Some Help From Heaven

Ok, let's see if I can write this without breaking down completely....

After my husband died, each of his three sons  came to me to ask if they could have his Rolex watch. 
The fact that there are 3 boys and only one watch and I had bought it for him as a Christmas gift, I told each of them that I would rather keep it myself. 
It broke my heart to turn them down. They were hurting just as bad as I was. They lost their dad/best friend/boss after all. 

It was a decision I would later regret....

After my husband died, I had moved, re-arranged my life, made adjustments. Learned to cope.
I paid off my house, moved, bought two cars, made decisions I hadn't had to make in many years. My husband did it all.
He was gone.

I had to have some small construction done in my Florida home. I hired a crew to do the work. All was going ok.
The house seemed alive with people.
The men were in and out of my house every day beginning at 7:00 a.m. to end of day.
One of the men from the construction crew saw and remarked on my husbands beautiful watch. 
"Wow, that's one pretty watch."  He declared when he saw it as he passed through the Master Suite where I had placed it the night before.

I made a quick mental note to hide it in the house or to take it to my safe deposit box.... The landline phone rang...  the conversation forgotten  as I ran to answer it in the bustle of the buzzing saws and hammering noises of the construction going on in the next room.

That night,  as I lay in bed reflecting on the happenings of the day, I remembered and as I raced to check on it,  the watch was gone! Gone!
Disappeared from the place it was just that morning. 
My heart sank.

I immediately called the police. 
A flood of regret washed over me. My beautiful husband's watch on another man's arm? Lost? Missing. 
I felt so broken. 
Why hadn't I given it to one of the boys? At least then it would be safe. Treasured. Still in the hands of those that love my husband not some stranger.

Sadly, the police took my information, filed a report and told me they would do what they could to trace it if it showed up in a pawn shop but warned me that the chances were slim of ever getting it back. 

The owner of the construction company had nothing to offer in the way of help either. I had no proof. There was only my suspicion that the young man that had asked about it had actually taken it.  
My chances of ever seeing that watch again were slim to none.
I felt so hopeless.

I can't do anything right!
Who allows their deceased husband's watch to be stolen from their own home????

I had many things of my husband's that evoked so many sweet memories of him but I could squeeze my eyes shut real tight and SEE that watch on his big strong arm when he was alive and healthy. 
The bright shiny gold would glitter in the sun as we would walk hand in hand into church on a beautiful Sunday morning. Out to dinner and I would see it on his wrist in the dim light of a candlelit restaurant as he reached across the table to grasp my hand. Every night I would see it on his side of the bed carefully placed on the night stand ready to be worn to the office as he rushed out the door.

Weeks passed then months. No word from the Florida State Police Department. Nothing. 
Not a day passed by that I would not think of my husband and his missing watch. It was eating my soul to know I had let it slip away.
Gone.

My husband's birthday was approaching.  May 6.
His first birthday away from me. All I could do was cry. 
I miss him so much. Every day.

 May 6, 2013
I went to the cemetery in the morning. As I stood there in the early light of the beautiful spring day, I told my husband what had happened. Explained my stupidity. Not just about the watch but many other stupid things I have done in the months since he passed.

I slowly drove home. Going to the cemetery was my way of going to "visit" my husband and it always made me feel sad but slightly better to know he was lying there waiting for me... someday. 
We share a headstone.  

When I arrived home, my phone rang. 
Pinellas County Police Department. 
They found the watch!!!

What? Really? How?

The person that stole it had posted it for sale on Craigslist. 
It was posted at 11:30 p.m. and it was recovered by midnight and on it's way back to me via USPS overnight. 

I got my husband's precious watch back and will watch over it like it's Fort Knox from now on. 
I don't believe that the deceased can see ALL we do but I believe they do know what is bothering us.  
To get that watch returned at all was a miracle. To get it back on my husband's birthday confirms that to me. I was beating my self up every single day for letting it slip away from me. 

Rest in Peace Sweet Henry. Every second that ticks by on your precious watch reminds me of you.
 I love and miss you so much.

Here is the Craigslist posting that the police were able to trace to the stolen watch:

How To Be a Widow II

Time passes and memories of the last painful days ebb just the tiniest bit each day but the hurt is still simmering there, right beneath the surface.

24/7

You wake up each day and the sun still shines. Days pass and you even laugh. I still have feelings of guilt for being here and alive and Henry is not.

Had it only been me to go and not him. Visiting his grave each day, I want to open it up and crawl inside.

