For those of you out of the loop, my husband died of a traumatic brain injury 17 days, 1 hour and 13 minutes ago. He fell in the kitchen,while I was in our bathroom brushing my teeth, and had a 1/6 inch cut just above his right eye. We had just been talking about dinner and watching a movie that night in the media room he built and was so proud of. I heard him fall. I thought "Oh what now?" He had fallen before. When he would fall or whatever at the lake he would bleed like a crazy person and just keep on truckin'....so I found him crawling up the side of the counter top, bleeding like a hog. Bled like a slaughter, anytime he cut himself , at the lake , even when he was shaving, just like oh shit G's bleeding... .... Cleaned him up, cleaned the floors up. Kissed it and made it better. So I thought. That's all a crock of shit. Sorry kids. He even wanted a picture. I told him I was going to print it out and put it on the fridge so he would remember to not be a re-re....bad image
Would not go to the hospital, would not go to the urgent care, would not do anything but let me clean it and dress it. I even called his mother and she tried to get him to go and of course, NO!! I even tried to bribe him by saying let's go out to eat, then I was gonna drive him right up to the ER. Nope. If I had still been in that room with him, maybe he would have fallen on me, and been fine. I still don't want to brush my teeth. BTW, this was the day before Natasha Richardson fell...and by the time I found out days later just how bad an "innocent" fall can be, it was too late anyway. Stubborn son of a bitch. AND HE WAS FINE for 3 days. We went to the store, we took the dogs outside, we watched TV..we talked about the Elton John / Billy joel concert ! We planned for our cruise. Gregory always was a bit loopy, so I didn't see anything that I wasn't used to. DAMM WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL ME !!!!
He then laid down to take a nap, and never woke up. And I found him, laying on his favorite spot on the couch, still breathing on his own, barely. He wouldn't get up. He wouldn't open his eyes. I called 911. I held him and begged him and begged him to wake up and kissed him til paramedics got there and made me let go. At the hospital they said "BRAIN SURGERY"....then an hour later doctors came in. I was expecting them to tell me about the surgery. Instead they explained the situation in all kinds of big words and things that I knew the meaning of but couldn't believe it. Not breathing on his own. Blood not clotting because of cirrhosis.... Subdural / Epidurmal/ whatever Hematoma. No viable activity. Strokes. They said the words no one wants to hear. "I'm sorry. There's nothing we can do. We'll just have to wait and see." For what I said, for him to lay there and die??? I asked them to take him somewhere else, to take my blood, my brain, anything. All the while my mother, my brother, my stepdaughter and my friends trying to help me. I have never felt so utterly alone in my life. Except I knw G was with me. Cause it was always just me and him, no one else believed in us like we did.
They called it a slow venous bleed because his blood wouldn't clot because of his liver. Three neurosurgeons told me a CAT scan or MRI wouldn't have caught it right away anyway, maybe not even for a day or so. That a helicopter in my backyard straight to an ER may not have mattered. His regular doctor told me his liver would have given out soon and a slow painful death from cirhossis would have been expected. Gee thanks I feel better now. Uh-huh. Add to the fact his already present diabetes and a little problem with overindulgence of the alcohol, and his body, his brain and his liver basically gave him the finger and failed him. Besides me of course, I'm the biggest failure to him of all. And that's all I have to say about that.
And I had to be the STRONG ONE,the one to make THE DECISIONS. I would not wish that responsibility on the world's worst person. All it is is a big old bucketful of guilt. Especially with a zillion family members and people that hadn't seen him for years suddenly appearing and offering their opinions and insight and oh let me go back there and look. Well Kim, what are you gonna do? Someone asked me about the freaking obituary less than 24 hours after we went into the hospital. And he was still BACK THERE AND ALIVE. I would have ripped out their throat but found out later Mom ripped them a new asshole. Thanks Momsie. And of course I got all of the usual. Oh yea, I know. It's what he would have wanted. We talked about it. He told me so. We even had it on paper, and legal and stuff !!! He didn't want to be kept alive by machines. BS. He would have wanted to be sitting here with me, utterly fascinated by "how one person can love being on the computer so much." Or sitting in the bathroom while I soaked in the tub, asking me if he could wash my hair. Or cooking us a steak, surprising me with tulips when he ran to the store, or pretending not to be interested in some TV show I was watching until he started quizzing me on all the goings on, and on and on and on.
Or working in the yard which I adored...he called me the queen of his John Deere tractor !!!! I am so proud !!!
Oh, and he got a tattoo last summer...that his brother-in-law Alan drew on his leg....my baby rocked it and got it !!!
I don't think there is a blog big enough in the world to list all the good things. And you know what, we had our bad times. He could be the world's biggest meanest asshole to me....and I could give it right back. Even his friends and daughter told him that he'd met his match. The bad things , the bad memories, gone....forgotten. Not worth the time we wasted on them. Any of yall that are reading this...don't waste your time on them too, k. It's not worth it. I don't wanna sound like a damm greeting card, but life is too short.....especially when you find your match.
