A year ago this evening my kids and I were setting up to play Rock Band 4 when Margaret shouted for us to join her in the bedroom. We dropped our plastic instruments and ran to Karen's bedside. Within a minute Karen was gone, both kids were sobbing, Margaret was bawling, and I had thrown myself across Karen's still chest, hugging her close and crying.
I expect today will be less dramatic. But so far it has not been especially easier. I spent the better part of this morning alternating between staring at my computer screen and weeping. It's been a year. It still hurts but not as sharply. These days the pain is dull and aches.
But this week has been a challenge. Today loomed large all week and I essentially retreated to my big, empty house, hunkering down and feverishly trying to get work done in anticipation of being not especially motivated today. A considerate reprieve from work is the highlight of my day so far.
Late at night last October 21, I wondered a few things. What would I do without Karen? How could I make it a year when making it hour to hour was next to impossible? Where would I be in a year? Who would I be?
I can't answer all of it but I can answer some of it. I'm much more easily overwhelmed these days. I don't know if it's fallout from juggling about one million things over the years of Karen's illness but I really try to keep my life as minimal and undemanding as possible now. Thankfully, the pain of losing her is no longer constant but the missing of her, the yawning void in my life where she used to be, that challenges me every single day. I talk to her daily, addressing the empty seat in the car, the empty stool by the kitchen island, her end of the couch, the aching hole in my heart. It helps.
My house is a minefield of memories and virtually every day I am whipsawed one way and then the other. Here's the spot where the kids decorated Christmas cookies with their mother every year and over here is the spot where Karen fell that time near the end and screamed in agony and scared the living fuck out of all of us. The peaks and valleys are so extreme I feel like I have the bends and altitude sickness at the same time, lots of the time.
The last year has been one of dizzying change. Miranda has moved into an apartment with friends and is preparing to transfer to a new college and will likely be moving away late next summer. Dash has moved out as well. Unfortunately, he left under a cloud of tremendous anger and we haven't really heard much from him since. This change in particular hurts. It's hard for Miranda and I not to feel as if our family has been cruelly halved. We reach out in the hope that someday, hopefully soon, we'll start rebuilding bridges from both sides.
Early next year I'll be selling the house and moving into an apartment locally. I intend to spend the following year answering one question and that question is "What the fuck?" The last year has had a lot less downtime than I'd anticipated and I want a leisurely year to figure out where I'm living, where I'm going, what I'm doing. You know....what the fuck? Getting the house ready is a pain in the ass but I'm actually looking forward to the move and finding out just what I want out of the next few decades.
I know I've said it before but this is truly the final post here. I realize now that there is no real end to this chapter in our lives. It will go on forever I think, ebbing slowly but never vanishing. I deal with it by imagining how much pleasure Karen would take were she around to share everyday life with me. I imagine how proud she'd be of her kids. I sit in my chair in the living room and watch the memory of her get up from the couch and go into the kitchen for a snack. I hear her voice from the other room.
And when my throat tightens and my heart sinks I remind myself that the pain of missing her reflects how deeply she loved me and I her. I try to focus on that, on the love we had and the love I still have in my life, with my kids, with my tremendous friends.
That's what got me through the worst of everything over the last four years. I am banking on it getting me through the rest of everything (as in the rest of life itself) as well. It makes the days good and I want as many good days as I can get going forward.
I love you, Karen. We all miss you. Thinking of you is far more happy than sad no matter the tears. Thank you for everything.
A week ago today, Monday, March 28, was what would have been Karen's 54th birthday. For us three remaining Coffeys, the day loomed large well before it arrived. Although the 21st of any month cannot pass without us mentally calculating how long it's been since Karen died (5 months), for the most part we have been doing well. Like, really well, surprisingly so. But her birthday was intimidating and we weren't sure how to deal with it or what to do.
