Author Archives: Sans Souci

265→Husband Journey: Let Them Eat Cake

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I walked into Robert’s room with tote bags of must-haves in recognition of his birthday. Evan was waiting for a parking spot. I worked out the details over days on a sheet of paper: Bring the greeting cards a few people sent, bring our card, bring a little cake, bring something for the staff. Bring, carry, mask, stuff. I am trying to reconstruct what happened within a forty-five minute time frame a few days ago. So, here’s this guy in bed. He is my husband of forty-five years. “Hi, Rob!” Hi, Susie! “Happy Birthday!” It’s my birthday? “Yes, you are … Continue reading →

264→Husband Journey: Cogent

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Sometimes you just don’t want to feel you have to do something. You just want to dump the shoulds and not think about anything. You don’t want to be reminded that you have a husband in a nursing home whose birthday is tomorrow. That because of a fall he has been out of the house for one year. That you have to go and make like everything is fine. Schmear the staff, deal with details. See the man in the bed. Diversion comes easily in these days of Covid: new variants are the unknowns out there that manifest like the boogey-man … Continue reading →

263→Husband Journey: Get Better, Go Home

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  On this day, the day of our son’s birth, Evan took me to visit Robert. One has mixed emotions about days such as this due to timing, association of events, (in this case birthdays) and just plain anxiety. And because, due to rules, Evan was not permitted to come upstairs with me, he opted out and decided he wasn’t going to visit his dad without me.  There have been times when we have been able to circumnavigate the rules and go together but this time was a sensitive time: Evan could not do it. When I arrived upstairs, wearing … Continue reading →

17. Life Is A Journey But This Is A Trip: Yes, I Still Get Migraines

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    Some of you have asked: Yes, I still get migraines. If you recall at the beginning of my posts, they really kicked in about ten years ago when I began caregiving for my mother. However, what I didn’t realize was that even before then, I was having these occasional weird vertigo episodes. What I didn’t know at the time and for some time later, that this kind of vertigo is attributed to migraine, not to a vestibular component. I have been tested about four times and there was never a correlation. At least with a vestibular component, there … Continue reading →

262→Husband Journey: Taking Leave

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  I plucked the last rose from the garden and decided to follow its stages from beginning to end. Then I asked? When does anything begin to be beautiful? Does beauty end? Does the aging process negate beauty? Does the life cycle we witness of flowers mirror our lives: do we come back? So much for polemics. Here’s what I saw. This hybrid rose had been choking from old Irises, weeds and garden clutter. Once removed, I found a new shoot and then the bud. What is living does not want to die. This rose changes color during its stages. … Continue reading →

261.→Husband Journey: Arm-or

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    Monday, 10-25 I visited Robert. It was the usual drill. My friend was kind enough to drop me off and wait while I went on my journey. I don’t know if you know how very important it is to me to have that physical and moral support. Each time I go I wonder what I would find. I wonder if will be the last time. I sign in, fill out a form, have my temperature taken electronically, make my way down the long hallway and turn right at the elevator. I breathe deeply into my mask, ascend to … Continue reading →

260.→Husband Journey: Water

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October. The deck, before the wind. …  then a strong wind from the east. Maybe Autumn has begun.   I’ve been visiting my lake. I take in the light, the air, the color, the sounds. The gift of nature soothes the most disturbed of hearts: my heart has been disturbed. It has been redefining itself, slowly accepting of my new, quieter life. I haven’t had the daily stress of caring for another individual for almost a year though I have flailed at the Universe and have been baffled and unsettled by my fate,  like the seasons, I have changed. The … Continue reading →

259.→Husband Journey: In Dreams Begin Responsibilities

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No, I haven’t been to see Robert. It has been over a week. He is as stable as he can be under the circumstances. I didn’t want to go alone, it is too much to bear. I needed someone to go with me but it wasn’t possible. When someone comes and waits in the car I feel like a child who has a left school at 3:00 PM with the day of learning behind me along with its anxieties. I will be swept off into security. The mixed emotions of a school day, and all the unknowns it brings is … Continue reading →

258.→Husband Journey: What He Said

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This is the photo that keeps me going when I visit Robert. I rewind my Universe about ten years.  He was not perfect, believe me he had his flaws, but he could walk. He could talk, He could work. He could shop. He could laugh. He could discuss. He could teach. He could listen to music of his choice. He could drive. He could feed himself. He could get into and out of bed independently. He could use a phone. He could. Now he can’t. Many people do not understand when I try to describe graphically, but with sensitivity, what … Continue reading →

