Tears and smiles

Can it really be two weeks already? Has time flown by? Just doesn't seem right that the world has continued turning. And yet I know that there's not much that would have stopped the world or time from going on. I wish I could have stopped it though. I wish I could've had a remote like the one in the Adam Sandler movie, Click, where I could have frozen time and rewound the events that have happened. I just want one more day, one more hour, with Billy. To tell him again that I love him and that I will miss him like crazy. Now I understand the depth of grief. I can clearly understand stories such as "The Monkey's Paw" and others that deal with a magical object granting wishes. I can see how grief would drive someone to make a bargain he or she would later regret. Just like in the television show Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Buffy found her mother had passed away. As a result of grief, her younger sister tried to return things to the way they had been before the mother's death but casting a spell to return their mother to them from the grave. Though I know it's not reality and couldn't happen that way, I can understand the need to try and bring the person back. I can understand how deep the need to touch the person once again, hear their voice, or just be in the presence of the person who's gone on. In all honesty, I was glad that I was able to talk to him the day the doctors put him on the ventilator. It's given me a bit of comfort to know that we were laughing and in good moods tinged with worry that day instead of being grumpy or having a bad outlook. I'm almost positive that it made him feel a bit more at ease with everything to know that someone was still there and wanting him to be happy even while facing something so serious.

I had a request to give a brief history on Billy's struggle with Lupus. In Late December of 1994, my brother, Andy, and I had a battle with the flu. A few days after I had recovered and Andy began his own recovery from the flu, Billy started to show signs of not feeling well. It was assumed that he was just coming down with whatever we had gotten over. After Mom came home from work, she and Dad took Billy out to the hospital. It was about six hours or so later when she came home to tell us that Billy was way sicker than what we thought. He had a disease called Lupus. It made his lungs rip and bleed on the inside so he was really choking on his own blood at times. Over the first five years of him having to deal with the hospitalizations and getting the combination of medications just right, we all had gotten used to seeing him have a Lupus flare where he was would be just fine, talking away, and then the next minute he's coughing up large amounts of blood. Then everything began to change between years six and ten of Billy's living with the Lupus. It didn't seem to flare up as bad as before. Maybe the damage had already been done by the earlier ones. He didn't really cough up that much blood anymore but had what he called "the gurgly feeling" in his chest, almost as if he could hear the blood or fluid in his lungs bubbling whenever he breathed deeply. Towards the end of his living with the Lupus, I'm glad to be able to say that he never really had many Lupus flares. It did seem as though there were other things that would make him have to spend weeks and sometimes months in the Intensive Care Unit of the hospital. He would have pneumonia or kidney failure or something along those lines where it became apparent to both my parents and myself that we were fighting a losing battle for the most part. That's why when we were faced with the decision to let Billy go or keep him here to live on machines the rest of his life away from the things and people he loved the most, we had to let him go.

It still doesn't seem real some days. I will be honest and admit that I haven't been sleeping at night. Even after I take the medications that I've been given, sometimes I wake up just a couple hours after falling asleep. Chris said the past few nights I have also had some nightmares where I whimper in my sleep. I don't remember any of the dreams when I wake up. I don't know exactly what's going on while I'm in Dreamland but I sometimes wish I did. There have been times in the past couple of days when I just haven't felt like I was present for a lot that has been going on around me. I sleep during the afternoon instead of at night and I forget to eat a lot of the time. There's a part of me somewhere inside that knows this is rational greiving that will pass only with the passage of time. I've been staying away from the phone and the computer. Mostly I've been writing and reading. I know it seems selfish but I just want to stay in my own world for a little bit. I've gotten 60 books read throughout the year so far. Still have a few weeks until the year officially ends so I just might get one or two more read. I've only been writing a page or two here and there. At least it's something, I know. I just wish I could do more. I truly want to write Billy's story. I just can't figure out how it would be best do that. Nonfiction? Fiction? I dunno. I guess it's just one of those things I'll have to work with a bit and figure it out when the time comes. I'm off for the night. I'm going to play for a little while and then read some more. Take care out there. I do appreciate each and every one of you.

Love and blessings,
Kim