Now and Then

A pretty decent week.  The ramp went up Monday.  Ron went and got drained at the hospital on Tuesday and felt well enough to catch a matinee of The Hunger Games afterward.  Just before the movie, he walked, using only his cane, into Smokes on Burdick to satisfy some cravings.  He bought some Djarms (clove cigarettes that we all smoked in high school – was this just an Alma thing, or a 90’s thing, or did everyone, everywhere, in every era do this?) and a wood pipe and pipe tobacco.  It was the farthest I have seen him walk since he fell last week.  Scary to “let” him do that, but I could see that it made him feel really good to be standing and interacting with the staff to find the right tobacco blend. 

When we got home, we arrived to a completely mowed lawn!  Again, our amazing nurse, Pam, coordinated with a friend to pull through for us.  Tom Block from Wolverine Lawn Services arranged to have our yard mowed, just this one time, at no cost to us.  They even weed whipped!  The place looks great and takes the pressure off from me for a bit, which is good, because I am still waiting to get my lawn mower back from the repair shop.  Additionally, hospice has secured volunteers for the next couple weeks to help with mowing (if needed, depending on what our weather does), so we should be taken care of for a bit and will go from there.  I was again flooded with gratitude, amazement, and humbleness.  Asking for and accepting help is a challenge for me, but it is such a good experience because it renews my faith in humanity - especially with strangers who come forward and do the right thing, not even knowing much about us.  It proves to me that there are still good people left in the world and Ron and I are blessed enough to have these interactions with them. 

Wednesday, Ron was pretty exhausted from being out and about so long on Tuesday, so he called off visitors he had planned from Alma.  It is hard for him, because he wants to see people, yet he is too exhausted most of the time for visiting.  I think it is even harder when everyone he wants to see comes from so far away – there is an added pressure of making it worthwhile or spending enough time with them.  I know people don’t expect that, but I think Ron has a hard time of letting go of that underlying pressure.  If he knows he only has about 20 minutes of conversation in him, he doesn’t want people to drive 4 hours roundtrip only to have to leave after 20 minutes.  So, we are just sorting all of those feelings out as we go and trying to figure out what to do. 

Thursday was a difficult day for Ron medically.  It left him feeling frustrated and sad and angry and humiliated and, in the end, just completely wiped out and exhausted.  Thursday kind of sucked.  I was feeling super sad, too, mourning the loss of a friendship that has completely deteriorated during the course of Ron’s battle with cancer.  I think I have finally accepted that it will never work out or be the same and I am letting that person go emotionally.  But it still causes grief.  It is hard to have added grief when I am also grieving around Ron’s illness.  I just do not know how some people can be so heartless – that is what I keep coming back to and struggling to wrap my head around.  Where is the empathy?  Fortunately, the disappointment I experience with some of the people who are supposed to be closest to me is overcome by the supremely kind actions of complete strangers who step in to help – for example, with the ramp and the lawn.  There are folks who offer financial assistance and help us in other ways, like keeping Ron company while I go run errands or preparing a meal for us.  My coworkers are now pitching in to pay for someone to clean my house, so I don’t have to worry about that while also caring for Ron 24/7.  Just all the little things people do (and even the things they offer to do that I don’t need to take them up on yet) are miracles that keep me going. 

Friday, Ron’s brother, Doug, and mother, Trudi came down to spend the day with him.  This freed me up to make a run to Ikea to pick-up a chair that folds out into a single bed.  A friend had suggested it to me when I talked about wishing there were a way for me to sleep near Ron again.  I miss sleeping by him, but we can’t both comfortably fit in the hospital bed and I don’t have a ton of room for adding a bed to the living room, since we now have all this medical equipment everywhere.  This seems like the perfect solution – a way to sleep in the same room with him at night while adding seating during the day.  The Ikea trip also gave me a longer reprieve from care-giving duties, with Doug and Trudi there and knowing Ron is comfortable with his family helping him.  They took him to his paracentesis appointment and were able to happily spend the whole day with him while I was gone.  I pulled my brother, Dustin, into the trip, since it is more fun to go with someone and he had never been to Ikea.  We got a lot of talking done in the car and I enjoyed the 1:1 time with him.  Dustin is, and has always been, one of my best friends.  He had fun at Ikea, we both got the items we came for, and admittedly some we didn’t, but I am pleased to say, impulse buying was at a minimum for me and everything I got, I will use.  When we got home, we hung out with Doug and Trudi for a bit and then everyone headed home.  Dustin later found out that he passed the written portion of his qualifying exams for his PhD.  This made it an even happier day for all of us (as if I ever had any doubts, Dustin).  Ron was wiped out from the hospital appointment and from visiting.  I put in Kill Bill Volume 2 (we had watched Volume 1 the night before) and he promptly fell asleep while I got busy with the Ikea directions for assembling the chair bed.  It took me most of the movie, but I put it together with not a single mistake during the process and am pleased to say, it is very comfortable and I look forward to sleeping on it tonight. 

