Anger towards the dead
Sounds messed up right? How could someone possibly be mad at someone that died? Well I’m here to tell you its very possible, and very very very REAL. It’s a feeling that has overcome me a few times in the last 6+ months. Today was one of those days when I got really mad at Gary for leaving. Kind cowardly if you look at it from my point of view. I knew Gary pretty well and he was never one to just give up. N.E.V.E.R!!!!!!!!
Logically I know that his body just couldn’t take it anymore, but I’ve watched my fair share of movies with people debating on whether to walk toward that comforting white light or go back to their body and well ummmm W.T.F!!!! How could he have chosen that light? Did he not see me freaking out outside of his room? How could he possibly think that *I* could raise Michael on my own? I mean I have no doubt that I can do it, because quite frankly I do NOT have a choice, but still knowing that his father left him when he was 2 and how he didn’t want to repeat that himself, how could he do that to us?
Like I said logically I know Gary didn’t have a choice here. But man if you were in my shoes you still can’t help but get angry from time to time. I totally blame it on the entertainment world for conveying heaven the way they do to all of us. 
My new adventure :)
I’m actually very excited about this too. When Gary was going through treatment he had told me about his friend, Josie, who was planning on running the Disney full marathon with Team in Training and wanted to run in honor of him. He was *so* moved by that. I actually got in touch with her shortly after to get more info on Team in Training because I thought it was such a great idea and I was interested in doing it myself once things calmed down with his health. I remember Gary telling me how when he was healthy enough he was going to train with Team in Training and run the Disney marathon himself, he used to be a long distance runner and ran a marathon or two back in the day.
So it was a no-brainer when I got the little postcard in the mail from Team in Training mentioning their info sessions for the upcoming winter season. Which just so happens to include the Disney marathon weekend. I immediately signed myself up for a session 
That session was this morning and I was so excited to go. Sooooooo excited. Being there and watching their little video just totally reassured me of the reason why I want to do this. I want to do this not only for Gary but for all of the others out there that are going through treatments for their blood cancer or those that will one day get diagnosed. I want a cure for this and like I’ve said before, whatever it takes from me I plan on doing it. So I filled out all of the paperwork and paid my registration fee so that I can run/walk (hopefully run) the Disney Half Marathon this coming January. It couldn’t be better timing either. I’ll be running my first half marathon EVER just days after the year anniversary of Gary’s death. Just thinking about the timing of all of it gives me chills.
I know people think I’m crazy for doing this but look at it from my perspective. I got to see my very healthy husband go from the pinnacle of health to someone that was gasping for air. I got to see him dwindle away to skin and bones while he was on his horrible treatment. I saw him cry when he was in pain….scream when things hurt…and pass out on the floor because his body just couldn’t keep him upright. At the time I felt helpless, now I know exactly how I can help. Yeah I can’t help Gary, but if he could put his life on the line in hopes of finding a cure for his very rare form of lymphoma well then the least I can do is put myself through a 6 month training program so that I can ultimately run 13.1 miles.
So stay tuned. I plan on posting updates. Training officially starts on August 14th Before then I’m hoping to have my website up so that I can start raising my money so that I can actually participate. I have a minimum that I have to raise in order to go in January so I can definitely use all of the help I can get.
The half way mark starts N.O.W!
And a HUGE UGH!!!!!!
Sixth months ago today was Christmas Eve. I was working from home because Gary wasn’t feeling so great plus it was a short day at work anyways so it all worked out. We had been invited by our good friend Melanie and Abel to spend Christmas Eve with their family once again, just like we had for the two previous years. All day long I kept asking Gary if he felt up to going because it was his call to make. Ultimately he decided that we would go and try to make the best of it. Gary had a BLAST at the party. Even though he wasn’t feeling 100% he felt well enough to play RockBand. I was watching most of the time while he jammed on the drums and at one point someone was getting tired of playing guitar so he asked me if I wanted to play. That was the last time we played a video game together. UGH!