In the end, we opted to more or less follow family tradition which dictates that the honored person gets to have their current favorite meal prepared for them. In Karen's case, that's meant fried chicken, asparagus, and mashed potatoes and gravy for the last 20+ years. So in her honor, I made a huge platter of chicken and the kids and I stuffed ourselves silly the way she would have. It wasn't sad or maudlin or anything; rather, it was kind of great. We talked about her, shared stories, and speculated on just how many pieces of chicken she would have devoured.
That said, the earlier part of that Monday caught me totally off guard. Like I said, we've been doing pretty well, myself included. But that morning I woke up and found that somehow I had been dragged back through time a good four months or so. The grief of that time descended upon me full force and I wept that morning for the first time in months. The rest of the day was a dull, grey wash of aching loss that lifted right about the time I started prepping the chicken.
It was a hell of a start to a long week.
On Friday, the kids and I flew to San Diego and checked into a ridiculously overpriced two bedroom suite with ocean views at the Hotel Del Coronado. The trip was unremarkable except for the poor TSA guy who wanted to do an explosives check on the box in my backpack. I was held up on the other side of the body scanner waiting for a fresh agent to scan me and watched anxiously as the guy opening up my backpack recoiled from the box as if it were packed with armored radioactive cobras. Miranda had politely informed him that her mother's ashes were in that box and he needed to wait for me. Sorry, dude. At the hotel that night, we had room service, lounged in the hot tub on the balcony, and noted repeatedly how much Karen would have loved it.
But Karen had always loved Coronado. She loved the ocean, she met me there, she met her best friend there, she fell in love with theatre there. It was, she had told me, the happiest time and place in her memory because she felt as if her life really began when she lived there.
On Saturday, I strapped my backpack on and the kids and I headed to the old high school. I had reached out to a former classmate who had become a teacher there to let us onto the grounds. After a tour of the dramatically changed school, my friend excused herself and left us alone. While the theatre was new it rested on the same footprint as the one where we had met. We sprinkled some ashes around the stage and I left a light dusting by the seats where she and I first spoke to each other some 37 years ago. We left, found her old house, and sprinkled some ashes by the tree out front. I tossed a handful of ashes on the corner of 2nd and Orange where we met every morning before school.
Then we chilled at the hotel most of the day.
After a lovely dinner with my parents and after my dad drove us around North Island so the kids could see where I used to live, the three of us returned to the hotel and I strapped that backpack on once again. It was long since dark and while the night was moonless, the stars provided enough light for us to march across the sand to the ocean. I pulled the remains from my backpack and carefully opened the bag. The ashes were both chalky and gritty, with unnerving bits of bone mixed in. We each took handfuls and stood there, wondering what to do next.
Words seemed to be in order but unlike the memorial service, I'd prepared nothing. Instead, we winged it, the three of us noting that we were together, we were good, we were having fun, and she would have been delighted with all of that.
And with that we began the scattering, sidearming handfuls of ash into the ocean, backpedaling quickly to avoid getting our feet and shoes wet, tossing the ash into the receding edge of the waves inches away from our toes. Dash took two huge handfuls and charged into the surf, releasing Karen when he was chest-deep in the Pacific. The ocean didn't take it all at once and the unearthly whiteness of the cremains practically glowed in the starlight against the dark wet sand. The last several handfuls we placed in a pile and watched as successive waves took increasingly larger portions until nothing was left. I turned the bag inside out, shook it to release the ash clinging to it, and that was that.
This was Karen's final wish and, with the exception of the clueless group of seven tourists who decided to stop their stroll practically on top of us even though it was ridiculously apparent what we were doing and maybe a little elbow room might have been in order, well, with the exception of them it went the way I think she would have wanted it.
On Sunday we went to the zoo and had a great time remembering previous visits with Karen.
And today, Monday, we came home. And, man alive, was I sad about it.
