2020. Angry with me because I won't accept that she is seeing  Eric el pinché motherfucker.  She had driven off under on the influence of Xanax, THC AND Rick Simpson oil.  She eventually came home.