I remember having to drag Gary out of their house because he was having so much fun socializing. Once we got to the car I could see how tired he really was. He pushed himself too much. We got home and he was so beat that he couldn’t help me bring Mikey’s gifts from the garage to place under the tree, ya know since Santa was coming to our house.
Six months ago today, Gary put Mikey to bed for the last time in his life. Had I known that I would have cherished that moment so much then, but I didn’t know. He loved that little boy so very much.
Half a year since my happy family was happy and together and happy because we were together. It feels like it was just yesterday.
Dreams of daddy
I don’t know how we got on the topic of daddy while on our way to the gym today but from the backseat of my car I start hearing Mikey talking about daddy. Specifically how he wants to find him. Ouch, talk for a stab in the heart!!!!
For the past 5.5 months I’ve been telling him that his daddy is in heaven with the moon and the stars and he’ll forever be in his heart. Mikey apparently is a smart little boy and realizes that its possible to go up to the moon and stars if you had a rocket ship. So he insisted on going in a rocket ship to go to daddy so that he could play with him. Because he REALLY wanted to play with his daddy. So to try to calm his whining I decided to ask him if he played with daddy in his dreams and he of course said yes. I doubt Mikey knows what dreams are, but its was comforting to think that he was playing with Gary in his dreams. I then proceeded to ask him what he did with daddy. Go figure, he remembers playing guitar hero with Gary so that was one of the first things he mentioned. He said that he played guitar and also the drums. He also mentioned playing with the bouncy ball. So I asked if he played soccer and basketball with him and he enthusiastically said yes.
I can only hope that this little boy *is* having dreams of his daddy. I’m doing my best to try to preserve whatever memories he could have of his daddy. It won’t be easy since he’s so young and the odds are against me from the get go, but I can only hope that our angel upstairs is doing his hardest to help me out in that department.
Walk with us!
We are less than 5 months away from this year’s Light the Night walk. This year is the second year that Team Gary’s Guardian Angel’s will be walking. Unfortunately this year we are walking in memory of Gary and Mikey and I will be carrying the lit up gold balloon that symbolizes those that we lost leukemia and lymphoma. There are a few things that makes this year’s walk THAT much more special in my book.
#1 -Gary is one of this year’s Honored Heroes. What an honor for our family, he’d never expect something like that in a million years.
#2 – At last year’s walk one of Gary’s coworkers, Gretchen, who raised over $1k in a matter of a week got a medal for having raised so much money. Well I happened to be standing right next to Gary with the camera turned on just as she was giving her medal to him because he was such an inspiration to her. That night I told Gary that next year (now this year) I will be up on stage getting my medal too because I will raise over $1k just myself. I WILL!!!!
So here I am soliciting people to walk with us at this year’s event. It’ll be on November 13th, at Huzienga Park in Ft. Lauderdale.
If you’d like to join our team you can by clicking HERE.
If you can’t join us for whatever reason but would like to help me get to my $1k goal you can do so by navigating to my personal page or by clicking HERE
Thank you! With your help we can get the money that researchers need to come up with a cure for blood cancers so that no other families have to be broken apart like mine has been.
An anniversary I’d rather forget
It’s hard to just forget anniversary to important events, today is one that I’d honestly wish I could forget. Today is the anniversary of the day Gary officially started chemo for the very first time. I remember that day like it was just yesterday. I remember the emotions that I felt that day. I remember crying in private so that Gary coudln’t see how very scared I was. I wish so much that I could travel back in time and tell Gary to not do it. To just take his chance with this lymphoma diagnosis. But I know even if I went back in time he probably wouldn’t have listened. Gary was a medical geek that wanted so much to have been a doctor, he knew the right thing to do was to do the treatment even with the risks that it entailed. I know that it was the right thing to do becaus otherwise you live every day of your life wondering “What If”. And Gary didn’t want that. Now I live my life wondering “What If” every day. What if he didn’t do chemo, how long could he have lived?