It's startling how the sadness still manages to ambush me. I had expected the scattering to be hard but it really wasn't; on the contrary, I think we actually kind of enjoyed it and that's exactly what Karen would have wanted. But while packing up and leaving this morning I found myself awash in a melancholy that still hasn't fully dissipated.
The cause of it is simple: we left her behind. She's not only not here, she's over there now, hundreds of miles away. While the metaphysical separation is challenging to wrap your brain around, the physical one is cruelly obvious. It's weird how deeply I feel leaving her last physical remains behind because I have been totally non-fixated on them in any way. I have barely given them a thought--for five months now they've been in a bag in a box in another bag in a closet in a room in a corner of the house I rarely go. I have literally not thought of them for months at a time. But for some reason, leaving that behind in a place that I, at best, will rarely ever visit, bruised a part of my heart anew.
I imagine that time will find new ways to freshen what will one day be an old wound and we will need to accept that and keep soldiering on. I have a small bit of ash set aside for my trip to New York in May and I imagine that leaving that bit behind will pain me just as much. Or maybe more. It is literally the last of her. But I'm thinking that the fact that I will be returning there throughout the rest of my life and, ideally, as a bunch of ashes after that life has run its course, will give me some measure of peace since it means we will be reunited periodically until we are both wafting through the city air.
That's my hope, at least. It sounds right to me. So I'm banking on that and forging ahead in the meantime.
It's been three weeks since Karen left us and we still are ambushed daily by new ways we miss her. Just last night, I was filling in Miranda on Chris Isaak (we had heard a bad arrangement of Wicked Game) and I immediately wished Karen were around so she could launch into her rant about Mr. Pretty Boy whining about being lonely while surrounded by topless supermodels. It's the countless small things like that which upset our equilibrium multiple times a day. Bigger things--like the ongoing ordeal of cleaning out her closet and dresser--just smash me flat and leave me near-mute for hours.
Speaking of my voice...I think it's about time I shut up.
I started this blog three years ago to keep family and friends informed on the shifting state of Karen's health and our family's efforts to deal with it. While I've always done all the writing--usually without any sort of consultation with Karen--it was always my feeling that this blog represented both of our voices. With hers now silenced, it seems wrong to continue.
And frankly, that story has come to a close. I don't know what story lies ahead (I'm betting it's a protracted horror tale), but I know its place is not here. And probably not in another blog because I'm disinclined to write something I personally wouldn't bother to read.
And so, on behalf of myself, my kids, and Karen, I bid you all a fond farewell. I will never be able to adequately thank everyone who helped us endure the last three years. For everyone that pitched in on the Meal Train to all the folks that helped distract me with Words With Friends games to the poor souls that actually talked to my woebegone self on the phone periodically, I extend my deepest, most heartfelt thanks.
I hope that no one who has read this blog ever has to go through this.
I hope that if you have to, you have the great good fortune to do it with a person as unflinchingly brave and unconditionally loving as Karen.
I hope to find my way out of this mess and into the life that I know she wanted for me.
Yippee Ki-Yay, motherfuckers. Rock on and die hard.
Distant family and friends started arriving Thursday and on Friday they were all pitching in to help make our Saturday observance go over as well as possible. I spent the day announcing that I was not going to do anything--and I didn't. It wasn't that I didn't want things to go well but I was focused on the memorial and delivering the eulogy and I was surprised to find I didn't have the bandwidth to give even a fraction of a fuck about other things. I am grateful that so many people pitched in and didn't care that I was opting to socialize while they tidied and organized.
Like I said, I was pretty much obsessed with the eulogy. When Karen and I first reconnected more than a quarter century ago, I was super-broke so I wrote a book for her for Christmas (this remains the only "novel" like thing I've ever written). Over the next several years I'd write a lot more for her. This was the first time she'd ever actually requested I write her something and given the situation I felt tremendous responsibility to live up to her clearly confused perceptions of my typing prowess. And I felt overwhelming pressure to do right by her.