I am not so sure about this grief stuff. It was suggested by a friend who also handily passed it along to my parents and now it's a "must go." I'm 39 years old !! (really!) I don't want to go (crossing arms like 3 year old here). I don't even want to leave the house. Or eat. Or shower. The only thing I find sanity in is my dogs, the TV, and my computer. It's even hard to breathe sometimes. So why do I want to discuss it with strangers?
I. don't. want. to. talk. about. it. At all. Not with you, or you, or even you. The only person I want to talk about it with has 25% of his ashes in an awful cemetery in Cullman , Alabama, and the other 75% of him is here at home with me in a big beautiful urn that looks like something he would like to eat oreos out of. And I have to take some of him out of that urn and spread it on the Chesapeake , and a little more on Lake Mitchell.
Oh and I talk to him. Yes I do. Constantly. I tell him hello and good morning and goodnight and goodbye and I love you and I miss you and I'm sorry I failed you and the dog just ate the remote and the damm refrigerator door won't seal and these two dogs are making me crazy and the weather is bad and I feel guilty for still being able to put one foot in front of the other and I feel like I have the plague cause no one knows what to say or do and on and on and on....I am like the crazy widow lady who walks around talking to herself. But I'm not. I'm talking to GREGORY. Just like I have done for the last 6 years. The first few months we were together we spent thousands of minutes on our cell phones. Each. And it didn't stop. We still talked ALL THE TIME. He made it a game to fill up my voice mailbox with messages when I was at work or when he was traveling . And like a giddy little schoolgirl I actually kept and recorded most of those messages. Yay me. I haven't listened to them yet. Can't do it. I see the tapes and the CD over there, looking at me. One day I think, I will conquer my fear and listen to the voice I love.... Because I am afraid I will forget what he sounds like. Or what he smells like. Or how he always thought it was so funny that I'd bury my face in his neck and chest and just breathe him in. I haven't washed his clothes. I haven't washed our sheets. I don't want to wash out the smell of him.
And I write him too. Everyday. I bought a journal and everyday I sit down and write him about what's going on, how I feel, how I miss him, and all of the things I may or may not have said when he was here with me. I used to leave him notes in his clothes I packed when he was traveling for work, he would always find one in a pocket and say it made him smile.... I sent him cards to his office in Pennsylvania even before he got there so he would have one to open everyday. I wrote him everyday he was away "getting help" for weeks last summer. BTW, thanks Bradford. Good job. Not. On a holiday, anniversary, birthday, just because I love you day, I could never decide on just one card, so I usually got him two or three. He kept them all. He left me notes too. And was getting into the card thing. I have them all. He got into getting his feet done a few years back. The lady that was going to do his pedicure told him "I rub you". He looked at me, in the chair next to him, grabbed my hand , and said "I rub you long time." We giggled like idiots. That's how he signed his notes to me from that day on.
I'm mad. I'm mad at Gregory, I'm mad at "god",and I am especially mad at me.I should have done more. I enabled him. I fueld him. I nagged, I begged , I pleaded.He was always afraid I was going to have him commited for alcohol, maybe if I would have he would still be here?? And alot of you people at the funeral...where the hell where you when he needed you ????? You know our phone numbers, our address?? Hwre the hell were you ?? I hope you have 1/10th of the pain that he had without you, and that I have without him. He used to say it was just us. Truer words baby.
In the last few months, people pulled away. Alcoholics will do that to you. The people at his job who were not only his friends but family for the last 20 years pulled away from him. Even though they said they would be there for him no matter what. Even though they enabled him. more to come on that. That broke his heart. And his spirit. He loved them, and he thought they loved him too. Their brand of tough love I guess. He thought they abandoned him, even though they knew our address, my # and his #, they just blew him off. It is what it is....and business is business.....but as Gregory always told me what's right is right. Like G said..he made a plan for his loved ones and it will roll down the tracks when the time comes....I never pulled away. I know I probably enabled him. But I swore to him, more than once, that I would be with him forever and I would never leave him. He is my best friend. Will always be. I could never imagine my life without him. And I don't know. I am still here. But even though I am here and in this life, as I know it my life stopped March 20, 2009 at 1109 pm.
And ya know how you always loved to play with my hair, and rub my neck ??
I have you in my heart......and in our ink...I did it for you G... ; ) ]
I love you G. I'll try out this grief stuff, but I dunno.
I will always be your wife. And you will always be my husband. And no one can ever take that away.
I rub you long time baby.
Kimberly Trimble MANN
PS - yes, I do know that blogging this really qualifies me as someone who should "get a room at Crazy Manor." But I don't care. FTW....
