Because Life Still Happens...

It was a bad week last week for Todd.... 

Todd likes to get out of the house once in a while, his favorite thing to do is to go shopping and he has a lot of times when he goes out for a few hours, sometimes just to wander and look at things. Just being out for a few hours wears him completely out, and upon coming home, his body will shut down.   Wherever he sits down he will fall asleep.  It's almost like his body shuts down and his brain still wants to be awake.  These are the absolute hardest times right now.  They are times when I can't get him to cooperate.  He thinks he needs to eat instead of sleep or smoke for hours on end,  and so he falls asleep eating or in the garage smoking.  I clean up a lot of spilled food and drinks, and he has a lot of shirts and shorts with holes in them from cigarettes.  There is no arguing with him.  If you have ever had to deal with someone who is very drunk for more than a few hours, then you have an idea of what I go through.  During these times his short term memory is completely gone, he is very unsteady, lately he has had more falls than I like to think about, and he thinks he knows exactly what he needs to do, and it's exactly opposite of what he really needs to do.  Normally this lasts for maybe a day or two.  Once he lets his body fully rest....in bed, for more than 8 hours, he bounces back and he's OK again (as ok as he gets).  Last week was his worst episode so far (since he first got out of the hospital).  It lasted from Tuesday night to Saturday night.  Four days and nights of following Todd around, trying to convince him he needed to sleep.  He would get in bed for an hour and get up to go to the bathroom thinking he had slept for hours, and decide it was time to get up.  I couldn't get him out of this cycle and it was not fun.  It's a good thing I decided to take those days off of work, because there was no way, I was going to leave him with the kids to deal with what was happening.    After the first couple of days to decrease my stress a little, I made things as safe as possible and let him do what he wanted.  I knew eventually his body was going to give in.  It's almost like dealing with a toddler who doesn't want to take a nap....almost, if that toddler is 6'4 and 300 lbs.   By 6:00 Saturday  night his body and mind finally decided to work together, and thankfully while he was in bed trying to eat, he fell asleep and stayed asleep, (only getting up once for about 20 minutes), until 11:00 Sunday morning.  For the next couple of days he slept, only getting up for a couple of hours here and there.  These are the easiest times. 

We have been dealing  with this as a family for 5 1/2 years now.  Each year gets a little bit worse.  Each year, we briefly and only briefly look ahead and wonder what the next will bring.  I don't allow myself to go to that place very often.  I know my husband is going to die.  Our kids know their dad is going to die....except for our 9 year old who still only understands that daddy is sick, because he doesn't understand what death really is.  All of this gets filed away somewhere in the back of my head, and we live life day to day, because life is still happening.  I can't stand still, I can't stop time.  We are not going to sit and stare at each other and cry for days on end. We still need to live, we still need to keep moving.  There will be a time when life will stop briefly and it will be sad,  and we will take that time to grieve, but that can't be now.  We still have a 9yr old that goes on field trips to the Planetarium and I still go with him.  We have a 14yr old daughter who is in the orchestra at school and has concerts, a 16yr old son who I have been teaching to drive.  We have birthdays, and holidays.  The kids have weekends while I'm at work that they all sit on the bed in our room and watch a movie with their dad.  We have times of absolute silliness, when we laugh so hard our stomachs ache.  Even though I try not to let myself think about the future, it is still very easy for me to get lost in sadness, and it happens once in awhile, when I'm driving  and a song comes on the radio, when I'm working and letting my thoughts wander, when I'm sitting here writing a blog post and I look out into my backyard.  I'm always very honest with our kids.  We talk a lot, about what is happening now, and what is going to happen.  They know they can ask me any question, and they will get an honest answer.  When my dad died, I was 17, and I refused to talk to anyone about it.  I just wanted to be left alone, to deal with it all, and it took me a very long time to be OK.  I put up a good front for everyone around me, while I felt like I was dying on the inside.  I don't want my kids to go through that.  I'm not sure what is worse, having someone you love die suddenly....unexpectedly, or having a few years to prepare yourself for it, when it's not something you can prepare yourself for.  It is sad no matter how it happens but, right now, life is still happening all around us, everyday.  We take each day, and do what we can with it.  Some days are nonstop on the go days, some are quiet, kick back do nothing but watch tv days.  Some days are lazy, drive through the mountains taking in the beauty all around us days.  Some are easy, fun, happy and some are filled with frustration, tension, and  anger.  We take each day as it comes, because right now, even though Todd is very sick and we know our time with him gets shorter as each day passes, life is still happening and there is still plenty of it to live.