A Quiet Saturday

It's nice not having to chase around. I have dinner with friends tonight, breakfast at the Onion and the rest of the time is mine!  I really am enjoying it. 

I managed to get through the 22nd uneventfully. And, I am not feeling the presence of the big rock over my shoulder as I did a week or so ago. 

An uneventful week.  I did go to Boise for a quick overnight trip to visit with a customer on Thursday.  Otherwise, it was a pretty typical work week.  We did have rain and apparently some snow last night at 900 feet elevation. My house is at 350' so I only saw rain. 

Last night I attended a concert at Stanford by the Stanford Symphony Orchestra and Stanford Symphony Chorus.  One of my grief group members sings in the chorus. It turns out I know one other member of the chorus as well. In fact, I had dinner with her and her husband at a friend's house last Sunday.  Small world!  

My next door neighbors on my south side put their house up for sale a bit ago and moved out this past week. They were a great couple and I really enjoyed them as neighbors. Their work situation had changed and the commute from Los Gatos to Stanford for Lucrecia, coupled with two kids, the younger needing day care and the older starting school was just too much.  She told me her commute is now less than 10 minutes, no freeways involved.  Sorry to see them go.  Here is a picture from the May Celebration of Mary's Life party with Lucrecia, Tim and my daughter, Erika. 

From 2010-05-08 Celebration of Mary

Finally, I was on Facebook this morning and one of the those long lost factoids popped up in front of me.  Mary's son, Daniel, asked Kamie to marry him during the recent Christmas holidays--and she said yes.  Kamie is a sweetheart and is more than welcome as a new member of the family.  However, and here is the long lost factoid, Kamie was born on April 8.  If you don't recall April 8 in my writings, here is a link to the post that explains it. Click here.   

It is cold today (for us, in the 40s) and its time I headed for the dry cleaners and some other weekend chores. 


Take care! 


p

Go Live Your Life, Redux

It was Feb 22 last year when the Oncologist told Mary she was cancer free. These links are to my blog written a year ago. I am presenting them here for the simple act of reaching out and that helps me with my grief.   

Feb 22, click here.

Feb 24, click here. 

Feb 28, click here.

The Oncologist's pronouncement was based on what they could measure and see. Unfortunately, Mary's cholangiocarcinoma didn't behave in a manner that would allow the suite of technology used at Stanford to detect the cancer. And, truth be told, if they had been able to detect her cancer in early 2010, it would not have mattered. There was no "further action" available after the surgery and radiation she had as treatments in 2009, especially because the margins on the removed liver tissue was classified as "positive" meaning the surgery had not removed all the active cancer in her liver. And we know her body was not able to withstand the chemo recommended for her cancer as she had tried in October-November.  Mary was about to be at the end, we didn't know it until a month later in March of 2010.  

I've talked about my personal gauntlet. Feb 22 is the 2nd major date in the sequence because there was such hope, optimism and positive energy then.  Click here for The Gauntlet.

Do I resent the Oncologist for what transpired on Feb 22?  Absolutely not. I think the Oncologist and the Surgeon, Drs Fisher and Visser, were absolutely at the top of their game with the latest techniques and methods available. 

When Mary was in Stanford for her last days, one of the residents took me through the history of Mary's care at Stanford. He had obviously spend considerable time reading, studying and even memorizing facts about her journey.  As I have written multiple times before, Mary's cholangiocarcinoma created no tumors or other features that allowed the best imaging techniques in the world to "see it"--including some far out experimental set ups they sent Mary through.  And, that is the basic truth of the situation.  The doctors cannot target with the knife or blast with radiation a cancerous growth that refuses to be seen.  There was simply nothing there for them to target after her liver surgery in May of 2009. 

Plan B, therefore, is to use chemotherapy. And, Mary did agree and did start chemo with the most successful chemistry reported in the literature for stopping cholangiocarcinoma.  Unfortunately, Mary's system did poorly with the chemo. So poorly, in fact, that it had to be abandoned after only two injections.  The chemo was rather aggressively killing her.    

