Starting my book :)

Posted by Sammy on Jun 3rd, 2010 | one comment

Tonight I decided to sit here with my laptop doing the first step of my very own book idea. That is to go through Gary’s blog posts and take what I can for the book. I fully expected it to not be an easy venture. Not because its soooooo very hard to copy and paste text from a website into Microsoft Word. It’s totally because I’d find myself reading the actual posts. Going back a year and reading things from the beginning of the NIH-journey, and knowing how the story ends, well I don’t have to tell you that I need a tissue box near me.

I came across this paragraph in one of Gary’s posts that he wrote 11 days after his official diagnosis of Peripheral T-Cell Lymphoma, and immediately I found myself crying.

2. PAIN and GUILT:

So after the shock of it all began to wear off I began to feel a tremendous amount of both pain and guilt. Not for myself. I mean let’s be honest if I die, I’m not really going to suffer for it. No, I feel an unbelievable amount of both pain and guilt for my wife and son. My wife because if I don’t make it she will be left holding the pieces of a shatter life and will be forced to move on. I hate that idea. And for my son I feel a sense of devastation because as a child I did not have a father (since that cocksucker left when I was 2). I vowed that when I had kids I would never do that to them. Now, I may be forced into doing that and I hate myself for it. All around feeling of guilt.

So with that I’ll continue with my work for the night with my tissue box by my side.

Life Sucks!

Posted by Sammy on Mar 18th, 2010 | 7 comments

Every bit of my life just fucking sucks. I have cried just about ever single night since being back home. Not because its weird being back home. I LOVE being back home. This is OUR home. I feel comfortable here. I find myself crying after Mikey goes to bed. Usually when I’m attempting to wind down. Instead of relaxing (like I should) watching TV after he goes to bed I start going on somewhat of a scavenger hunt around my house. Perusing boxes and drawers. What am I looking for? I’m looking for two things. One is the DVD with the photos of our last family photo session that we took on Mother’s Day last year before Gary started chemo. I have the case the photos came in, but I can’t seem to find where this DVD is. I remember giving it to Gary and where it went after that, beats me. I have no clue. Thankfully I have all of the photos saved on my pc so I can burn a dvd myself, but ya know, its not the same. I want THAT one.

The other thing I’m looking for is this black and white surfing picture of Gary. He actually used it to woo me over 11 years ago I have the picture saved digitally but I’d like the original too. I know its somewhere because at some point I had scanned it in for our wedding but beats me where the hell its gone since then. That was 5 years ago! I know eventually he’ll help me find what I’m looking for but man does it suck when you have your mind set on finding something and your mind in a way is getting in your way from finding it.

In my hunt I came across some cards from Gary. I tore my room up the other night looking for any kind of card from him and couldn’t find a damn one. But tonight I found 3 of them personally from him to me with a beautiful note in each one. Each one just broke my heart, almost like the analogy of pouring salt into an open wound. Yeah that was me. Pouring salt into my open wound, my heart. All of these cards were ones that he wrote me last year between Valentines, oops I meant Hallmark Day, and the last one was for our 5th wedding anniversary. The things he said brought me more tears today than they did the day he wrote them, because those cards he actually wrote from his heart. It wasn’t the cheesy, I love you type message. It was messages like “You are my rock”. Or him thanking me for pushing him to find out what the hell is wrong with him. Or the one line that hurt me the most tonight was him saying how he realized that he has so much to live for and he is going to give this fight all that he’s got because he’s got so many memories to make with us.

So on the eve of Gary being gone for exactly 11 week (yeah it’ll be 11 weeks tomorrow morning at 7:10am), I wanted to say that right now I’m more of a mess than I was 11 weeks ago when I lost him and I’m more alone than I was 11 weeks ago when I lost him. Whereas everyone else’s lives have gone on, mine hasn’t. Mine remains in shambles.

After shock comes guilt

Posted by Sammy on Mar 17th, 2010 | one comment

Or at least it does for me.

I don’t even know where to start with this post. For the past 2.5 months I’ve been somewhat numb. Just “living” what is my new life without Gary. Just getting by. Acting strong to everyone, while even surprising myself at times. That was the shock phase apparently and to me the next stage that has hit is guilt.

Guilt that I wish I would have screamed out to tell Gary that I can’t do this without him while they were performing cpr on him. Maybe just maybe he would have heard my screams and said “Ok I’ll keep fighting”.

Guilt that I left at 12:30am on New Year’s Day even though he wasn’t doing that well to go home and sleep so that I can have energy to spend the next day with him.

Guilt that I didn’t take him to the hospital sooner.

Guilt that I let us attempt to live a normal life after he was done with chemo, even though his immune system wasn’t back to normal.

Guilt that I didn’t tell Gary that I loved him every single day that I was with him.

Guilt that we won’t grow old together.

Guilt in the fact that I get to enjoy seeing our beautiful little MIkey grow up and Gary is missing all of this. How he would have loved hearing half of the things that comes out of Mikey’s mouth now. I get to see how much Mikey’s face lights up when he sees pictures of Gary or how he has this huge grin when I replay Gary’s voicemail greeting. I wish he was here to enjoy this, for us to be our little family again, a wish no one can ever grant me unfortunately. I’d have better luck at winning the lottery at this point.

Oh the guilt, this phase, S-U-C-K-S. I cry in bed every night because of the guilt I feel. People can tell me that I was the best wife and did everything I could. And I know that, but I still feel that guilt. I know its a phase, and I know it’ll pass. I hate everything about this new life of mine. The emptiness I feel is so much more real now than it was 2.5 months ago when I lost Gary, and that is probably why this phase is kicking my ass.