Soldiering On

 It has been fifteen months since my husband's co-workers found him face down on the print shop floor, not breathing and with no pulse. His boss started CPR and kept it up until the paramedics arrived. Tommy was in the MICU at Baptist Hospital for three weeks with a tube down his throat and hooked up to a wall of machines. That is called "life support" but I don't think he was alive. The machines kept some of his organs functioning but not the ones he needed to recover -- brain and heart.

So I have been a widow for a year and three months. At first, the grief was just unbearable. Frankly, I don't know how I survived it, except for the mercy of God and Tommy's friend, Lisa. He was her best friend and his passing and his absence left a big hole in her life, too.

Many people were praying for me and Tommy through his sickness and afterward. People told me eventually my life would return to some semblance of normal, though you never completely get over it.

I lost my older sister to Covid three months later. My parents have been gone since the early 2000s. Tommy and I had no children, so no grandchildren. His family is in north Louisiana and mine is ... gone. My nephews -- my sister's three boys -- are keeping in touch with me; they live across the bay in the next county. The oldest has been a great help to me, making Tommy's truck accessible to me, installing a running board step and a hand hold inside and doing other things for me. Tommy had life insurance on the truck loan so I let my car go and the F150 is my paid-for transportation now.

 I have learned to pay bills and keep myself and our cats fed (yes, they're still ours, Tommy's and mine).  I have made it through the last 15 months with some sanity because I cannot let myself think of him. Memories flit in and out of my head, and sometimes I dream about him but I cannot purposely sit and remember. If I do that, I fear I will lose my sanity. 

And the music -- no way. I cannot listen to his music -- the Eagles, especially. I cannot listen to our music. It doesn't even have to be his or ours to crumple me -- popular rock and roll was the soundtrack of our life together. Sweet Melissa, Two Tickets to Paradise -- these and others have reduced me to blubbering, and they weren't even our special songs. I don't know if I will ever be able to listen to Desperado... 

There is so much more I could say here, but I really don't want to.

At first I didn't think I would ever feel like writing again, But the urge has been coming back lately so I've reacquainted myself with my website and blog. I'm reading up on promotion and marketing (I never did any of that, which likely explains why I've made enough royalties to buy a Happy Meal). I want to try something different; not just family stories and romantic suspense, but science fiction, intrigue, mysteries...  We'll see  how it goes.