Why were the doctors so positive?  Because the blood test, affectionately called CA19-9, gave favorable readings month to month. The value was dropping each month after Mary's liver surgery (except during radiation, and that was typical) and then it dropped into the "normal range" for the prior couple of months leading to Feb 22. The Feb 22 reading continued this great trend.  And that gave the Oncologist the confidence to say "Go live your life, you are cancer free."  

As you read those year old postings, I don't know if you can feel the joy we were both experiencing.  Mary never read the blog, she treated it as 'my therapy' and didn't want to influence what or how I said things.  I think she may have also felt my openness on some issues would have caused her blood pressure to spike, causing a fatal coronary.  If she was gonna die, it was going to be from cancer, not from my writings or my cooking.  

Thanks to all my friends for their support, caring and letting me know how much they feel as well. Thank you. 

p

In case you were wondering, click here for the definition of redux. 

A Rainy Saturday

The weather has changed, we've lost our wonderful "summer in winter" and are now suffering a true California winter. daytime temperatures in the 50s and rain. Oh well...it is February.

I am still waiting for the rock to roll over me. It hasn't been felt for a few days but I am pretty sure it is lingering back there somewhere. During my massage last night, Ingrid used a technique involving hots stones and hot towels on my torso and back. She said it may provide the comfort to release some of the feelings. If the analogy is correct, releasing a little by little may prevent a massive downer.

Right now I am playing the music I selected for Mary's Celebration at the house on May 8. Each of those songs has a special meaning for us, and some just trigger tears.
"From the dark and lonely street, to the bright side of the road, we'll be lovers once again on the bright side of the road...
Into this life we are born, baby sometimes I don't know why, at times seems to go by so fast, in the twinkling of an eye...
Let's enjoy it while we can, help me sing my song, little darling from the bright side of the road..." From Van Morrison's Bright Side of the Road played as our wedding march in 1996.

I loved the call for "Little Darling", Mary was certainly that for me. And "share my load", she did that for me and I believe I did that for her too. We both came out of relationships that were less than bright for each of us to be lovers once again and to form our wonderful love for each other and a marriage that was beyond belief in happiness and joy.

How could we know that "Into this life we are born...at times seems to go by so fast, in the twinkling of an eye." Mary's dad, Grampa Jack, lived to his late 80's and her mom, Alberta, lived to her late 90s. Our plan was for Mary to follow them and probably break 100 pretty easily, given her genetic gift. Instead, she just turned 63 when cholangiocarcinoma took her...decades too soon.

Truly, our time together was just "a twinkling of an eye".

I took Mary's car into the dealer this week. Its on board computer was berating me for being 20 days past required maintenance. This car does not go in on a time based schedule. Instead, the dashboard lights up like a spot light on a cop car to tell you to take it in for service.

Turns out the last time the car declared it needed service was two years ago, just before Mary's symptoms presented in late March of 2009. Our service writer, Paul, is a true gentleman. As he approached the car, he was looking around as if someone was missing. Rather than let things get to far down the wrong path, I informed him right away of Mary's death. He was visibly shaken and overwhelmingly polite.

Later in that conversation, he said a wonderful thing that simply caused me to tear up.
"It was so cute that you and Mary always came in together when this car needed service. I could easily see that you clearly had a wonderful loving relationship that was very special."

We parted on his words, "If you agree, I belong to a prayer group, may we pray for you and Mary?"

I choked out a "Yes, certainly" as the tears came and I turned away.

p

Indiana Jones had it easy

He could see the damned big rock rolling in his direction.  I can feel a rock rolling towards me as I continue through the grief gauntlet, but I cannot see it.  At times I can feel it, like this morning as I got ready for work. I just knew there was a massive emotional downer just waiting for me to acknowledge it. And, as soon as I did, it would take over and put me into a tailspin.

