This is the Great Adventure

Day ?

I am a little lost in all the confusion and turmoil that putting together a great party does to someone. Yes, that is right. I said a great party. Last night at 5:00, a ton of people who loved Brad got together to celebrate the life he lived while here on Earth. I am quite sure that the party he is having now is nothing to compare to our event last night, but this one down here was fabulous. There were around 396 signatures in the guest book. Not that we were counting and/or taking attendance. If you need a note of excuse it better be good. The best one was from a friend in Colorado who had a meeting with the governor and attorney general and they weren’t being very flexible with their time. I think that one might just win out over those of you who wanted to stay home and watch the CMA’s. Speaking of country music, I don’t know how in the world Brad has control now over radio stations but Katie and I were in the car just before the last visitation and Toby Keith’s new song, “Cryin for Me” came on and of course, the words were exactly written for Brad. So there were go…crying in the car.

It’s a little funny-this grieving widow thing. How do you practice for it? Do you expect that it could happen at any moment? I remember laying across Brad’s chest and wailing for him to wake up one more time on Friday morning to hear another voice behind my shoulder telling me this was a little too dramatic and Brad would get embarrassed if I made a scene. I stopped. I knew he wasn’t in there. It was simply the casing that I was accustomed to. Guess I have seen too many great movies where the hero makes a comeback at the last second. They told me I could stay as long as I wanted. As I sat there with my temperature rising in the gown and mask I had to dawn to see him for the last time, I asked my good friend, Kristi, how long was I supposed to do this? Does it make me a better person if I stay longer? Does it tell the nursing world that I cared more than the last grieving wife? I knew it wasn’t doing him or myself, much less Kristi any good to stay there too long. At that point, I just wanted to get on the road to Irving and love on my Katie. So we left…or tried to. We had loaded all of his belongings which fill up and overflowed a wheelchair. When we started looking for specific items, we realized that they didn’t pack a thing in his suitcase which was why it was overflowing the chair…hmmm…strange practice but we figured it out and condensed somewhat. Still we needed to use the wheelchair. Maybe for us to lean on as much as to carry the stuff out to the car for the last time. Back to the exit from ICU room 734. We were trying to leave and we couldn’t get the wheelchair out the sliding glass door. We kept backing up the chair and trying to line it up just right and then we realized the leg thing kept moving out to the side right as we hit the bump where the door would slide. That was what was keeping the chair from going out the door. Crazy as it sounds, Kristi and I were chuckling about how two supposedly intelligent 5th grade teachers couldn’t figure out how to drive a full wheelchair, when we realized it was just Brad saying goodbye. We both looked back at him, told him to stop it and the next time we tried, we got right out. Weird way to leave MDAnderson, lobby empty at 5:45 in the am. We had to have security escort us. Found out that was customary in most hospitals when the “loved” one comes to view the body. I guess they thought I might go postal on them or something. Eeriely quiet, a few security people-”SA-CUR-ATEE” (Nevermind…that’s a whole other story!), one lady who was like me several times and didn’t have a hotel room curled up on a really not comfy chair with a hospital blanket on and a few other nurses rushing in to punch the clock. The entry at MDA is like a grand hotel with a soaring ceiling, a grand piano usually being played by a volunteer and people from all over the world seeking answers and cures. Right in the middle there is a beautiful tall water fountain sculpture made with money donated by some family who’s name I looked at a million times but never even processed. That morning I looked at that name and wondered how they felt as they left the building for hopefully the very last time. Mixed emotions. Sad, happy it was complete, glad, mad, worried, scared, exhausted. These were my feelings at the time. At that moment, I knew that I wanted to have donations made to MDAnderson but directly to the doctor that is studying the hideous cancer monster that took my Brad. With Brad’s luck, the donation money paid by his friends would have gone toward the purchase of a Hiney Hider. That’s the name of the maker of those bathroom doors for those of you who haven’t spent much time in public bathrooms. If you missed the address it is on the post just before this one. I would love for Brad’s name to be included in a medical journal as funding a study which just happened to be the cure. How great would that be!! Also, on the last post read the poem by Alan called DUDE. It sums up what happened last night. If you don’t “get it” then my only response is that you shoulda been there!

Last night, this grieving widow (wow…still sounds totally foreign to me) learned that you better love on people while they are around you, make great friends who can actually think of nice, true things to say about you, and keep in touch with people no matter what sort of situation you find yourself in. Brad caused a bunch of different people to have to come to terms with situations they had found themselves in. I enjoyed watching each of these events play out. I knew Brad was TVOing it so he could replay each look, each piece of conversation had. He studied those plays like a coach and he made sure they happened.

If you could find your way back to the very first post-(I dont even know if it is still here, but Mark can probably find it! ) you would see something that Brad wrote about me crying that we didn’t have any friends as we embarked on this cancer journey. I don’t know what was wrong with me. How can you say a gym overflowing with people and hundreds of others that weren’t there counts as no friends. Silly me. What was I thinking! Enough for now. As always, I am exhausted but this sure feels good to write these thoughts down…almost as good as retail therapy Jeff!!!! t

November 12th, 2009 at 09:09pm Posted by Brad | General | 12 comments