Tough Times Don't Last, Tough People Do

I was watching a tv show and this quote was used many times. After it was said about the fifth time, it hit me. That is so true. I’m going to share my “tough time” experience in a way I’ve never shared before. It’s a little scary for me to really “open” up to my real thoughts and feelings, but here goes. My tough times began in January 1996. Charles and I had moved to the mountain and lived in a rental house a mile from where we were building our new house. It was extremely cold that winter and we had many problems in the rental house. In the front part of the house were most of our belongings in boxes. I believe we were into every box before we ever left that house. The house was very old and the roof leaked—right into several of our boxes. Our water pipes froze, the electrical was so outdated and almost everything caused the power to go off. We had problems getting people to our new property to do the work. Charles was subcontracting the work out. He would go to the property and wait for hours for someone to show up and he was out in the brutally cold. He got sick and the doctor was treating him for the flu. He wasn’t getting any better and they determined it could not be the flu. It took a long time before we knew that it was really his heart. I couldn’t work anymore and all of a sudden we were in a dilemma. We had a house partially done, living in rent, most of my boxed possessions ruined by water, and I thought what am I going to do? Because I couldn’t work, I put everything on credit cards and accumulated a massive debt that I didn’t know how I could pay off. During this year of 1996 the doctors had agreed that if Charles didn’t get an emergency heart transplant that he would not live to see Christmas 1996. I won’t go into the details of all that here, but he recovered without the heart transplant. I’m not saying that he was totally healthy again because he wasn’t. He lived another 14 years with his heart only operating at 25 percent and that isn’t even what killed him—cancer did. Needless to say, he got better enough to finish our house—the upper level—just enough for us to move in. We stored everything else in the basement until the garage could be built. It was a wonderful feeling that we moved in, but I actually hated this house. At first it reminded me of everything bad that had started to happen to us because Charles was never the same healthy person he had been. There is something about someone being really sick, you have to accept that the sickness is there. Charles always told me that in life you don’t have “problems”, they are “challenges” and with each challenge we look at it and see if it is something we can solve or if not, how we will deal with it. Changing that one word has meant a lot to me. Well, when Charles lived and we moved into this house I had a new problem—we were in debt. If he had died, the insurance money would have saved me, but instead I had to tell him. That’s another story too, but I can say that this “challenge” brought us together even more. I am an only child and as my parents got older, they became more dependent on me. I worked really hard and I also had my husband, mother, and dad depend on me to get them to their doctor appointments. I guess it was the year around 2005 or so that things really got bad. One Sunday morning my mother woke up with her left eye closed. We really didn’t think so much about it, but I took her to the emergency room and we spent the day there. Her problems started that day. It just seemed that each day got worse for her. I took her to a retina specialist once a month to get a shot in her eyeball because she had macular degeneration. When they got that under control after 18 months, she had the cataract on that eye removed. During this time, she couldn’t drive anymore because she couldn’t see very well. After this surgery, she had a large stroke and it threw her into Alzheimers/dementia. She had had this all the time, but we all made excuses—she’s getting old, she’s forgets, etc. My mother had always been a person that took care of herself, everything matched, her hair just so, and all of a sudden she would put on something dirty, she couldn’t find her purse, she didn’t comb her hair, she didn’t wash her body. But, we all found excuses. My dad had already been diagnosed with Parkinsons and Charles had just finished 45 radiation treatments and 9 chemo treatments. He had an anaphylactic reaction to the first chemo. He almost died. When they found him, he was already in shock, fingernails turned blue, and his eyes had rolled back into his head. When I got there he was still in shock. Nobody told me what was going on and then the parametics showed up. I walked behind them as they took him to the emergency room and I called my daughter crying. I told her that I didn’t know what was going on and I needed her. She left her job and got there in just a few minutes. Well, after that I stayed with him when he took the chemo treatments. For 9 Fridays I spent the entire day with him while he took chemo. I don’t regret a minute of it. I had just started a new job, I was the Managing Broker at our new real estate office. I had never done that before so I was learning everything. Going to my new office became my sanctuary. When I first moved into there, I thought an office with no windows would drive me insane, but it didn’t. I needed that solitude just for me. Things just continually got worse and my mother had to go to a nursing home until I could figure out what to do. In the meantime my dad was living alone and I found him on the floor a couple of times. The second time I had him sent to the hospital. My dad became very angry with me and blamed everything on me. My dad had never raised his voice to me in my life and all of a sudden I was a smart alec know it all. I cried over my mother, the changes she was going through. I think the hardest thing was when they told me she would strip naked and go out of her room and they found her in the dining room eating and she was naked. Charles helped me as long as he could and then we got the news, the cancer had returned but this time in his chest. He didn’t want to go through radiation or chemo again—only pain management and we knew that he would really die. I’ve said a lot of this to say this—I became very bitter at the things that were happening. I resented that all of a sudden I had no life. I couldn’t plan to do anything. There were some weeks that each day I was in a doctor’s office, or the emergency room with one of the three. I thought back to my mother at the same age I was when they all got sick, she was having the time of her life, and look at me, I have no life. I was bitter, angry, and resented the entire thing. I don’t know when my attitude changed, but it did. I grew accustomed to my new duties in life and added responsibilities. I felt like it would be that way forever, but it wasn’t. I got used to hospice, the nurses, assisted living, even my dad grumbling and arguing with me about everything. I was the new decision maker for the three people closest to me. I don’t think anyone can even comprehend what that is like. For me, I don’t really remember. I just did what I had to do. I took one day at a time. When our office closed, I came home and stayed. I didn’t work at all. I am glad that I spent the last months of Charles’ life totally here with him. I had never watched anyone die before. He was a wonderful patient. He woke up every morning and the first thing he said was, “Damn, I woke up alive again.” He was so ready to die. He had lived on drinking Ensure and just being able to eat some soup for the past three years. Yes, it was difficult watching each one of them die. In the beginning I hated it, I resented it, I felt sorry for myself. Why me? Why was all of this happening to me? Now that they are all gone, I ask myself, Why not me? I could do it. God gave me the strength and the knowledge to take care of them. I even spent hours and hours over at the VA center trying to get VA benefits for my dad and mother. My dad told me I couldn’t do it and I told him, watch me. I did get them benefits and I’m so thankful for the hours I spent because I was able to take care of them properly. I went through a period of hating my dad. I just wanted him to drop dead and I even thought I could hurry it up. I talked to a minister about it. He asked me a bunch of questions, like, are you still taking care of him, taking him his medicine, taking care of his clothes, etc? I said of course. He told me that the Bible verse says “honor” your father and mother and what I was doing was honor. He said the Bible verse does not say you have to love them or even like them. He gave peace to me that day. I can say that I did not hate my dad anymore by the time he died. After my mother died, he became the dad I had always known. I’ve touched on some of my feelings about tough times. I don’t know if I’m really a “tough” person or not, but I do know that tough times don’t last. I know that material things don’t mean that much to me anymore. I know that I value the friendships I have. And I love my family. Don’t get so busy that you don’t have time for the things that really mean the most to you. Remember, tough times don’t last. DR 1/8/13