Journal entry for March 30, 2018

I can make myself cry 20 times a day. I can't make myself laugh even once.

It has been since March 15, 7:44 AM that Boopie, Sharon, my wife, died. I can never forget those horrible last days, hours, minutes. I held her hand and watched her slip away. I watched her struggle to breathe, and I watched her struggle less and less. I can't forget her lifeless face when it was done. Just empty.

Even when she was sick, she was alive. She was a radiant human being with energy and feelings and opinions, hopes, thoughts, likes and dislikes. I can never forget all those things. The bad parts, the anger with what was her situation has passed like a bad dream. Now all that's left is sadness and sentimentality.

Everything is connected to her. Only everything. I felt angry when she was alive. Angry that she stole my identity or freedom. My hopes for a carefree life. Now I don't know who I am anymore, without her to care for, to shop for, to complain to, to bounce my stupid ideas off of.

I can only feel sadness and regret. It only takes a thought of anything that ties itself to her, and the next thought is: "and she is not here, she's really gone and is never coming back."

One of the last things that she said, maybe a couple of weeks before she got really sick was, "Let's smoke a lot of weed and listen to music and just laugh." 

I told her, "Oh, honey, I miss those days, too." It made her cry.

A lot of things I said could have made her cry, but she rarely did. She would cry at the drop of a hat over some animal story on TV or a silly commercial or Disney movie. If it had animals, she'd be bawling. I never understood how she could seem so indifferent to her own situation and then get so emotional over some sappy moment in a movie.

I only get that way now with every single thing that I see, because it all relates, in some way, to her.

The horses are back today, grazing the new grown grass. The horses she could barely ever see, the grass that she had me photograph because she hadn't been outside for years.

It's time to do some planting. Tomato plants, like she had me do last year, which she was so happy to hear about and to get to eat from occasionally.

If I open the freezer there's the food that I made or bought for her. I think, "The food lasted longer than she did." If I clean up a mess or mow the lawn it's like, "This was done last when she was still alive."

I'm going through her old emails, deleting the spam and the old bills, not reading everything, but watching writing abilities go from worse to better as I get to the older emails. I'm seeing birthday wishes from Hannelore go year by year. There was a lot of pain and sadness back then, too. I can't process it all.

I have a lifetime of things accumulated in this house, all of them tied directly or indirectly to her. I can only make it through the day if I don't even think about all of them. Maybe pick one or two things a day, make a small effort and try to pass the time. I'm trying to not be to inactive because I am feeling the effects of not working, and now not having any real thing to focus on.

I thought I would live for this day, this so-called freedom to reclaim "my identity," but my soul has had a hole in it for years. Most of it has leaked out a long time ago. What is left of the person I became, the caregiver, sufferer of woes?

I can't think of anything that even seems the least bit like it's going to make a difference. Why do this vs. that? Anything vs. nothing? I guess I don't want to make myself any worse off than I already am, so I keep up a minimal routine of eating, exercise and chores. But who am I kidding?

If I could lay down and sleep for a month, I would. Or even longer. I have the cats and dogs to think about. And who will inherit this place when I'm gone too? I know it will happen eventually, but now with Sharon gone, it seems so much closer. And I don't mind.

I just don't want to suffer the long process of deterioration. I could never endure what she did. God, how did she stay alive so long in such a condition? And do it with so little complaining?

I complain even when there's nothing wrong. I just find something and make it the focus of my attention until I can't even see the beautiful sunny day, the green grass or the horses, just the "problem." She could barely talk, eat or move, but when she felt a breeze on her skin, she managed to tell me, "That feels nice." If I grow to be half as gracious a human being as that, I will consider it a win.

I think about her every day, but am I being selfish and self-indulgent in crying about every little thing? She'd probably say that I was. That I need to get to doing something productive and stop with all the moping. But you can't clean up from the flood until the rains are over. And it's still pouring.