During the past four days I stayed so busy, it made sure the feelings didn't have time to either run over me (the rock) or linger long enough at any one time to trip the landmine.  This morning, as I dressed for work, I could really feel the rock and I started to react to it. But, I had an early morning meeting at work and I pushed it away in order to do my day job.

This afternoon, I met with my grief counselor and we talked about the rock, landmines and the gauntlet.  All are reasonable analogies for the emotions I am dealing with.  She also suggested I make time in my calendar to let some of this emerge so I could deal with it little by little. I hope I can do that in the next few days.

Dinner on Valentines evening was with MaryR and me at Ingrid's place and Maurice was the cook. An excellent meal was prepared and it was delicious, thank you, Maurice. 

I remembered a bit more about Valentine's Day of 1996.  In 1995, Mary had just moved here from Scottsdale and for Valentines Day of 1995 I asked her that we not discuss or spend time on "what's next" in our relationship for a year. Rather, let's spend time on us and seeing if this is a relationship that truly works. For Valentine's dinner of 1996, we picked Pedro's Cantina in Los Gatos.  During the meal, Mary very gently led me to the issue that was on her mind but not so aggressively that I'd bolt and run (hey, I did that in 1968!)

As I recall, her words were along the line of "It was a year ago we had Valentine's Dinner shortly after I moved here from Scottsdale."  Frankly, those words had no impact when she first said them but then as the discussion continued about this and that while the meal continued, it dawned on me that this was the one year mark!  How I could have forgotten? And not prepared a special Valentines Card is one of the great mysteries of the male mind.  Her gentle statement did help me remember.  I did panic about almost forgetting. I did NOT panic about what to say.  Somewhere during that year it was clearly plain to me I was going to marry this woman if she'd have me, so I blurted out "Mary, I want to marry you if you will agree."  And, obviously, she said yes.

The next step, of course, is the ring.  We started shopping in Los Gatos and the first shop we hit was Gehrkens (http://www.gehrkens.com) and he had a beautiful ring in the window.  Amazingly enough, it was Mary's size.  We thanked Ken for his time and told him this was our first stop and we really wanted to do more shopping before making a selection.  We looked over the next several weeks and then we decided to go back to Gehrkens.

As I walked in, I said to Ken "Looks like you sold that ring, oh well."
He responded, "Oh no, I set it aside, I knew you'd be back."  At that point he opened the safe, pulled out an envelope marked "Mary and Pat" with no last names, no phone numbers nor other identifying items and out spilled the ring.  It still fit Mary beautifully. He was right, we were back! As we visited other shops, we had found ourselves comparing this ring to all the others we found and concluded it was the ring she wanted.  As an aside, Mary did not want a set, she wanted a single ring for engagement and marriage. (If the picture does not appear below, click here.)

From Mary E Quirk Hughes Lamey--Later Years

This picture was taken at the Los Altos Hills Country Club during an Easter Brunch with Dean and Cheryl.  The look on Mary's face is priceless! Sort of a "I finally landed that fish!"

And this fish was happily caught!  And in love.

Ciao

Running the Gaunlet, #1

Tomorrow is Valentines' Day. As I wrote previously, that is the day I asked Mary to be my wife...and she said yes. 

I have filled this weekend through tomorrow night with lots of activities.  Friday night dinner with Ingrid and Maurice who arrived from Vienna on Tuesday night.  Lots of chores on Saturday. Dinner party meeting virtually all new people on Saturday. Breakfast at the Onion with Ingrid, Maurice, MaryR and myself. Maurice then came to the house and we moved a big piece of furniture from the master bed room to the downstairs recreation room.  That was a project!  

Tonight I hosted a pot luck dinner with my grief companions from the group sessions I attend. It was a very nice event and I think everyone, including me, had a good time. Tomorrow is work and tomorrow night is a dinner party with Maurice, Ingrid, Mary and possibly Emilie for Valentines' Day.

In other words, I am not sitting and waiting for the grief landmines to hit me.  But, in spite of these activities, the landmines are sometimes triggered and there is nothing to do but ride them out.  

