Sometimes Life is Just Hard

It’s just hard, sometimes, you know. Just getting through day to day without going completely out of your tree. It’s hard and keeping as busy as humanly possible is really the only way to get through. The last 92 days have been like that.

The last year has been like that… with Bear getting the flu (or more likely covid)… then hospice… working from home… care taking… then in October passing on… The holidays… staying busy has been kind of a thing. Now that the holidays are over and life is… well… just life… the quiet is crashing down. I’ve tried so hard to keep busy… but the tsunami of life has just… well, yeah.

The holidays weren’t as sucky, I guess, as I thought they would be. I didn’t spend the entire day on either Thanksgiving or Christmas crying (thanks to my Dr and her numbing pills… I guess I haven’t done too bad relying on them. 92 days and I have taken, I think, 15… not even relying so much on the sleeping pills).

The decorations all went up… they decorations are slowly coming down (with 6 dogs, it’s hard to dry the inflatables in the house)… Funny… I just realized that I didn’t take “the picture” this year… the one we have taken every year for years and years in front of the tree. We never got around to it for some reason. I think maybe it was just that it wasn’t the year to remember.

And now it’s January. Bear has been gone 92 days. The house is a disaster area. The floors (6 dogs and muddy yard) will never be clean again… every week I just scrub off the old mud so new mud can be laid down. We have started to make in roads to getting things done. It’s not perfect… but nothing ever is. I’m starting to get my head around figuring out what life is going to be now… who I am… what I need to do…

I’ve had so many hassles with insurance. Who knew that when the last kid ages off the policy… POOF whole new policy (you met your out of pocket maximum… psyche bitch no you didn’t)… then when one spouse has the audacity to die before the end of the year… whole new policy…. psyche bitch… thought you met it again… NOPE… suck farts… cough up more money… of the 7000 maximum I needed to have… I will end up eventually having paid off 10500 of it. yay me. Only blessing is The Clinic is willing to work with me to make payments on it so I can spread LAST year’s money and this year’s money (since I’m now on an HMO and there is nothing in the HMO with which to make payments on $13000 a month for infusions let alone meds) so I don’t have to spend much more time in the corner crying hysterically because I really can’t do this any more.

Add to those insurance woes the fact that I’m a dumb ass (yes, Lois, I know… no negative self talk… and it really isn’t… it was just an incredibly doh moment) and forgot that different insurance in January means that the approval I got for my infusions went bye bye with Aetna and that Antheum Blue Cross didn’t ACTUALLY know it was coming let alone approved it…. that meant last week’s infusion (which was very much needed THEN) didn’t happen until yesterday. My fingers and toes have been on fire for a week… screaming… and because of that I’ve been so short tempered and on the verge of tears most of the time. Yesterday, though, I got my obscenely expensive meds and now here I am back on track-ish. I know it’s already working because my scarab ring that Bear bought me at Prairie Peddler 2 weeks before he died isn’t stuck on my finger any more… I can move it around which makes me very happy.

I can even sit back, now, and smile (almost) at the fact that I did “The Goofy” last weekend. It was physically and mentally harder than it maybe needed to be… physically because of my late meds… mentally because when I paid for the race, October 2, Bear was going to be all bundled up in blankets with the kerosene heater on sitting on the porch watching me cross my finish line for at least the full marathon. Instead, I walked the route of our last walk together… me pushing the wheel chair… him holding Snickers… all alone… I walked alone in the quiet and it was so hard to realize that… I’m all alone. I’m not. I know I’m not. But I am.

And finally… all of the Covid-ness.

Bear… maybe covid was what he had in the spring that sent him on his down hill slide… maybe the flu… but the flu was never as bad as what we all had back then… and because it was when it was we will never know.
Brother-in-law… was it covid? Probably not… probably the heart disease that he had and had been battling for months and months…
Brother-in-law… was it covid related? Maybe… he went down hill awfully fast in the high rise… maybe “just” everything else that was wrong… but when you are on hospice they don’t really test you so much…
Cousin-in-law… that WAS covid and that was on life support and that was in ICU and that was…

those were the 2020 deaths…

Found out yesterday that Sister-in-law-1 got out of being in the hospital with covid and has moved in (temporarily? maybe permanently) with her daughter. Dreamed about her last night… She went in with a concussion… caught covid in the hospital… recovered.

Found out yesterday that Sister-in-law 2 got covid and it quarantined for a week so far with it… visiting nurse in her assisted living facility visits twice a week. She’s not hospitalized… she’s at “home” and the nurse says she’s fine… but Nurse Dave with Bear said he was fine 16 hours before he passed…. so I worry. She is the last of the siblings and her RA is way worse than mine.

And here we are… 2021… a new year. Found out yesterday that my half marathon that I signed up for last year is probably going to happen in May. I need to make sure I have enough sexy masks that are technical material to get me though that half. I’m worried about that one, I won’t lie. It could be okay-ish but maybe not… I’m hoping amish country in September is way more okay and I can do that one (with a mask even if I get shit for it).

Dopey 2023… now I’m in training for you… I have to make better than a 19 minute mile… but I have time to get to where I need to be. I promised Bear I would do it in his honor and I would carry him with me and I will.

And now it’s time to git-er-done… set my goals for the day… for the weekend… for the week… which I probably won’t meet but I’m starting to be a little more okay with that… taking just a little time to just be me and take time to have quiet time…

Love and Light
April
1/16/2021