Okay, so that was the week in review.  Now for the fun stuff – remembering what happened three years ago on this day, March 31^st.  I woke up in Lansing, staying at my friend Dan’s house so that I could get off to a Motivational Interviewing trainer booster session.  At the end of a day of training, I drove up to Alma. 

Ron and I had been talking every night, for hours at a time, for just over two weeks.  I had already blurted out on the phone that I loved him (which I did, but still . . . you are not supposed to say stuff like that so early in the relationship).  We did what we called “verbal cuddling” before bed each night, just talking about how great it would be to actually hug and kiss and physically be near one another to match the emotional closeness we had developed in our distance relationship.  It was all very giddy and cute.  We had decided that after my training, I would stay the night with Ron and then wake up super early to go straight in to work in Kalamazoo.  It was a long day of training, even though it let out fairly early, waiting for that moment when I could actually see him now that we had formed a relationship.

I sped to Alma.  My stomach was doing flip-flops.  My pulse raced.  I was nervous and excited.  We had not even had a proper, real-life kiss yet.  Almost no one knew where I was going or would be staying that night.  Dan knew and heartily encouraged me to “Get some, HB,” which, of course, made me blush.  I felt like a fugitive, creeping unannounced into the town where my parents reside to stay a night with a new boyfriend and try not to be seen by anyone who would report back to them (not that they would have cared that much about the new boy, but more about the fact that I didn’t tell them I would be in town and didn’t make arrangements to see them). 

I had once awkwardly tried to kiss Ron after an evening of drinking at a friend’s house, but the kiss was not reciprocated.  So, we had talked about this moment, this time when we would both be prepared for an actual kiss.  I had a cold, but Ron said he didn’t care – he was willing to get sick with me in order to have a first kiss.  I was so anxious.  I had been with the same person for almost ten years before meeting Ron and wondered what kissing someone new would be like.  I wondered if I even knew how to make out properly and worried I would screw it up somehow.  When I got to his house, I was so wound up that I could not stand still or even look at Ron, let alone kiss him.  We hugged and I announced that we had to go for a walk immediately so that I could work out some of my energy.  So we did. 

Once back from the walk, we briefly made-out in the kitchen.  It was sweet and nice and not at all as weird as I had worried it would be.  It confirmed, for me, that I was crazy about this boy and that we had chemistry together.  And, it took the edge off – the first kiss had been accomplished and we could both just relax. 

There were more kisses and hugs that evening, but mostly we just enjoyed actually being together after weeks of only being able to talk on the phone.  Ron cooked dinner.  I met some of his friends.  I took in the messy, bachelor pad apartment that he shared.  We walked and hung out in his room and went to sleep in his bed.  I even let him hang onto me all night, though I am not much of a cuddler and don’t get any sleep that way.  I lay in his bed, with his arms around me and him snoring near my ear, trying not to cough from the cold that I had.  I let my eyes adjust to the dark and surveyed his posters and books and other belongings.  I took in everything.  Ron is a comic book fan.  Ron is a trombone player.  Ron is a computer nerd.  Ron is a smoker.  Ron is a music lover.  Ron is a coffee lover.  Ron is interested in all things food.  Ron likes to eat candy.  Ron listens to jazz on his record player.  Ron watches Battle Star Galactica.  These are the things I learned about Ron from being in his place.  ‘This is the boy I love,’ I thought.  I felt happy.  Eventually, it was morning and I got up and took a shower and left early for the two hour drive to work, again feeling like I held a giddy secret with regard to where I spent the night.  I was sad to leave Ron, but I knew I would see him again in a couple days for the weekend.  Realizing that we worked in person as well as we worked over the phone basically solidified the fact that we would spend as much time together as possible.

So, this day marks the three year anniversary of our first kiss and our first night spent together.  Wish we were having as much fun now as we did back.  Wish we could go out and do something to celebrate.  Wish we didn’t have to deal with such serious shit every day.  Wish we would have the latitude to expect many more years together than the three we have shared so far.  But, rather than dwell on what I wish and things we cannot have, I am going to try to turn my heart to a place of gratitude.  I am grateful that today, I still have the amazing Ron Clark in my life.  Today, I can still kiss him and hug him and love him . . . and we don’t even have to cuddle via phone calls anymore, so, in that regard, life is good.