And in fact, that pressure extended to the service itself. Late Friday night, after another self-disgusted pass on the eulogy I had a moment of panic and worried that everything we were doing was going to go terribly wrong. Karen and I had made some unusual choices and I was concerned that we would offend the church people attending from St. Paul's and maybe even piss off the funeral home.
In the end, I changed nothing and went with it. Everything followed the plan Karen had wanted and approved.
And everything went well. No, actually, everything went magnificently.
Half an hour prior to the official start time of 1PM, we began playing music. I'd put together this playlist about two years ago and every song has a purpose and most have some intense personal meaning (I cannot listen to the Lou Reed songs here without utterly losing my shit). Accompanying the music was a projected slide show of photos of Karen throughout her life, some of which you can see throughout this blog post.
Here's a link to the playlist: Bon Voyage Entrance. Quick note: the last song was actually played as people left, it was not part of the walking in playlist.
After that bit of cheeriness, it was time to set the tone for the memorial that would follow. To that end, Karen had chosen the following video to be played. This was the real test--and the laughter that greeted the video was just about the most welcome sound I'd heard in ever.
In our infinite consideration and wisdom, the program required the reverend from Karen's church to somehow follow that bit of solemn reverence. Somehow she pulled it off with tremendous aplomb.
This was followed by readings and shared stories from the attendees. Dash led off the Open Mic section of the celebration with a fantastic off-the-cuff speech expressing his determination to remember the truth of his mother. Everyone that spoke did so from the heart and while there were plenty of tears, there was more laughter. The room was filled with warmth and a sense of togetherness and community that surprised me but when you consider the genesis of it all--Karen--it really shouldn't have been so unexpected. She had brought people together and inspired happiness throughout her life. Why should have this day been any different?
All in all it didn't just go well, it was wonderful. It was a comfort. It was cathartic. And the hours we spent afterward at home, with so many friends and family remembering her and just having fun...well, that was extraordinary. I will never be able to thank Karen enough for providing me and kids with such a great day.
As for the insurmountable mountain that was the eulogy, I managed to deliver it without breaking down. People seemed to receive it well. I think I did well by her and that was all I wanted to do.
I've copied my eulogy below. This is more or less exactly what I said although I added and edited a bit on the fly.
EULOGY
Early on in our New York life, well before we got
married, Karen and I saw Nashville at
the Film Forum. She’d never seen the movie and I had been so young when I’d originally seen it I’d basically forgotten it. When we stepped outside the
theater it was a freezing cold January day but it was sunny. We started talking
about the movie and it turned out the highlight for us both was this one scene
featuring Keenan Wynn.
I remember this for a couple reasons. First, it was
a great walk home. I’d lost my gloves so I stuffed my hands in my overcoat
pockets and she hung on my arm the whole way back. Every time we had to wait to
cross a street we’d embrace and a few times we missed our light but that was
okay because we just extended that embrace while we waited for our next chance
to cross.
Second, I remember that day because it notably created
our personal shorthand for those very rare and intense moments of feeling you experience
with art and artists. We called them “Keenan Wynn Moments” and we were pretty
stingy when it came to doling out the coveted Keenan Wynn status. Few things
were—or are—Keenan worthy.
But with the benefit of hindsight filtered through
the lens of, let’s say, recent events, I’ve come to believe that these moments
were never about Keenan Wynn or Brando or Rickie Lee Jones or whoever but instead
they were really all about Karen. These were actually Karen Coffey moments
because without her they never would have resonated so deeply with me. If I
didn’t share something with her it was almost as it if never happened. And during
my reflection over the last couple of weeks, I’ve come to realize that that sort
of intense clarity and impact of the moment wasn’t limited just to these rare
isolated instances but, rather, they were just the most prominent of the daily
remarkable occasions that defined our 37 years of caring for each other.
