Days and weeks

Today as I sorta sorted through this massive pile of mail I have collected, I came across the last two bills you filled out to pay. The dates on these, oddly enough, medical bills is 10/13/13. You died 10/28/13. And you were sick in the hospital 2 weeks prior. So basically these fucking bills were the last thing you felt good enough to do prior to your death. And it makes me so fucking mad. And in case that doesn't cause enough grief and pain, I came across my insurance bill which now I am so clearly labeled widowed. Widowed at 40. How did this happen? Why did this happen?


I will have a few days or at one point it was even a week that I feel OK. Not great because I never feel great because I am a fucking Eeyore. But I will feel OK maybe like I will live through this and walk out the other side of this journey better and whole and healed. I don't really think that is how grief works. I think I will limp along waiting for someone to save me from drowning in this pain and when that doesn't happen I will still continue to limp along. I am good at limping along I have had a lifetime of practice.


I am not going to wax poetically about how great our marriage is/was or whatever because that is just bullshit and the world is full of enough bullshit without me adding to it. What I am going to say is we did tragedy and suffering well together. It was our "thing". The world knocked us down and by God, one of us pulled the other one up and we dusted ourselves off and we survived. We made it through my family's multiple screw-ups, the loss of friends and the year we lost Grandpa, Gran and Gertrud. But we always had each other. Now, I am alone and it sucks.


It's been 26 weeks and 3 days since you left me. I replay your illness and death over and over and over in my mind. I have a lot of anger. A whole hell of a lot of anger. I failed you. Medicine failed you. Ego's failed you and ignorance failed you. And I am sorry.

I want

I sit here with tears running down my face and that heaviness that hangs around my neck and runs up into my ears. It's a weird feeling, like I need to breath and can't or can breath but shouldn't. And I have this 100 pound weight on my shoulders and this pain under my right shoulder blade. I have social anxiety and at the same time a big case of the I Don't Give A Fuck. I feel like I have had a good day if I shower and make it to work. Luckily, I am on autopilot when it comes to showering and working because if it was any trouble at all, I just wouldn't screw around with it. I wouldn't do it. I couldn't do it right now. I have a tiny bit of I cans and a whole lot of I can't. My tolerance for anything stressful is low at best and days like these, well, no tolerance is an understatement.


I wake up dead and go to sleep awake. I never feel rested. I want to dream about you because I want to hear the sound of your voice, I want you to tell me it's going to be OK and that you love me. I have a whole fucking list of wants, I want to see your smiling face, I want to come home to you snoring softly in our bed. I want you to tell me goodnight and be safe. I want to call you when everyone is driving me crazy so you can tell me that we can't starve and we like electric. I want to cry on your shoulder and tell you how bad I hurt. I want you to go through this with me because we did tragedy well together.


I want to know you are OK. I want to know you are at peace. And I want you to know I love you and I miss you like crazy.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder

I feel that my grief is an oddly beautiful thing. Beautiful in it's easy, graceful waves of hate, sadness, and emptiness. The way it washes up around me and embraces me in feelings so raw and bare that I can't tolerate the pain. Then retreats, waiting another moment to take my breath away, to bring back the tightness in my throat and the pain across my chest.

My hate, oh the hate. I have embraced you. Right now you and I are inseparable. If you see one of us the other is not far behind. I am so full of you, hate. I am so fucking mad. Mad at Tony. He wasn't supposed to leave me. This wasn't my life. This wasn't our life. We were working on things. We were getting our shit together. We were celebrating 20 years together. We were supposed to have a party. A big celebration of our life together and what happened?! Well, you left me. Hell, you left us. We all miss you. Instead of having that 20th anniversary, I planned your celebration. The celebration of life, what a fucking joke, we all know that I planned your funeral. Your goodbye. It's not how things were supposed to go and dammit, I hate.

Oh, sadness my oldest friend. You are here and in your glory. For once in my life I am allowed to fully embrace you. I am allowed to wallow in you. Sadness, you are part of what makes my grief so beautiful. The way you cover me and weigh me down. The way you show in my face and in my movements. The sound of you in my voice. Sadness, enjoy this time because you won't always be welcome. One day, sadness, you will be replaced.

Thankfulness, I got it

I am not good with mushy-happy-feel-good feelings. I am much better with hate, doom, gloom and humor that may or may not be appropriate at any time. November is the month of all that is thankful. I usually participate in the thankfulness posts on FB mostly because it annoys the shit out of people and to remind myself that I have a lot to be thankful for.

This year, well, it's not been a normal year. FFS I hope it's not a normal year, never, ever, never a normal year. Although, it's been 5 years ago that my grandma and my mother-in-law died right before thanksgiving. Apparently, November hates me.

Where am I going with this post? Well, I am dancing around it but I want to say that I am thankful. I am very thankful this month for odd things. I am thankful that things aren't worse. How can that be, say you? Well, I could be an uneducated mother of 5 who's husband just died and we didn't have life insurance. Instead of a young employed woman who's husband just died without life insurance. While my life is forever changed, I am not going to starve or have to worry about where my house payment is coming from. Things always can be worse, my most un-favorite saying of all time has become my mantra.

What else is getting my thanks? Well, for all the outpouring of love and kindness, even the hugs. I don't have the words to express how much it means to me. It has been overwhelming. Strangers, friends, and family have all shown me so much understanding and love. I just can't wrap my mind around it. And I am thankful for all of it.

Are you kidding me?

