Not One Bit Strong

I was reading my fellow blogger Jen Fulweiler's blong today over on Conversion Diary (I would make that into a clickable link but I don't know how--someone please tell me), and firstly I want to welcome her beautiful new son into the world, as well as Hallie Lord's over at Moxie Wife.  Lovely, strapping young men!

Unfortunately, Jen's son is having some breathing issues and had to be taken to the NICU in another hospital.  She said something to the effect that people were telling her how strong she was being, and if what she feels is being strong, she wants some examples of what "not being strong at all" feels like.  I could agree with her completely on that point. (and please join me in prayers for her young son).

I have had several people tell me lately I am handling my husband's death "well" and that I am being "strong" and one lady said she had no idea how I could do it--that she could never be that "strong".  Frankly I would love nothing more than to collapse into a permanent pile of weeping, raging terror and agony. Nothing. And I do so on a regular basis.  But, once you run out of strength to howl and scream and beat the wall and beg him to come back, please please please come back, I cannot bear it, I need you so much...........what are your choices but to get up and keep going?  Especially if you have a child, and especially-especially if you have a special needs child--one you swore to your dying husband to do everything for that he would want me to, to the best of my ability?

It hurts. It hurts when someone was picking up some ham radio equipment my husband had been repairing for him and  said while giving me money for the repair that he "certainly would not want to take advantage of a widow" (a widow??? That's me now? I don't like the sound of that at all. I feel I should be 95 and wearing black crepe).  He meant it kindly, but it's not the identity I always had of myself.  Wife, wife, wife--someone's wife--that's what I was, and still am, in my mind.

It hurts to flip through facebook and see a photo posted by my dear stepdaughter of her dad and my husband just weeks after we got together, when he was healthy and strong, holding her now 14 year old son and seated next to her now 17 year old son, who served as a pallbearer at his funeral, wearing a shirt I bought him so long ago, as a birthday present.  I wanted to die.  The pain was exactly like an icepick being driven through my heart and into  my soul.  How will this ever ease? I cannot fathom it.

I have to remember the blessings of these past few weeks--that he survived the initial esophageal bleed which almost no one does, because he was in the ER already when it happened, giving Daniel and I time to get there, and that a kind friend was willing to drive us 3 hours in the middle of the night to his bedside.

That he woke up from his post sedation coma after being given a good week to do so by a kind, caring Catholic doctor and a wonderful Catholic nurse.

That he saw us and recognized us and knew we were by his side.

That he had one good, lucid day when he was able to talk to us, and to tell me he loved me and kiss me, and even tell us a joke.

That he was baptized into the catholic faith, given an Apostolic Pardon, and went, presumably, straight to Heaven.

That I was able, despite earlier events indicating I would not be able to do this for him, to bury him where WE both wanted to be buried--in a beautiful Catholic cemetery, with a Catholic funeral service in our parish church, by my spiritual director and pastor, and using the funeral home I wanted. This was due to incredible kindness on the part of a family member.

That I was with him when he passed, and that he passed peacefully, with me holding his hand.

And finally, that a kind woman I barely knew at church said to me yesterday, "You think your relationship with your husband is over--but it is not over! It's just changed, that's all.  He's still here and you still have a relationship with him!"  That was the best and most encouraging thing anyone has said to me since the funeral.

But it's still so very very hard.  Please keep us in your prayers.

7 Quick Takes Friday

1)   Hanging in there. Trying to hang in there. Slipping off pretty regularly, but trying.

2)  I took some stones with words on them to the cemetery yesterday to place on my husband's grave. One said "Beloved", and one said "Watch Over Us". As I stood there crying and begging him to intercede with our Lord Jesus, I wanted to hear his voice so bad, I dialed my home phone line just to hear him on the voicemail. It broke my heart to hear him say "Bye!" at the end. 
Goodbye, my true love, goodbye. 

3)The incredible kindness of friends and those who loved him and our family has been the most radical, amazing example of true Christian love I have ever seen. Every time I turn around, another hand is reaching out, with prayer blankets, Irish soda bread, pumpkin bread, money, help for my son,  flowers, or some other much needed and gratefully appreciated item. I thank them all from the bottom of my heart. 

4) This weekend the cemetery is having a day for families, with lunch, nature walks through their wooded property and trails, and a chance to fellowship with other Catholics who have lost loved ones. It is SUCH a lovely place, I wish you all could see it.  