I have begun going to grief counseling and that helps. To be in a group of others...mothers, fathers, husbands, wives. All of them love and lost and it hurts. They say that "Time heals all wounds" but there is one addendum to that old adage and that is that time may heal but a scab forms and the slightest thing such as a song or smell or memory opens it up and the heart bleeds. Again.

I am strong.

I can do this.

Each day I get up. I apply lipstick and put one foot forward and life continues.

Henry would want me to be happy. He loved reading my blog and my watching my videos. The best thing about my husband was that he listened to me. I mean really LISTENED to me. Whether it was about lipstick or kids or the dogs. No subject matter was too small or too slight.

He listened to me. And isn't that what a "best friend" does?

Simply put, we had a marriage that many dream of. My best advice for success in any relationship is so easy and simple.

Be KIND to each other.

That's it.

Be kind.

Kindness is as easy as it is implied.

We all argue or feel our side or point of view is the correct one.

Would you rather always be RIGHT or always be HAPPY?

I choose being happy. Being right all the time is too much work.

I'm no one's doormat but I also don't feel the need to push my opinions, thoughts or ideas down anyone's throat.

I want so bad to go back and watch the videos that my husband was in but that day will be a long way off. We had so much fun making them. We had so much fun EVERY day!

Henry told me how proud of me he was daily. He told others I was "The Love of his Life."

I received sympathy cards from so many friends that wanted to share that Henry would always say that. *sigh*

Being the Love of His Life.

What a GIFT!

Those words help ease the pain. Just a tad.

The day of the showing was exhausting but with the love and support of my family and friends, we all got thru it. Ten hours of people and stories and so much love for my husband. It's funny to feel so close to so many strangers, acquaintances, and those you love all wrapped up into one day. I have found that when people tell me they knew my husband, I feel an instant bond. You knew him? Oh, please tell me more! Just talking about him keeps him alive in my heart and probably theirs as well.

The day of the funeral was to be grueling. To send a loved one off into eternity forever?

How does one do that?

I sat down each day and wrote down everything. Writing is therapy for myself and many others. Henry loved my writing. He made me promise to continue, hoping it would not only help me but others going thru an ordeal like this or something similar. If it helps one wife or sister, parent, brother or child that has lost a love, then all the better.

I love you all so much. Your kindness does indeed honor Henry and my gratefulness to you is more than I can put into words. We were both so blessed.

Be kind. Be kind to those you love and even to those you don't.

More later....

He Was All I Have

Hello to all of you that have sent all of the amazing notes and to the ones that left me a Tweet or note here  every day, I owe you big-time.
You have no idea how these notes got me thru these last months. I got where I actually looked forward to them. They were a tiny bright spot in an otherwise very dark time.
A thin thread to a different place.


When I was approached to write a book during my husbands treatments, I told the publisher that I wouldn't write about his passing but instead go back. All the way back to my life as a child. 
It was a compromise. 
I totally dropped the ball on my writings the last 4 - 5 months. My hands were full with caring for the love of my life. Who can write when their heart is being crushed. I stopped everything and devoted every second to my husband.
He is gone.
I cry just thinking of him. 
I miss him so much it hurts like a physical pain. 
I seem to hang at the cemetery.
I rake and clean and preen and decorate his gravesite. 
Somehow it gives me comfort. I had to stop telling family and friends that I go there 3 times a day. Now they look at me funny as if I am loco.
Maybe I am.
It's like going to his place. It's all I have.
Someday soon I will write about it all. The 
last months, the beautiful love we had, and his passing.
Right now, I am so raw inside it would come out as rambling jibberish.
Writing clears my thoughts.  It's all I have.
Henry died the way he lived... His way.
If someone can die beautifully, he did.
I held him in my arms. He was all I have...

Decisions.....

Today ended up being the worst day of all.
Are you all sick of me yet?  
I sure am. 
I can't even look at myself anymore. A good friend that has been thru something similar told me to get up every day and put on lipstick. Do my hair. 
I really don't care anymore.



Weekends are ok but week days are the worst. 
Doctor appointments. Tests. Scan. Needles. Yada Yada
The mask we went to have fitted on Friday is done! 
Whoop-de-Freakin-Ding Dong.
My husband has played football and basketball with pain so great it would bring a lesser man down. Not him. They'd throw some novocaine into a pulled hamstring or torn ligament in  his knee and back into the game he'd go. Three broken noses his Senior Year in college ball. No big deal.

Claustrophobia is another matter all together. That mask freaks him out! The mask is fitted very tightly to your face then clamped down to the table while your arms are in chains to pull your shoulders away from your neck. Seriously, it looks like a Medieval Torture Chamber.


