Tag Archives: husband journey

Part 298: →Husband Journey: Hey! Where You Goin’ With That Suitcase?

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  This post takes us back about a few weeks when I called Robert’s former nursing home to make an appointment to pick up his personal effects. It was months since he left but no one had the energy or courage to pursue the task. I was told by the receptionist who is one of the only  people I respect there, that I would have to notify her of the day I wished to come in, and, in about a day I would get a call to make the pick-up as the effects of those who pass are destined to … Continue reading →

Part 297: →Husband Journey: Don’t Know Why

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© Susan Kalish I walked in the first heat of Spring on an April Sunday afternoon, in circles, knowing where I was going, but not, fearing I would trip and fall on small rocks, trekking up and down grade. “Find me, steer me,” I said, knowing that when alive he had GPS in his head as he was proud of saying. My inner compass was tattered and muddled by emotion: make a right, no, make a left, go up there on that rise. Lost. I hadn’t come here before this, I couldn’t go before, easy as that. I don’t know … Continue reading →

Part 296: →Husband Journey: Tower of Power Meets Pablo Neruda

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Robert’s grandparents, father on the left and uncles on the right     The picking through the piles has begun. Piles and mountains the size of Everest. Photos, so many photos. Sorting, so much sorting. Recreating albums, ditching hundreds of duplicates and realizing that everyone in every photo from previous generations is gone. And, then realizing that the previous generation has been usurped by the present generation and we’re going.   I sit on the floor surrounded by paper and archive someone else’s life; I haven’t had the time to archive my own. I have been given ownership and the … Continue reading →

Part 295: →Husband Journey: These Days

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    Today is March 2, 2024, the one year anniversary of the (second) mastectomy and (complicated) reconstruction which created months of visits by visiting nurses, and live-in aides and long, drawn-out healing which has left me, still uncomfortable and with compromised flexibility. Then there are the medical records. M is for mastectomy. Again. Now when dealing with medical records I am asked to fill-in another date. It was 2004. Now I have to add 20023. March 2, is also the birthday of my first husband, Steve, who passed at the age of twenty-eight. I was twenty-six. It’s a long … Continue reading →

Part 294:→Husband Journey: Somebody That I Used to Know

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Well, dear friends we’ve been on some journey. A journey of years with surprises and twists and convolutions and paradoxes and disbelief. And let’s not forget the sprinkling of Covid for good luck, just to kick things up a notch. I left you before Christmas and continued to slog on into a world of darkened, short days, hoping for Spring, and while we’re at it, hoping for miracles, for, after all, ’tis the season. Hope. Miracles. Them’s fighting words. Strong stuff. Magical stuff, control stuff. So, let’s move into January and all that hoopla of a new year. More hope. … Continue reading →

Part 293: →Husband Journey: And Then He Kissed Me

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  Here we are, back at the nursing home: I begin the ascent to the third floor with a pit-stop at the rehab department. I am looking for someone from the speech department and share my alarm at the recent observation that Robert’s frequency and quality of responses are waning. I share my view with a combination of realization and didactic condescension as this is “my field” of expertise and what could these young people know? I approach with sadness, I approach with urgency and I approach with questions. I am told I will get a call-back. As usual I … Continue reading →

Part 292: →Husband Journey: The Great Pretender

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The bonsai was a gift from my sister in November 2022. It was doing well: the instructions said to keep it moist, to provide a tray of wet pebbles underneath for humidity, to feed it. It produced two small, fragrant gardenias in the spring and then carried on looking green and gorgeous until this past November when it spontaneously, mid-month, began to droop; its leaves sagging, eventually drying, then dropping. I frantically did research and have been stuck between grief and hope. I removed it from the pot that it was wired into. No, it wasn’t potbound, no the roots … Continue reading →

Part 291: Husband Journey: Has Orvieto Been Lost?

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We had lunch and we went. My son, my husband’s dearest friend from second grade, and I. Am I recovered? Enough, I guess to make my way back out into society and to a nursing home, where Robert has been living for almost three years. As long as I swallow hard and make myself numb, I am OK. Until I walk into the room and see a person in a bed who I don’t recognize. We usually visit in the late afternoon between the time the patients are being tended to and served dinner. Perhaps it is not the best … Continue reading →

Part 289. Husband Journey & (Part 29. Cancer) I Heard it Through The Grapevine

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  The confluence of events continues: It is the countdown to a big surgery. I am not going to announce the date but it is coming up and my head just keeps spinning. In fact, I even had two lousy days of bed-ridden vertigo; it’s been a long time since I was on that ride and I was glad to get off. But stress, ahhh, good old stress will get you any which way it can. So let’s catch-up. My appointments are in order, I’ve had pre-surgery testing by the hospital. I’ve booked an agency for a 24/7 aide for … Continue reading →

Part 288. Husband Journey: I am a Cartoon Living in a Pixelated World

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1/24/23 I began my day, as many of my days are started with acute anxiety. I know all of the tricks to help it dissipate–to an extent– but the thought of a big surgery coming up in about a month, becomes overwhelming. Meditation and visualization pick at the mountain of fear. People tell me to call them and I want to but as it turns out most times, I can’t move or if I do call,  they are not home. Deep breaths. I try to reconstruct myself, like I am made of Legos, snapping the pieces together, so that I … Continue reading →

(Part 28. Cancer), (Part 287. →Husband Journey) A Mastectomy? Carry On

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David Crosby has passed Two blog series collide… Hey, come on, you know me by now; you know how I need to weave a swatch of cloth from my life’s events and then make it into a garment. And you know that it takes me a while, sometimes weeks to do so. And you know how I flee to the past when the present gets tough and the future looks iffy. Stick this patch in the middle of the fabric: The I hate January patch. I detest watching the month crawl along in winter’s darkness, but I love when it … Continue reading →

(Part 27. Cancer), (Part 286. →Husband Journey) A Confluence: Who Knows Where The Time Goes?