Beautiful spring day

Garden of Precious Love, where Mary watches over miscarried babies

St Francis path

5)I think often of how Mary must have felt when she lost her husband, St. Joseph, who had always protected her and Jesus, and provided for their earthly needs. I wonder sometimes if she asked Jesus to heal him?   Losing a wonderful protector and provider like my Robert--a man who worked for us to the very end--leaves such a large and frightening hole. Only in God can that hole be filled.  But I will always miss his earthly presence. 

The death of St Joseph

6) I am praying today for Jen Fulweiller of Conversion Diary as she undergoes a difficult medical procedure to protect her heart and lungs from clots during her delivery monday, and for Hallie Lord of Moxie Wife who is delivering today, I believe. I wish them both blessings, successful deliveries and that Jen's medical procedure goes well.  Please join me in praying for them. 

7) What does one do with one's wedding rings when your spouse dies?  How do you go about going through their personal items, clothes, etc, and when? 

The Funeral

Today was my husband's funeral.  It was a lovely Catholic funeral mass in the church, followed by interment at Our Lady of the Rosary cemetery in Georgetown, Tx--a beautiful cemetery with wildflowers, lovely headstones of all types, and windchimes everywhere, and wooded paths to walk along.

Many wonderful friends came--my beloved friends from Church who have walked this journey with us, and Robert's ham radio buddies. Also, his two grown kids from his previous relationship, grandkids, and my 3 boys.

We were all brokenhearted to lose such a wonderful, gentle, caring, unselfish soul.  A man who did everything he could to the very last for his family, though disabled, and who tried his best to help in any way he could. Though I had him only 15 years, they were the most blessed years of my life.

I don't know who I am now.

I'm not a "Catholic wife and mother" anymore.

I haven't worked in years and have many health issues that may prevent that.

My son has Asperger's syndrome---something that requires two parents at a minimum, and for which I am ill equipped emotionally to deal with right now--but that's another post for another day.

AT any rate, I was blessed today to have so many who cared for me come out--even many old friends I had not seen in over ten years.

I will miss my Robert with all my heart. The sky weeps for him as well today.

A Tragic Loss

In future post, I will go into more detail but right now I just wanted to let some friends know that I lost my beloved husband, Robert David Wolf on March 26 to cancer. We knew his time was short but not that short. Our son Daniel and I spent the last 3 weeks at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas at my husband's bedside as he tried to recover from an unexpected esophageal bleed. We are now back home in Austin. His funeral will be Tuesday, April 2. He was baptized Catholic by a priest, and this was a great blessing. More to follow as soon as I can.

7 Quick Takes Friday

1)  What are you doing for Lent? Or NOT doing? I was going to try not raising my voice with my 13 year old but I don't think that's going to work.  So, now I have to come up with something else.  And I'm two days late. So, it would be good if I could think of something I haven't done in two days that I like to do to get a jump on my tardiness.  But what........?

2)  Scorpions--I have to wonder why Jen at Conversion Diary sees scorpions every ten minutes in her house, in the same area as my house, and I have never seen a single scorpion since I moved to Texas in 1978? Why is that?  I have seen rats, flying tree roaches (seriously--FLYING roaches?????), yellowjackets, fire ants, geckos, you name it, but never a single scorpion.  Why is that?

3) Speaking of hideous critter tales--once upon a time about 10 years ago when we lived in a little stone house with crumbling foundations and fireplace holes that could not be plugged up and an attic opening big enough for raccoons, etc, we had the occasional rat scamper merrily across the living room floor as we were watching tv or something.  It sent me into paroxysms of terror as we had a baby in the house, plus I am no friend of rats.  We called the pest control people and they basically said there was nothing they could do.

Then, one horrible night around Halloween, I had a bowl of those small orange mallow Halloween pumpkin candies on a table beside my bed. We were asleep and suddenly, I felt a warm, furry creature nestled in my hair in the crook of my neck.  As we had no small pets, I immediately deduced what it was and threw myself screaming onto my husband, and the critter wisely took off. We turned the lights on, I sat up, and one of those pumpkin candies rolled out of the crook of my neck and onto the bed.  It had teeth marks in it and they weren't mine.  That was not one of my better nights.

A little bit like this

4) As for the flying tree roaches, I was instructed by the wife of the former renters that I should never ever venture outside the house at night--that the backyard was full of all kinds of unsavory flying and swooshing and slithering things, like in a Stephen King novel, and I would regret it bitterly.  She was right.  The tree roaches, however, came right on in when it got too hot outside for them, and I recall vividly lying in bed with my 4 day old baby and watching one emerge from our closet and begin walking slowly around the top of the wall towards where I was ensconced in the bed with my innocent babe. I actually called my husband and made him come home from work to murder said tree roach before it reached us.  I was having enough problems already with mastitis and thrush and giant purple nipples from the gentian violet I was told to use on them without tree roaches trying to carry off my baby.