Today: 8:45 a.m. Home.
I give my husband who has never taken a drug in his life 2 mg of Xanax to relieve his anxiety of the mask. 


9:15 a.m. The 4th CaT Scan is scheduled with the dreaded mask to calibrate exactly where the radiation beams will go on the neck. Thy say they will salvage what they can. One salivary gland and maybe a slim chance to salvage the taste buds and voice box and his bottom teeth. His throat will be blasted by radioactive beams 5 days a week for 15 minutes a day for 8 weeks.



9:30 a.m.  An IV put into place. Time to put on the mask and get the CT Scan. He panics and refuses.
My heart drops. No mask= No treatment. He will have to wear this mask everyday of the week. 5 days a week for 8 weeks. The Xanax is useless. I coax and plead and cry and beg and  bargain with him. He has dug in his heels and says No! OMG. 


12:00 p.m. I am exhausted. Myself and three nurses have worn ourselves out but we finally,  2.5 hours later convince him to get the scan with the mask. Thank You Jesus! (How kind and amazing there are to take so much time and energy to CARE)
Claustrophobia sounds lame but it can be so debilitating. 


3:00 p.m.  First consult with the Chemotherapy Oncologist. 


The Pathologist Report. 
This damn report has dogged me all weekend and I almost want to burn it right there in the padded ugly purple chair and run like the wind while the ugly chair and the report ignite and are never seen again by mankind or the decorator that chose that ugly ass purple chair.


Chemo will begin after the G-Tube and Chest Port for Chemo are surgically installed. One will Feed and the other will fill my husband's veins with deadly chemicals to kill cells in it's path.
The report again. God, I don't even want to write to you what that ugly thing says.
The secretary of our family doctor was right. 
(From this date forward, her name will not ever be mentioned in my house or while I breathe air. She seemed to enjoy telling me that news.) I want to poke her eyes out with a spoon.



The Report........................................


My wonderful kind and gentle husband has not ONE but TWO kinds of cancer.  
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, he pulled the very short straw. 
We went to tell his 95 year old Mom the bad bad news on Sunday. She at first thought he meant that SHE has cancer (Remember, she does. She has a mass on her lungs but we never told her. Her affairs are in order. At 95 what does it matter really?) It seems that every male in his family has died of cancer. HOW did we not know this before????
He has Stage 4 Squamous Cell Carcinoma of the Throat AND a very rare form of very aggressive Large Cell Neuroendrocrine Cancer. Survival rate is slim. 
Now we know and now we fight but for what? 
75% chance it will return after treatment. 
My fight is dimming. His fight is all but gone. I don't even pretend not to cry anymore. I am so raw and scared and quite frankly I worry that he will suffer and then after 4 months of radiation and the chemo he will be seared and burned and poisoned and THEN he will die. I feel hollow. He talks about when he's dead and gone now.  Instructing me on what to do when he is...



I once knew a woman in real life that hated my YouTube Channel so much. She told me I had weird and bizarre people that watched my videos and that it was all very revolting to her. She would post about me on gossip sites and called my own brother to get him to make me stop posting videos. She thought all of my viewers were freaks. 
Not So. Not even close. I feel sorry for her closed up mind.


I have found that since being on YouTube, some of the most genuine, thoughtful, caring and most of all loving and giving men and women in the world has ever known! 


Today, I have cried tears all day long. 
Tonight I cry while typing this to all of YOU. You are so strong and steady and I have been sucking the very souls from all of you and your amazing strength and love you have shown to my husband and to me... perfect strangers. I have never been as blessed as I am right now, in a time of sorrow and fear as I am by each and every one of you.
Let me copy a Tweet for you...


savingsmallbiz 

@LanaIndianax Here's today's 


hug {{HUG}} The first beautiful flower you see on 


your path today is from me ;)




That is just ONE example out of the thousands I have received since this began less than 3 weeks ago.  Every day I get notes and comments and letters and messages and warm hugs and LOVE from you.  You are all angels here on Earth and I love you more than you know.  Thank You.


P. S. I saw her flower today as we walked out of the Oncology building.  It had the most beautiful bee buzzing around it. Loving it.
I stood there on the green grass of the perfectly manicured lawn and hugged my husband and cried.  See, I never ever took much time in a day to stop and LOOK and see the pretty flowers and what God has given me.  Given Us. Maybe God needs a warm and gentle, sweet and caring man in Heaven.
Maybe he will let me keep him.
I need him and I need all of you too. xo