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  As we enter a New Year and look back, the passage of time is inconceivable. I hope we all get through the new year  content and ununscathed, or as content and unscathed as possible. As for happy, what does that mean? Here it is: I am stuck at the crossroads of words and life. Of Robert’s  (The “Husband Journey” which began with The Mother-Daughter Journey) and my own health (Blogging for Breast Cancer). Let me try to sort it all out here. I recently had the wonderful distraction of having family stay over for a couple of days. It … Continue reading →

286→Husband Journey: I Wish I Had a River

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The Levin Farm; Cambridge, New York 1972 oil on canvas Art for a typical holiday card was usually a winter photograph taken by one of us. This painting served well as our annual winter scene one year ~ The muse gets lost in the shuffle of life. It took a friend’s email to jolt me awake. Thank you, Phyllis. I wrote back: Merry Christmas to you and yours. Every year, Robert would toil over putting together a printed tome and winter photo to wish an incredibly long list of people the best for the holidays. It was his annual tradition … Continue reading →

285→Husband Journey: Time Passages

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  November 18, 2022   Robert looks at the ipad.  I say, “can you see? One eye is closed.” He opens it. Years ago he was seeing double; perhaps that was a sign of things to come. We had a special prescription made to correct that. A prism was embedded into his lenses. I have no idea where those glasses are: in one of the many places he was in over the last couple of years: the hospital, the nursing home, the hospital again, triaged in the Bronx with Covid, back to the nursing home. In one of the many … Continue reading →

284→Husband Journey: Wedding Retrospective

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How do you attend your son’s wedding without your partner of almost fifty years? You just do. You kind of depersonalize. You step out of your body, disconnect and swallow the lump in your throat. You’ve rehearsed the event in your mind as best as you could with your imagination as your guide. You observe. It is bittersweet to see a child reach this point but you try to focus on the positive. You smile, you dance, you focus on not falling, you mingle, you try to enjoy the fabulous food. A few nice details: The sun emerged a couple … Continue reading →

282→Husband Journey: Dreams to Remember

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August has been speeding up and despite my protests, much of it is gone, pushing me to Fall. I keep busy. I distract myself. There is plenty to think about and plenty I do not want to face. I am having a biopsy under MRI this week for something suspicious that appeared on a recent MRI. The MRI is the new annual protocol for breast cancer people. Like I said, I don’t want to think about that for now, so, let me report on my last Facetime visit with Robert. By the time you read this I will have had … Continue reading →

281→Husband Journey: It’s Automatic

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Over the last few weeks I have been speaking to Robert via FaceTime calls. It takes the stress off of me: I don’t have to sit in a hot car and take a Covid test before entering the nursing home, and, in addition, I have a houseful of stuff with which to stimulate his brain. I am finding that since the stents were inserted to open clogged arteries, he seems to be more alert. When I get a Facetime call from the nursing home, I greet Robert, wait for the din around him to die down and begin, or try … Continue reading →

280→Husband Journey: A Garden of Memories

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Photos of the garden. I take Robert on FaceTime “trips.”   I’ve been lax and lazy. I took no notes on several interactions with Robert. I don’t recall all the things he said. Maybe just the affiliated mood. I am contacted more regularly for a Facetime call and I am finding it very helpful: I can walk around the house and pull out props to stimulate his memory. I “take” him to the garden, have him greet the tomatoes, let him silently marvel at the flowers and at how tall the Krauter Vesuvius Plum Tree has gotten. I go out. … Continue reading →

279→Husband Journey: Playing Ketchup

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So my friends, it’s catch-up time. We are back to Robert and a few of his noted responses during visits. When we communicate I prompt and prompt for a response but there are times when words just come to him and I am pleasantly surprised … I haven’t taken as many notes as I would have liked during in-person and FaceTime calls, but I will say that sometimes my babbling and prompting seem to work. To wit: when I mentioned that our brother-in-law had been ill there was initially no reaction, but if I said, “what would you like to … Continue reading →

278→Husband Journey: Life Goes On

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I took this photo last year and it is part of my apple watch slideshow display: Everytime I raise my hand there is a new flower glowing in the light, changing in front of me, right on my wrist. It reminds me that the living need to be focused on, that things are happening that require attention, that life goes on. We visited Robert the other day, as Father’s Day may not be an option for a visit. Robert doesn’t mark time or the days. i suspect that “time” is one long continuum and he has forgotten when it began. … Continue reading →