Are you kidding me has been a daily saying the past three weeks. It's bad enough that I have lost my husband. Lost my husband. Say that, think about it, lost my husband. What a dumb fucking thing to say. I lost my husband. You lose your keys or a pen. You don't lose a loved one but at the same time you can't say "my husband died". Or he's dead. It upsets people too much. It makes things too real. So I walk around saying trite shit like, he expired, or I lost, or he passed away and smile weakly and sigh and scream in my head " HE IS FUCKING DEAD DAMN YOU. DEAD".

I will never see him again. I will never hear I love you or I miss you or how was your day. I will never kiss or hold hands or touch him again. Who is going to fight dirty with me? Say all the mean, awful truths that one only knows from years of being together. Who's going to scrub my back and tuck me in. Who will love me when I can't love myself?

Going through this is just fucking awful. Awful. Nothing is easy, I can't take Tony off my medical insurance without filling out two packets of paperwork and even with that I had to write-in death. What a crazy thing. I was going to take him off the car insurance, nope can't do that because the car is in his name. Now I am not real sure of much these days but I don't think he is going to be driving real soon. And dammit if he seen driving is I say having car insurance is the least of my issues. Why is the world is all this so difficult? There is not many things in life that are for sure other than death. We are all going to die one day. Who makes all these decisions that makes simple things so difficult? Who the fuck is making these rules?

New title

I hesitated about blogging right now. I am going through a lot of painful feelings right now and I don't want to hurt anyone or perhaps it is I don't want to cause anymore hurt in a world full of hurt. Yeah, yeah, cliché but true.

It's been 2 weeks since Tony died. The first week was a numb blur, last week a numb blur and well, I am damned thankful for that numbness. I sit and I am still waiting for him to come home. Logically, I know he isn't returning but I do a few things around the house, sigh, and wait. The dogs wait. My family waits. His friends wait. We wait and he isn't coming home. And I am so fucking mad. I feel so cheated.

I feel the medical field that I work in failed him. It failed me. I have wasted all these years working nights, weekends, and holidays for nothing. I let this useless-ass medical field take-over my life and sap what happiness I had right out of me for what? For nothing. Nothing. I was already bitter and now I don't have the words for what I am.

There are things in life I never thought I would have to do, I had always kind of thought I was so damned high strung that I would just drop dead or perhaps a nice stroke? I just thought I would die first. I mean, I am left-handed -10 years, obese -10 years,  work nights -10 years, married -5 years, and no children -10 years. I should be dead last year. I don't relax, hate fun, eat junk and don't move. The 7 deadly sins and I are friendly-friends. I wasn't supposed to be left behind. But here I am.

Here I am. I am here. Starting a different life, a new life. What do I like to eat, how is it going to get fixed, bought, and put away. Who's going to eat with me? Ask me about my day. Worry when I am late coming home. Take care of me. Who is going to be my side-kick and who is going to have my back? No one had my back like Tony.

This blog is just a jumbled mess. Like my head. My thoughts. Myself. Our family and friends.

Illness is only for the sick

The hubby is ill, like seriously, are you fucking kidding me, really, fucking ill. And I am a fucking mess. A damned mess. A hot mess. It's crazy because things were going so well, smooth even. Tony started with the seasonal crazy, a tad early this year I might add, and I pointed it out to him, I even was somewhat nice about it. Usually, I am all OMG are you kidding me you are acting nutty than a fruitcake in March, which helps all of NONE but it doesn't stop me from stating the obvious. They don't call me Cap't obvious for nuttin'. But this year a kinder, gentler Angie has been spotted (stop laughing) and she said lovingly, Tony, really? I mean seriously, it is only Oct and it is too early to start this shit. And it worked. He told me the next day, I am sorry I let my crazy out and I am going to work harder on making this year a better year. WOOT.

Then BAM, the fucking life truck hit us. Hahahaha, it said, things going decently, let me fix that shit for you. And here we are 15 days into some of the worse shit ever. Today is day 10 in the hospital and let me just tell you, fuck the hospital. Fuck it right in the goat ass. It's not the care, no horror stories or anything, just it's the hospital. I only like being there when I am getting paid to be there and then I still don't really like it and they are paying me to be there. UGH. And watching Tony become weaker and sicker sucks stinky balls.



This is the blog I was actively working on when Tony woke up and said, "I want to sit up" and my life changed. I have no clue how much my life has changed or the depth of change but my life will be changed. See after this happened my Tony died. He died. While I would love to tell you something poetic and some bullshit but I can't. So, I am going to tell you some real shit instead.

I have a low hum of activity in my head. The what-ifs and whys. The should have and the could have and the OMFG what the fuck-haves. I believe I am partially in shock and in panic mode. I believe that the body/mind protects itself and right now it is protecting me because I am oddly numb and detached. This shit isn't happening to me. It's a joke. I would say Tony was just gone on a trip but really the only time he ever went anywhere on a trip without me was with Todd and I had to force him to go because he needed a break from me. I needed a break from him to but he needed a break from me. I am not a nice person. You have to remember this.

I stopped talking to Tony awhile back, it has been a gradual thing. Oh I am not saying I never talk to Tony, I am just saying, over time, I stopped talking. I let all the pain and hurt and anger build up and instead of dealing with it, I just stopped. Story of my fucking life right? And recently, I have had a change of heart and started talking more, I told him things he needed to hear about things I was unhappy about and the things I love about him. But I don't think I told him enough I loved him and that I needed him. When I was mad I would say "I don't need you, you know this right". Needing something is weakness. I don't want to be weak.

However, I am a fool.