Breathe

Breathe, breathe in the air
Dont be afraid to care
Leave but dont leave me
Look around and chose your own ground
For long you live and high you fly
And smiles youll give and tears youll cry
And all you touch and all you see
Is all your life will ever be

Run, rabbit, run
Dig that hole, forget the sun,
And when at last the work is done
Dont sit down, its time to dig another one
For long you live and high you fly
But only if you ride the tide
And balanced on the biggest wave
You race toward an early grave.

It is almost impossible for me to know what to say. On the one hand, everything from last week is fading like a bad dream. My sister in law, is gone, and nothing will change that. My son asked one day in the middle of everything why we weren’t crying. I said “you can’t cry all the time.” And you can’t.

I don’t want to make it seem like this was my best and closest friend that passed, because we weren’t really that close. But we had been through a lot over the years. She was my wife’s oldest sister; when Sue was in nursing school my wife would stay up and help her study. Guess what? My wife teaches anatomy now. Twelve years ago, Sue was in a locked battle with her inner demons, with depression. Something I know a taste of now. We helped her past some rough patches, she’s helped us along the way. We’ve watched her son grow up, we were the photographers at her wedding.

Through everything, my kids have been wonderful. They ask questions, they need assurance. They fought sometimes, but that’s what kids do.

I don’t feel normal right now. I should, but I don’t. We’re getting back into our work and school routines, after two weeks of wondering and waiting and finally knowing and grieving. I’m starting a list of instructions for my siblings and/or kids to follow when I finally go. Things like “it’s ok to wear jeans to the funeral if that’s all you have with you, I understand.” Also, it’s ok to laugh, even while it still hurts. It’s what we do. I’ve thought of blog entries, and I’ve forgotten blog entries. I’ve seen news that makes me want to scream, but not badly enough to actually sit and write a post about it.

Finally, and I can’t say this strongly enough, thank you all for your comments and support over the past many days. Most, okay, all of you I’ve never met in person. Yet I feel a kinship and a closeness that I don’t even get from folks I see frequently in real life. Is it all imagined? Maybe. But to me, the cyber hugs and blessings and warm thoughts are just as real as they can be. It means the world to me to know so many of you are thinking about us.

“Love you guys”

Sorry, I’ve been away.

These are the last words my sister in law spoke. Just before they sedated her so the respirator could do it’s job more effectively. She knew there was a risk, as with any procedure.

She went to the hospital with what looked like an asthma attack and was sent home shortly after. A week later, she went back, having trouble breathing – the doctor’s thought bronchitis. She was treated, and when we went to visit, she was happy and ready to be sent home “in a couple of days.”

In the middle of the night, two days later, she had an extremely difficult time breathing, and the hospital could not get her oxygen up to where it needed to be. A couple days later a relative called and told us to get there quick. By the time we arrived she had been heavily sedated, and the working diagnosis was a staph infection in her lungs that probably developed after she arrived at the hospital. Not that we’ll know.

Not that it matters.

On Monday, a couple hours after I wrote the last entry, she passed. Unable to draw another breath. Unable to regulate her heartbeat, and with a myriad of complications arising from these two simple task that I take for granted every minute of every day.

She was two months shy of her fifty-fourth birthday, and had smoked for almost forty years. She had quit smoking three days before being admitted to the hospital, because she was scheduled for a stress test that her doctor wanted to give her.

She was, among other things, a mom, a sister, a nurse, a daughter, and a friend.

And now she’s gone.

I’ll be back. Don’t know exactly when.

Love you guys.