So, really, my life has been all about collecting as
many of these Karen Coffey Moments as I could, from the time when I was 15
years old waiting every morning on the corner of Orange and Second so I could
walk her the last couple blocks to school to a little more than two weeks ago. The
most keenly felt and most gratifying experiences in my life were all shared
with her and I’d like to share two that bookend our marriage.
First…Over the course of our honeymoon there were a
lot of mishaps—a tennis injury that I inflicted upon her, a dodgy hotel, a massively
delayed flight, and a very very unfortunate overnight journey on the Orient
Express—but what I remember most from that trip is one evening Karen and I spent
in Salzburg. Every August there’s this month-long Mozart festival and we had
picked up tickets to a string quartet performance at this castle that sits on a
large hill high above the rest of the city. At intermission, the two of us
wandered out onto the, I don’t know, I guess you’d call them ramparts or
something and we looked down at the city. There was a full moon above us and
below us a layer of fog rested atop the city.
We looked down at Salzburg and marveled at how
beautiful it was, with these thousands of sparkling lights trying to pierce the
fog over this classic kind of storybook village. They shot Sound of Music
there. Anyway, we stood there for a long time, right up until they announced
the performance was about to begin again. But right then, somewhere in the city
a symphony orchestra was performing Beethoven’s Ninth and just as we turned to
return to our seats they hit the Ode to Joy and all of these voices just came swelling
up from down below us. So, while everyone else at our concert took their seats,
we stayed outside. Just the two of us, no one else. We stayed out there until
the symphony ended and was replaced by just thunderous applause and cheers from
what we liked to consider as the concert’s secondary
audience. We cheered and applauded, too, Karen laughing and clapping with
her hands above her head. After that, we spent about five minutes or so trying
to figure out how to get back into the castle. It wasn’t easy—those places are
literally built to keep people out. And I think Karen needed to use the
bathroom so that made our inability to get inside just a little more urgent and
a little more entertaining.
Still, it was magical. It was. I was never more in
love with her than at that moment, some eight days give or take into our
marriage. And honestly I was never any less in love with her, either.
More recently…
Karen’s last responsive day was October 19, which
was just two days before she died. She had the strength to do just three things
that day. First, she smiled when our longtime friend Cliff visited and held her
hand. Second, she opened her eyes and whispered “Hi” to her daughter who was
perched right next to her bed and chattering away at her. The third thing came
later that night. Understand: Karen was really struggling with pain at this
point and unfortunately it was necessary for us to periodically move her for
her longer term comfort, but moving her hurt. Enough for her to cry out at
times. We apologized all the way through it, each time we did it.
And yet…this one time, this one last time, as I leaned
over her frail and broken body in order to lift her just enough to shift her
just a little bit, she somehow managed to get her left arm across my back. Her
fingers spread out and I could feel her pressing her palm against my back. 48
hours before she’d leave us, she wanted me to know she loved me. And to
reassure me that it was okay to move her. She was taking care of me.
It was her
last conscious act. It was my last Karen moment.
That final action speaks to the core of who my wife was,
why she mattered to so many people, and while she’ll continue to be a
touchstone in our lives. I’ve never known anyone who was so deliriously and
joyfully in love with the world and who and what it offered. The breadth of her
unbridled love is exhausting, frankly.
Just to illustrate this, a few things…
Karen loved:
Leonard Cohen, Aimee Mann, Barbra Streisand, Marlon
Brando, Vanessa Redgrave, William Shakespeare, Anton Chekhov, William Faulkner,
Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Louisa May Alcott, Einstein on the Beach, Laurie
Anderson, the IT Crowd and all of the Oz books.
She loved Game of Thrones—both on TV and in print.
She loved The Lord of the Rings—on screen and in print, although, honestly, it
was the movies (especially the extra-long director’s cut) which were dearest to
her heart.
She loved working in her garden. She loved her roses
and inexplicably loved the lilac bushes I bought her that refused to bloom. She
loved her weekend trips to the nursery, planning our new front yard, and
dreaming about putting a pool in the back.
