This might be a long one

If you need a drink, or to go to the bathroom, you should go now.  This might take awhile.

Yesterday I said I was hoping for a boring 2014.  That made me start thinking about years past.  What has happened?  It occurred to me that 2003 was not a particularly good year, and that got the reflections going.

I don't remember a lot about 1973.  I know we had a red 1969 Dodge Power wagon with a factory winch and a cab-over camper.  It was huge.  We took it on trips, going across country in it at least twice at some point.  It had three gas tanks.  In 1973, no one gas station would let you fill three gas tanks, so we would go from station to station, buying as much gas as each one would allow.  I rode hundreds of thousands of miles in that truck, first in the front seat with my parents and then, after my sister came along, sitting on a tool box hunched over peering through the boot out the windshield to stave off car sickness.  No power steering, no power brakes, it took my mom both hands to shift it and the AC made the gas mileage drop below a mile per gallon it seemed so we never used it.  A whole lot of memories wrapped up in that truck.

In 1983, I went to New York, had my tonsils and adenoids removed (finally!) and started high school. While I know I did some stupid things, maybe even life altering, there is nothing to share with the audience about that year.  It was the best year the band at Western had while I was there, that was for certain.

By 1993 I had graduated college and gotten married, not in that order.  In the fall of that year, I had just gotten hired as a substitute teacher and we had bought our first house.  I came home from work (at my other job) the Sunday of Labor Day weekend as my (now ex-) husband was moving stuff from one house to another.  I'll never know how he managed to load a washer and a dryer in the truck by himself, but I was home to help unload it. Beer seemed to give him strength.  That was the only thing about him it improved, let me assure you.  As the dryer on the dolly came off the truck, he lost control of it and it was falling.  When something is falling, you catch it, right?  Don't.  The dryer/dolly became wedged between the tailgate of the truck and the side of the house.  Too bad my right hand was in between, with the corner of the dryer in my hand, literally.  Somehow he managed to pull the dryer back and I got my hand out.  When I looked at it, I could see the tendons in my hand.  I went inside and wrapped it in a kitchen towel and came out and told him we had to go to the emergency room.

He drove like a maniac, yelling at me all the way about how I could do something so stupid and he was sure it wasn't even so bad that we needed to go to the hospital.  The triage nurse disagreed and they took us right back.  They kept asking me questions to see if I was shocky, but he kept answering them.  I wish in those days they asked the questions they ask now, about do you feel like you have a safe place to go home to, because I certainly would have told them I didn't.  They stitched up my hand and sent us on our way, but told me to see my primary care doctor.

Tuesday morning they called me for my very first subbing job. In those days, an actual person called you on the phone.  I had to explain that I couldn't take it because my right hand was stitched and bandaged up. Instead of subbing, I was at the doctor.  Wonderful Dr. Miyazaki.  He took one look at my hand and asked why the doctor had sewn it up with my fingers closed.  I don't know.  He said that if we let it heal that way, I wouldn't be able to use my fingers.  Yes.  He had to take out the stitches, open the wound, straighten my fingers, re-irrigate the wound and the sew it up again.  It was just as pleasant as you imagine.

By 2003, I had been divorced, remarried, and moved back to Las Vegas, not in that order.  Well, the divorced and married part was in the right order.  It was a rough year even before the fall.  We had endured fertility treatments and miscarriage.  Kelly's father's cancer had returned. The news never seemed to get better.  In August, my grandmother's kidneys began to fail in earnest.  I was teaching at an elementary school on five track year round, which meant we had roughly a week and a half between one school year and the next.  We ended and started in August.

The Saturday before the first day of school, I got a call that my grandmother was being taken by ambulance to the hospital and could I be there.  I raced over and beat the ambulance to the hospital.  Her kidney doctor had determined that her kidneys were shot.  At 98, with the exception of her eye sight, everything else was in good shape.  She was completely there mentally and could carry on a conversation on a multitude of topics, including current events.  But there are not kidney transplants for 98 year-olds and she did not have the stamina for dialysis.  It would have to be hospice.

She was fully aware of what was happening.  As I sat with her, she said to me, "I don't want to go.  We have such a nice little family."  What do you say to that?  There are no words.

We had to meet with the hospital social worker to arrange everything.  Apparently you have to die within a prescribed amount of time, so we had to be prepared to move my grandmother to another facility if she did not expire before the deadline.  No, it isn't funny, but I'm not sure how else to word it.  They sent a car to pick her up instead of a vehicle that could take a gurney.  Another long delay while we waited.

We spent all day in the ER, not arriving at the hospice until late in the evening.  The nurses were wonderful. There is a special place in heaven for hospice staff.  They asked my grandmother if there was anything they could do for her.  She squared her shoulders and said, "Yes.  Comb my hair and brush my teeth.  I can't be meeting new people looking like this."  Okay.

Once they stopped the diuretics, she slipped out of consciousness.  When we came to visit the next day, she was completely out.  It was the only time in my life I ever saw her without her teeth in.  A priest came by and we held her hands and prayed as I know she would have wanted that on Sunday.

Early, early Monday morning she passed away.  I got the call before I had even gotten up to get ready for the first day of school.  Kelly took the day off and took my dad around to take care of all the arrangements. Sometime during these unhappy errands, he got the call that his dad had been taken to the hospital.  We didn't know that he would not come home again.

We endured the funeral and went on.  Ron's (Kelly's dad) prognosis was never very clear, at least not to me. Looking back, we wish we had spent so much more time with him at the hospital.  Then he was moved to another hospital.  As we waited for him to come home, we were shocked to learn that he was next going to hospice.  It was now November.

I cannot recount our visits to the hospice.  They are too heartbreaking. As sad as I was to lose my grandmother, she did go quickly and painlessly.  To see a man more than 30 years her junior lose his fight with cancer was another story.  Hard does not begin to cover it.

Another funeral.  Thanksgiving, less two.  Hanukkah and Christmas with missing faces.  A rugged year, 2003.

2013 is a year that has loomed large in my life for 18 years, seeming impossibly far away and year arriving at tremendous speed.  This is the year Karina would/did graduate from high school. I pushed.  I pulled.  I nagged.  I worried.  Would she live up to her potential?  Would she make the big leap to college with success?  I pushed away other concerns and buried other stresses.  Nothing would mar this if I could help it.
We did get to graduation, and that glorious summer in between high school and college.  Karissa went to summer camp for the first time. Karina would go away to school, Karissa would start third grade, and I could sub as much as I wanted. Life seemed full of potential for everyone.  If only my mouth would stop hurting.

In August I had my "victory lap" visit to the oncologist.  This was my five year post radiation visit.  It was all supposed to be sunshine and lolly pops.  But I knew something wasn't right.  I almost became hysterical in her office because I knew something wasn't right.  She said, "Nothing in there gets my hackles up."  She suggested Kenalog paste.  I asked what if it was cancer?  She said there would be treatment for me if the cancer came back.

Fast forward.  Of course it was cancer.  It had been all along and I had down played it.  I had two benign biopsies.  I had no raised hackles.  I had everything in my favor, except that it still hurt.  I ignored the pain and went on about life.  I got the biopsy results the night before Karina moved into the dorm.  September 24. We know how it goes from here.

Looking at this track record, I am more than a little worried about what 2023 will bring.  Karissa graduates from high school that year.  Hopefully this year was the apex and everything will get better from here.

Again, here's hoping for a boring 2014.  Maybe some boring years to follow.  I'm up for that!