Breaking Out

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This post was initially going to be a note on Facebook with a few photos. It is, I feel, more appropriate as a blog. I have not been visiting Robert: there are Covid cases in the building and until this is under control, I’ll limit going: I need to break out, away from the stress and tension of what has become my life. Strangely, talking about breakouts, I had a close look at my aging, almost unrecognizable face in a magnifying mirror and gasped at “stuff” that didn’t belong. I poked and prodded and probably injured myself in a fruitless … Continue reading →

23. The Nipplemania Newsletter, 2021 Edition (Blogging for Breast Cancer)#3: The Yin and Yang of “Benign”

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Yom Kippur, 2021 May we be inscribed in the book of life for another year. And may we, dear lord, be healthy. How do I say this, let me count the ways. My husband is failing, in a nursing home. My son announced his engagement and the happy couple are searching for an unusual venue: I am trying to be happy. I hide from Covid and from myself on a daily basis. I live in a body that I don’t know how to make sense of. Day by day. Yesterday morning I went back to sleep after being up for … Continue reading →

22. The Nipplemania Newsletter, 2021 Edition (Blogging for Breast Cancer)#2: Good News

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The Nipplemania Newsletter was established in 2004: I had just retired from thirty-three years of teaching only to find, the day before my retirement party, that I had breast cancer. It’s a long story and it begins here. I just wanted to say that I had a double lumpectomy on August 26th. Actually, what my surgeon calls it is a “lumpectomy and a mini-lumpectomy.” See the previous post for details here I am forever in the debt of my friends: M, who took me for the “scout” implant which marked the areas with radar markers for the doctor to track … Continue reading →

257.→Husband Journey: Absolutely

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  Last week I received a couple of robo-calls on different days from Robert’s nursing home notifying me that there were two covid cases found in employees in the building. This affects visitation, but in Robert’s case, as he is on “comfort care,” it does not. One friend from his former employment, a fellow teacher, spent time with him on Sunday. This past Wednesday, A & J, from Chicago, came to visit as part of their travels to see family. And so, I made a plan. We would pick them up from the Long Island Rail Road (they were staying … Continue reading →

256.→Husband Journey: Resilience

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📌An excellent article about resilience is in The New York Times Several weeks have past and it is time to come back to words.I had been trying to divert myself from life via an on-line digital photography class. Sometimes images are more soothing than verbal ideations. Sometimes we have to be, well, non-verbal. But don’t worry, I yak to friends on the phone in my effort to make sense of my world, as well as your world. For weeks I had Robert on one side of my brain: that is ongoing. However, I didn’t see him for two weeks in … Continue reading →

255.→Husband Journey: On Loss, Dreams, and Old Fashioned Moments

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Well, friends, it has been a while. My words went silent and sunk into feelings. Drowning in feelings. There is Robert to think about and those thoughts are now competing with other thoughts that are filled with anxiety about my upcoming surgery. I remind myself, between episodes of heart palpitations, that people who surround me have been flooding me with offers of escorting me back and forth, that I should not worry, that things will fall into place, that people care and they have formed a loving village. That calms me for a few minutes and then the fear ramps … Continue reading →

The Nipplemania Newsletter, 2021 Edition (Blogging for Breast Cancer)

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Folks, it’s the return of your favorite publication!     Here we are again blogging for breast cancer, making an informational blog about all the stuff women, and sometimes men, can be faced with. Let me fill you in about what has been going on over the last few months. I will reconstruct the timeline. My insurance pays for a breast MRI every three years; it is part of the breast cancer protocol and for years nothing has shown up. We women get mammograms, sonograms and each view they produce can reveal something new. With smartphones and apps we are … Continue reading →

254.→Husband Journey: Cells (Blogging for Breast Cancer#21)

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So, dear friends, it has been a while and there has been a lot going on which has stretched me thin. This will be a two-part blog, the second being under a new category, or rather an old one; please be patient. Today’s theme came to me after I took Robert’s little, old, flip phone and turned it on. It’s a small device that he had for many years, not wanting to give it up for anything more complicated. It booted up, still worked fine as it sat in my hand. A cell phone. A device used for linking people, … Continue reading →

253.→Husband Journey: Moments

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When I visit Robert I hope for a spark, something to prove that he is still present. During my last visit I went into my usual soliloquy: I do my late night TV-type monologue and wonder how Johnny Carson survived for so many years. It ain’t easy. The visitor feels compelled to keep a conversation going when there is no one to converse with. Robert hasn’t initiated conversation in months. Apparently, that part of his brain is unable to latch on to the words he might want to say. He doesn’t ask for anything. He is no longer moved for visits. … Continue reading →