She loved Buchhardt Gardens, the butthole of Sauron,
going on cruises, suites at the Bellagio, and she loved all the fantastic Saturday
nights we spent in New York with Vito and Cathy and Rayleen and Cliff.
She loved matzah ball soup, Marie Belle chocolate, holiday
dinners at the Moonstruck Diner, anything dinners at the French Laundry, Girl
Scout cookies including the weird kind of nasty ones, real deal barbecue,
John’s Pizza whole pie not a slice, and every single thing at the Festival of
Pies.
She loved Die Hard, Die Hard 2, Die Hard: With a
Vengeance, Live Free or Die Hard. But A Good Day to Die Hard…eh…not so much.
She loved Sour Diesel, Grandaddy Purple, Jack Herer,
and especially Chem Four. I’ll be honest here: she just loved smoking weed. It
might have taken her 50 years to get around to it but, man alive, did she ever
become a pothead. You have never seen anyone enjoy the act of smoking a joint
more, announcing “Pot is great” while rolling the smoke around her tongue and
beaming. She loved trying to blow smoke rings even though she never managed to
do it.
She loved the Chicago Cubs, the Dallas Cowboys (especially
Emmitt Smith), Torvill and Dean, the Olympics in general, and became a
late-in-life boxing fan with a deep affection for Gennady Golovkin, Vasyl
Lomachenko, and Robert Guerrero. She never cared for Floyd Mayweather, though,
but that probably speaks well of her.
She loved decorating her home, even though she
didn’t have a real flair for it and relied too much on mirrors. She tried to
spruce up our bathroom by placing a mirror over the toilet but she put it at
such a low height that basically any man who happens to stand while using said
toilet is ambushed by a moment of the most intimate sort of self-reflection.
She loved everything I ever wrote even when I
didn’t.
She loved Maggie and Zoe and Smokey and Ivan and
Otto and Calvin and Alice. She loved every dog at ARF and she loved visiting
ARF just to see them.
She loved working at Synergy and Wells Fargo because
she loved the people she worked with, finding them to be a reliable source
of both joy and inspiration.
She loved her parents.
She loved her sisters.
She loved our brave, heroic children with a ferocity
that was almost frightening.
And for some reason, she loved me.
And now she’s gone. Even though, in a way, it
doesn’t feel like it.
One of the weirder things of life since Karen passed
has been a stubbornly persistent sense of her barely removed presence. A
feeling that she’s somewhere in the vicinity, maybe just around the
corner or in the other room. I feel her presence in the universe so keenly I
keep expecting her to walk in the door.
And I have given up trying to talk myself out of
this. That she’s not here. Because I think she hasn’t left. She is, in some
strange and wonderful way, still so very present. Her love endures where her
body does not. I see it in the faces of everyone here. I have experienced it
with every kind act you fine people have performed on behalf of my family over
the last three years. I live it every time I talk to our children, who are just
as delightfully idiosyncratic and flat-out amazing as she was.
We were married for a long time and Karen’s
love—enthusiastic, unflagging and limitless—buoyed me through every day. It
buoys me still. I feel that strong, certain love as surely now as I ever have. The
difference now is that I cannot return it. We cannot return it. That’s the
heartbreaking part.
But while my heart is broken it is somehow also full.
Full of love for her and full of the love she poured into me each day we were
together. So while I am torn with grief, what I feel most deeply within me is
gratitude.
Karen loved traveling so please help us send her off
in style as she departs on her most adventurous trip ever. Bring your stories, your
fondest memories, and maybe a generous supply of tissues. After we send Karen
off properly, we’ll decamp to Chez Coffey for foodstuffs, beverages, community,
and a liberal application of life-affirming hugs.
We'll be holding our celebration on Saturday, November 7 at 1 PM at Hull's Walnut Creek Chapel. The address is 1139 Saranap Avenue in scenic Walnut Creek, CA.
Hope to see you there!