It is NOT ok for these to fly.

5)  I JUST got this nice picture of Pope Benedict put up and now he's leaving office.   I'm not sure how I feel about that, but I wish him  peace, bless his sweet heart.

6)  My husband is still at MD Anderson in Houston, awaiting test results next monday morning from his PET and MRI scans, to see if and to where the cancer has spread.  I am terrified. I  cannot fathom being without him.  Please keep praying for him.

7) I am so grateful for all the dear friends in my life who have done so much for us these past few weeks of agony--I could never have made it through without them.

7 Quick Takes Friday--on Saturday

Ok ok, so I'm a day late for 7 quick takes, but I have been so busy and drained I can barely drag around these days to read other people's blogs, let alone come up with 7 coherent ideas of my own, lol.  SO, please excuse the delay.

1) As I was perusing our local Catholic store today--my favorite thing to do on a Saturday--I ran across this lovely----statue or something---of St Francis of Assisi and his animal chums.  It had a flat back with a hole for hanging, so it was obviously meant to be hung on a wall or something, and at the base it had a bowl of sorts made of grass. I could not decide it it was a holy water font or perhaps a rosary holder--BUT nay, 'twas not. In the packaging it said it was a BIRD FEEDER!   And here it is:

St Francis the bird feeder

Well, in MY house and my mind he's going to be a rosary dish/holder, and that's that.

2)  I talked with my lovely nieces last night--Kathleen, who is two years younger than myself, and Colleen, who is 9 months older than I.  My brother was 21 when I was born, already married and with a daughter. My sister, 17 at my birth, always said I threw her out of the house, taking over her room with my baby implements and forcing her out to the local YWCA to live, where she met and married a lovely Catholic gentleman and had three lovely children of her own.  My nieces and nephews were almost like siblings to me, as they were much closer in age, and we saw them very often as I was growing up in Southern California.  Kathleen and Colleen were closest in age to me, and have both led hard lives as have I, but have turned out to be beautiful, strong people (as have all my nieces and nephews). They made me laugh last night on the phone for the first time in a month, since we got the awful news about my husband.  I bless them for that.

Kerry, Colleen and Kathleen, circa 1970

3) A book I have been reading lately is called "Travel Guide to Heaven" by Anthony DeStefano. It makes Heaven sound like someplace you absolutely cannot WAIT to get to--no angels on clouds plucking harps, but a beautiful place of nature, houses of incredible awesomeness, and all the ones you loved who died in Christ--and above all, the beatific vision!  It's a must read, based totally on scripture and tradition, written in a lighthearted but not joking manner, and it is helping my husband feel much better,

4) Gray carpets should be illegal.   Really. My carpeting is so old and so dingy that it is no longer possible to tell what color it was originally.  Only I know it was once light gray---3 kids, 5 dogs, and three daycare babies ago.

5) I love reading about large families--especially large Catholic families! I love reading how they function, make things work, get by financially, live the liturgical year at home, all that good stuff. I only wish I had become one sooner, and had had a chance to welcome more little ones into the world.  But hey, my oldest son is getting married soon, in April, so maybe I will have some grandbabies to cuddle!

Aren't they cute?

6)  Please continue to pray for my husband's health and the full conversion of his soul to Jesus.  Going to M.D. Anderson in Houston for more tests this week.

7)Please keep praying for Jen Fulweiler over at Conversion Diary, taking care of a houseful of little ones while pregnant and with pulmonary emboli due to a blood condition.   Hail Mary full of grace, please wrap your mantle around Jen and intercede for her health.

The People God Puts in our Lives

I have certainly felt the calming touch of God, our Father this past few days as he as blessed us abundantly with people to help us wade through this bleak time period.

When I went to Mass last Sunday, I was late getting there and had to ask the usher to find me a seat. He led me to a section I rarely sit in and pointed next to a woman who had a bit of room beside her. As we were kneeling during Communion, my old RCIA sponsor walked by me, put her hand on my shoulder and said "I'm so sorry about your husband". The lady next to me overheard. She asked me "You aren't Kerry Wolf, are you?" I said yes, and she identified herself as the lady I had spoken to on the phone the day before. She leads the grief and bereavement group at our large parish and I had asked by phone if I could start coming even though I am not "bereaved" yet, but am indeed overwhelmed with grief.  She had assured me I was welcome.

