Bill Is Fading

 

Bill sleeping today in his favorite chair in our sun room

Bill has been home for a day now. He was so tired last night as was I. We both slept the Sleep of the Dead last night. 

I had more errands to run today and as usual I took Bill along with me. He loves to go for rides with me. Today I took an extra long ride. Even staying a while in the car while we were parked in the Redner's parking lot to talk to Bill while we watched the traffic go by on Route 9. Oh how I appreciate this time we get to spend together. 

This morning we were actually able to take a shower. He's still very weak but was able to walk  into the shower while I supported him. And this morning when I changed his Depends, I am reminded why I was glad to convince him to wear Depends for the last year or so. We're back to accidents now but it's no big thing. As a good friend of mine said who was a caregiver for his very ill partner for a long time said "It's only shit" and indeed it is. Just clean it up.

Bill felt so much better after his shower. I am so thankful that he can still walk even though he is much weaker. He wants to walk and I think as the days go by he will regain some of his strength. Bill is and always was a very strong man physically. 

I had to do major wound dressing this morning on his right leg.  It's still swollen but not as bad as last Friday before I took him into the Urgent Care unit. The big blister has broken and clear liquid soaks through the dressing. I change it daily although the medical information says I should change it twice a day. I'll check it tomorrow and if it is getting better, like all the other times before, I'll continue to only change his dressing daily. Otherwise I change it twice a day which makes it more difficult because he wears jeans and I have to either take his pants off or try to roll up his pant leg which is hard to do because his leg is so swollen.

Even though my Bill is home now I notice some subtle changes. He sleeps most of the day. Thank God he knows who I am and is aware but he does sleep almost all of the time. And he's not eating as much. He used to go through a whole pack of lemon cookies but he hasn't touched them since he came home. And the other cookies that I make and buy for him, he hasn't touched at all. This time last year I had to make the Viennese Crescent shortbread cookies at least every week or less. This last batch I made several weeks ago is still in the cookie tin. He has lost his appetite for everything except his twice a day oatmeal ("which extra sugar" he always reminds me). 

He's peeing more often in a jar or one of those hospital pee jugs because he's too weak to go downstairs to his bathroom during the day. He does go down at night although last night he stayed quite a while in his chair in the sun room. Much longer than he usually does. Same thing tonight. He loves his setup in his downstairs bedroom but I sense he's avoiding the effort to go downstairs.  But once I reminded him he did. I check in on him several times during the night, when I get up for my own pee runs as is the case with us older guys (sometimes I get up as much as four times a night). 

Bill is fading folks. I think back to what he was like three years ago before his strokes and we started on this downward path. He was all over the place. Full of life, energy, opinions, and spunk. Even last year, once he started to recover from his strokes he had more energy than he does now. It's almost like he running on empty. He doesn't want to leave me, or leave me alone in the world. And truth be told, I don't want him to leave me. Today in the car when we were parked in the Redner's parking lot looking at the traffic on Rt. 9 go by, he told me again that if I went first he would end his own life. My God folks, I'm so thankful that I'm not sick because it would be unbearable for me to think I would leave Bill alone in the world. 

During our fifty-nine years together I guess most of that time we always assumed we would always be together even during and after my "forays" and even one "foray" Bill had with his friend Damon (strictly platonical) with the twelve kids and wife until Damon's wife found out and ended that friendship. She's probably reading this blog now and I don't care. She was very cruel to Bill doing what she did. Their kids loved Bill. And as I said the relationship was not physical but I committed the cardinal sin by being openly gay and in her conservative religious world I am damn. Do I care? Not for myself but for Bill because he was truly happy during those times he visited Damon. End of this train of thought, it's depressing me.

Back to Bill's slow fade, I can see it so clearly now. 

I know so many people who have suffered the loss of their longtime partner or spouse, the latest being my sister-in-law when my youngest brother died this past September. I talked to her on FaceTime the night before last. So sad. Several gay couples I know here in the Rehoboth Beach area, their spouses have recently died. The suffering they must have endured to lose their longtime partners. I sense my time is coming. I hope I can hold up as well as they seem to be doing. I don't know if I mentioned this before but it bears mentioning again, as my friend Ur-Spo told me in a recent text message:  "There is nothing to alleviate this sort of sorrow. It is the price we pay for loving someone."

I'll end this depressing post with what my friend Jon of Lone Wolf Concerto said in a comment on my recent blog post:

"Time doesn't heal all wounds, it only obscures them."

Time does heal physical wounds but not emotional wounds. 

I see it coming folks. And it scares the hell out of me.