P.S. In lieu of flowers, Karen has requested donations
be made in her name to Holden High School (link HERE).
With about half an hour of time to kill prior to auditions for The Crucible in high school, I was being typically loud and rambunctious and walking all around the auditorium on the arm rests of the seats. I passed this girl with curly hair and she asked me who I was and what the hell I was doing. We began to talk. I asked if she wanted to know a secret and when I shared it with her she told me she shared the same secret. I was 15 and she was 16.
That was how Karen and I met.
When devoted stoner Bart Berry still didn't know his lines three days before opening night, our director fired him. I was promoted from the smaller part of the feisty and crushed-by-stones Giles Corey to take over Bart's bigger role of John Hale. Karen offered to help me learn all those new lines over the few remaining nights before we opened. Every evening at her house we would go through the play over and over again, running lines for hours. We stopped only to make out the way high schoolers do, meaning: frequently and for a long time.
12 Years After High School
That was how Karen and I fell in love the first time.
Twelve years later, we reconnected when Karen and her roommate visited New York in early September. She was in the city for three days and we spent as much time together as possible. I got people to cover my dinner shifts at work and freed up all of those days. She eventually returned to Tucson and we racked up some major long distance bills. She came back to NY for four days that Halloween and we went to the parade and we marveled at how my boring ass temporary roommate managed to find a way to spend the whole evening with models while dressed as a cow.
That was how Karen and I fell in love the second time.
The following November I artlessly asked Karen if she wanted to get married during one of those epic long distance calls. On January 1 she joined me. we married in the summer, and we eventually moved into a four room railroad apartment in Chelsea. We were young, broke, crazy in love, and living in the greatest and most exciting place on this or any other planet. It was the best time of my life and it just kept going, at heart continuing that same initial conversation through 25 years of marriage, enriching it with the addition of our children's unique and brilliant voices a few years in.
And that was how Karen and I lived.
At 9:11 this evening the beating heart of my life and family finally stopped. She was attended by myself, her children, and her dearest friend, each one of us touching and stroking her, telling her how much we loved her. She craned her neck as if to see something distant and then she was gone.
I went for a bike ride this morning and my iPod greeted me with this Lavender Diamond song because the universe apparently likes a good joke. Enjoy, comrades!
Yesterday Karen slipped further away from us. Our dear friend Cliff (one of my two best men at our wedding) tacked a visit to our home onto the end of a very long day that included a red eye flight from Hawaii, moving into a temporary apartment, and a full day's work. He took Karen's hand and said her name and she opened her eyes and smiled. Cliff leaned over to kiss her but she was pulled back into the fog before his lips even reached her forehead. Later that night, Karen would whisper a slurred "hi" to Miranda. She hasn't spoken since.
The fog she is lost in now is no longer a pharmaceutical one. For the first time since hospice started she slept through the night without any middle of the night or early morning pain scares. She went longer without pain meds than she has in forever. It is clearly the disease keeping her down now. Still, it was, thankfully, a peaceful night.
Well, for her anyway. I had a pretty hard time falling asleep myself. Karen's hospital bed is right next to mine and her ongoing decline has left her with a ragged nightmare of a periodic wheeze. That death-rattle-with-training-wheels is actually just a wee bit more ghastly to sleep next to than you'd imagine. I'm pretty tired today but I've been running on fumes for at least a week now.
But it doesn't look like Karen will be keeping me up much longer (though I'm still not expecting to get a whole lot of sleep anytime soon, like, oh, the balance of 2015 at least). She goes long stretches without taking a breath and when she does it is that tortured rattling mess. She is uncommunicative and does not respond to our voices or anything else. Her fingers have turned blue.
I imagine we'll be making our final goodbyes relatively soon.
And when my throat tightens and my heart sinks I remind myself that the pain of missing her reflects how deeply she loved me and I her. I try to focus on that, on the love we had and the love I still have in my life, with my kids, with my tremendous friends.