Ciao

Pat

Just a Tuesday

Tuesday is my day to attend two counseling sessions. First, a session with an individual counselor followed by a 90 min break and then my group session. Twelve of us this time, seven women and five men. The group composition changes every 6 weeks and this is the first time we had more women. These weekly grief sessions are still very valuable to me. My emotions certainly come out in the weekly individual sessions and somehow I am able to keep most of my really strong reactions in check until I get to individual session each week. 


Tuesday is an evening where I take the time to focus on me. The individual therapy allows me to push away all the distractions and really allow the emotions to be present. Sometimes that session is really tough, other times it is emotionally draining but not so terribly painful. And, as always, my counselor is really good at helping me identify those things that help me move forward.


The group session is good for we are suffering the same event (loss of a life partner) and we find support and empathy amongst our members. We each experience the pain in a different way, but there is no question the pain is there.


I am resetting my diet this week, getting off the bad stuff and on to the healthy foods. My plans include a reconfiguring of the house to encourage more time on the treadmill plus weekend time on my bicycle. That all stopped and fell away with the broken rib last August.


The gauntlet begins on Monday, Saint Valentine's day. In 1996 at Pedro's Cantina in Los Gatos, I asked Mary to be my wife. She said yes.


Mary moved here in January of 1995 upon my insistence. Just a few weeks later on Valentines Day in 1995, I asked her that we enjoy our relationship and not dwell, discuss or otherwise spend energy on what "might come next" for 12 months. Considering she had given up her seat on the bench as a judge, pulled up stakes from Scottsdale and only had an assurance from me that she'd have a place to stay, it was probably pretty ballsy of me. Oh well.


When it's right, it is right. And, believe me, it was right for Mary and me both.

I'm OK and getting ready for the gauntlet

It has been a couple of weeks since I have posted so you may be wondering if something is wrong. Nope, everything is fine. I am just buzzing around doing this and doing that and generally keeping myself distracted.

The emotional gauntlet is coming up for the next 12 weeks, or at least I am calling it the gauntlet. It goes like this:

• Feb 14:  On this day I proposed and Mary accepted (1996)
• Feb 22:  The Oncologist pronounced "Go live your life, you are cancer free" (2010)
• Mar 7:   Mary's Birthday
• Mar 22:  Mary's symptoms of Cholangiocarcinoma presented while we were in Denver (2009)
• Mar 26:  Mary was admitted to Stanford for the last time (2010)
• Mar 28:  Mary was admitted to Good Samaritan Hospital (2009)
• Mar 31:  We first heard the word "Cholangiocarcinoma" from the Doctor at Good Sam (2009), The Stanford Doctor told me I should "assemble the family" (2010)
• April 4:  Easter Sunday and the last day Mary was conscious
• April 8:  My birthday, our first date (2nd time around), my Mom died, Mary died--And my sister informed me this weekend my Aunt Claire Lamey also died on this day. I just became aware (again) that Daniel, Mary's son, is engaged to Kamie who has her birthday on April 8.  
• April 17: Los Gatos remembrance
• April 24: St Paul remembrance and burial
• May 8:  Celebration of Mary's life at our home

Part of the therapy is to set plans to "get through" tough dates without going into a massive emotional downer.  I have just started working on those plans now. I don't know what they will be but don't be surprised if you find me someplace in the world doing something during the next three months. 

As for Aunt Claire, Mary and I attended a visitation and funeral in St. Paul, probably my Dad's but I really don't remember other than it was at O'Halloran and Murphy (of course) and it was the first funeral Mary attended of one of my family members in the 1990's. What I do remember is Mary and Aunt Claire sitting together for the longest time talking, laughing and telling stories.  Aunt Claire and Uncle John were very much part of my life as I grew up and I was mildly shocked this weekend when Maureen told me Aunt Claire also died on my birthday.  I have since confirmed it via the archived obituaries of the St. Paul papers. 

That is all for now.  I hope to write this weekend of my recent activities.
Ciao