As good as I have been the past couple of months I’ve hit a new low. It’s almost like my mind and heart have both started talking to one another and they both have come to the conclusion that Gary is never coming back. He’s gone. He can’t breathe, he can’t open his beautiful green eyes to look at me. I’ll never see him smile again. I’ll never get to give him another dose of the hug therapy he insisted on daily during chemo. He’s gone for good. I’ve been crying daily for the past week. None of my family members or my friends really know that I’m doing that, shoot Mikey doesn’t even know because when I cry around him its in the car with my sunglasses on.I don’t know if I’m finally really allowing myself to really grieve or what, but this just feels so very raw.
I wish someone would pinch me so I could wake up from this bad dream already!
My life…..the children’s book
With today being the anniversary of the day that Gary and I hopped on a plane to Maryland for his very first round of chemo I was reminded about how crappy my life has turned in just this past year. If anyone is due a break its ME! So everyone else…..quit your bitching, it’s my turn!!!!!! When I was thinking about all of the crappy stuff that was thrown our way I was reminded of one of Mikey’s favorite books that we seem to read EVERY SINGLE NIGHT.
The book Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day could seriously summarize my life right now. Except for the minor fact that I’m not in grade school complaining about how my day got off on a horrible start all because I fell asleep with gum in my mouth. So you are probably wondering where the hell I’m going with this. Well in the book Alexander constantly vents about how this or that goes wrong and how he vents about it to whomever is nearby him but no one bothers to listen. That’s kinda where I feel a lot like Alexander.
There are some days when I feel like everyone thinks things are just hunky dory with me. That there is no possible way I could, gosh still be grieving. But it’s day’s like today where all of the progress that you’ve made, you take a thousand steps back all because of what TODAY signifies. So *NO* things aren’t all peachy for me. I don’t bitch about it like Alexander does because quite frankly I think everyone is tired of hearing me bitch, so no one is there to listen anymore. That’s why I blog about it, because if anything I can get my words out, whether or not anyone chooses to read what I have to say.
Edited to say……OOPS as I was continuing my book writing this evening I realized that I was a little ahead of myself on this anniversary crap. That’s actually tomorrow. Woops. Well guess I have another crappy day in store for me then!
Bring on the tissues
As I said in my previous post I’m working on my book and I don’t really get that far without coming across something that makes me tear up. This was the latest one and I just had to repost it on my blog because when I read it I can totally hear Gary’s voice in my head saying it to me:
In our family I guess it’s best that I got the cancer since my son is so young he can’t comprehend and my wife is strong. However, if my wife got cancer I don’t know how strong I’d be if I had to explain to our son why mommy was sick AND do all the thing my wife is selflessly doing for me. If my Son got cancer I *know* I would not be strong enough to hold my wife up and take care of him. That idea literally scares me to the point of nausea.
Starting my book :)
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.
One year anniversary
I’m not sure why it’s even worth noting, but it is my blog and I control what I write or don’t write…right? Well even though I’m on vacation with Mikey I can’t help but know what today signifies. Today is the one year anniversary of Gary getting his official diagnosis of Peripheral T-Cell Lymphoma. I remember this day last year like it was just yesterday. We knew the call was coming because Gary was playing phone tag with the doctor. Finally around 6pm when we were both home his cell rang and we both knew who it would be on the other line. I didn’t have to be listening in on the call to know that it wasn’t going well. I saw the look of concern overcome Gary’s face as he was told that not only he has a more aggressive type of cancer but that he’d need chemo asap. I heard the word chemo come out of Gary’s mouth and I felt this sinking feeling in my stomach. I could only imagine the feeling Gary was feeling at that very moment. If Gary would have known that less than a year later he wouldn’t be alive I just know that he wouldn’t have done the treatment. He would have totally had taken his chances with this lymphoma thing and would have seen how long his body would let him be here for. It’s just crazy to think of all of the things that transpired in this past year.
A recent widow and single mom doing my best to survive on my own.
Last year I told Gary that I'd raise $1k at the 2010 walk, please help me reach my goal. This year Gary is one of the Honored Heroes for the walk so its even extra special to me. :) Just click on the Sponsor Me image to be taken to my fundraising page. Thank you!!!
Help me get to my 1st Half Marathon in Walt Disney World where I will run in memory of Gary :)
