GINA STARTED GOING to bed earlier as the fatigue started wearing her down more and more. I’m not necessarily an early evening guy but I would go to bed with her. I can’t tell if it was to help make her comfortable or if I was just trying to soak up every second with her that I could. It bothered me because I would fall asleep easily, but as tired as she was, the pain in her bones would keep her up. I can’t tell you how many times I woke up in the middle of the night only to find her downstairs. Let me tell you, there’s not a more helpless feeling than looking over the banister and seeing your wife in her housecoat rocking back and forth in pain and knowing that there is nothing you can do about it.
As time goes on, you learn to live with the reality. You never seem to fully digest exactly what you’re in the middle of, but you learn to get through each day. I still wondered to myself how I was going to pick up the baton when I really had to do it. I prayed a lot at that point for strength. Strength for me, strength for her, strength for the kids. It always gave me some comfort and to be honest, I think God answered my prayers a little bit there because the girls were handling it relatively well.
I was pretty good about not outwardly focusing on the finality of things and I’ll tell you, that’s not an easy thing to do…especially when it’s the first thing people around you want to talk about. Understandably they just want you to know they care and are there for you, but their well wishes and sad glances don’t let you escape from under that cloud for even one second.
At this point we were about a week past our damning doctor’s visit and Gina still wasn’t overly concerned with her affairs yet. We hadn’t really been talking much about things because again, I didn’t want to make her feel as though I was hurrying her into the grave. I decided we would get through Christmas, and then begin to figure things out. The problem was that I could never plan the right time. I could never bring myself to force the issue and I really wish I would have. At that point, you obviously have her feelings and emotions at heart, but the reality is once you get to this point—days don’t get better. Every day things get just a little bit worse and the longer you wait, the worse she is going to feel. Each day makes it harder for her to handle and harder for her to do. Like an idiot, I missed my window. I should have done it when it was fresh so we could ride out the rest of our days and not have it weighing on my mind twenty four hours a day, seven days a week.
It was a bizarre time for me, trying to be happy while I was mired in despair. Given the fact that it was Christmas, it wasn’t hard to bury it in booze.