Anyhow, what a "God thing" to be placed next to her!

Following that, I went over to the RCIA class where I still hang out sometimes after the service--I have lots of friends still in RCIA or who are sponsors and I just needed to be with someone. I told a friend there that I really wished I could speak to someone who had walked the same path and who was about my age, perhaps with kids still at home, when they lost their spouse. She said in fact there was a lady right there she could introduce me to who had lost her spouse to cancer 6 years ago when she had 3 teen boys still at home. We sat in a side room and talked for 2 hours, and she helped me greatly. She wept openly as she shared her own pain with me, and her loneliness.  She has been in contact with me daily since then, and wishes to walk this journey with me.

My beloved CRHP sisters have organized meals for me which have been a great relief as well, and sent beautiful cards, medals, listened to me cry, taken me out for coffee, and just generally been a blessing.  And my sweet husband has agreed to see our Deacon  to talk about the faith--he is coming over thursday night. Also he has agreed to talk to our priest, which is so wonderful! I just hope I don't say something dumb and mess it up now that he is interested.

Please keep us in your prayers and I promise to write about something more upbeat next time. This is just so overwhelming right now it's all I can think of. We see the oncologist next monday.

Boy Howdy What a Week!

And it hasn't been a good one. 

I am in desperate need of a break, Dear God, for just a day or two, from all the incoming bad news and devastating horror. 

My husband was removed from the transplant list. because the radiology specialists at the transplant facility felt that since he had small enlarged nodes near his lungs, that indicated probable metastasis and they won't transplant if there is cancer anywhere but the liver.  They referred him back to his liver doctor here in town for referral to an oncologist. 

So, on wednesday, we went to see the liver doctor here. He told my husband that these tumors that occur in diseased livers are of the same type always, are aggressive, and frequently get into the blood. He said it can be treated but that the treatment causes a very severe rash.  He also said that if it had truly metastasized to the lungs, they "might not be able to treat that" but that we would have to ask the oncologist.  He also opined that untreated he might have 6 to 12 months to live--treated he might have double that.  But again, ask the oncologist. 

This was so heartbreaking for us both. We had both been hoping for some hope. 

He also is referring us to a new transplant facility in Dallas for a second opinion. 

Right now I am flattened with exhaustion, terror and extreme anxiety--yet I have to keep everything going and start learning how to do all the things I have never done before.

Today, I had an appointment with my priest to talk. However, he for whatever reason was not there today.  I ended up going to sit in the Marian shrine near our church. There was another person there--a man who looked like he had been weeping.  I asked him if he was alright, and he told me his wife of 16 years had asked him out for coffee this morning and dumped divorce papers in his lap, totally unexpectedly. She told him she had found someone else and that he needed to get out.  He told me they had a 12 year old son at home. 

He said he was utterly broken inside and had no idea what to do. He was raised a Catholic but had been away from the Church for 25 years. Yet, he was driving past our church that day and felt drawn to come in. He had spent some time in the Tabernacle and then outside with Mary, where I often go when I need a good cry. He said he felt like putting a bullet through his head. 

I told him I was familiar with that feeling of utter despair and fear, and of being blindsided with something.  We were both reeling, and yet had both come to church instinctively. 

I think after we talked he was feeling a little bit better and was open to the idea of returning to the Church again. Please lift up a prayer for him as well.  And thank you for your continuing prayers for my family. 

Please Pray

Dear friends, both old and new--I need your prayers please.  My dear husband has been on a liver transplant list for some time now--he has cirrhosis from hepatitis that he got from a blood transfusion back in the 80's.  They do annual MRI scans to make sure nothing is developing as far as cancer, etc and this time, they found a mass in his liver that they strongly suspect is cancer, as well as something in one lung that they are not sure what it is--they said it did not light up with the contrast dye like cancer usually does and may just be a nodule or something else (cyst, etc). They also said his blood work showed a normal alphafetoprotein level which is usually elevated in cancer of the liver, etc. However, the liver mass did light up with the contrast dye, indicating probable cancer. 

They said it IS treatable and that there are several ways to treat it, all outpatient, and right now he will be having a CT scan of the lungs next week to see what is going on there and then on the 22nd the transplant team will be meeting with a specialized radiologist to decide what is what and what treatment plan to choose. 

Please pray for this dear sweet man, and for my own sanity as well--I don't know how on earth I will bear it if I lose him. I love him so very very much. And we have a 13 year old son who adores him as well.  I ask your prayers please, tonight. 

God bless you.