Birthdays on hospice: March 12,2010

So how do I pick a birthday card for my wife of almost 23 years this week? She will be 58, but will probably not see 59. All the cards say sweet, sugary stuff about dreams for coming years, or silly stuff that is not so cute anymore. She wants her birthday blessing this year at church, and is giving it all she has to be up on her birthday this Sunday for that and to see Chloe speak in church and Kerry and Charity in the choir. But how do we celebrate? What does one buy- especially for someone who has just about everything because she keeps saying "You can't say no- I'm dying." Only now it's suddenly not so funny.

Linda has fallen daily this week. Yesterday it was twice, and the second fall required steri strips and bandaging for a long gash, and she is bruised head to toe. We are having to force her to use a walker for stability. She's fighting it all she can for her own independence. Tonight she ignored it again, tripped on the oxygen line, and hit the floor again, on the old bruises. It's hurtful and demeaning to her, and horrible for all of us. How do you get through to someone who has always been so independent, so strong, and such a fighter, that she cannot bend over and pick up a dropped pill bottle? How do you say nicely and sensitively and empathetically that if you do not stop doing stuff you cannot do anymore that one of these very near days one of your kids is going to come home and find you on the floor? I am afraid that I didn't say it nicely- I said it to make a point that was necessary but incredibly painful for both of us.

The time has come where Linda can't do what she wants. She can't be independent. She can't even be left alone for much time at all. She wants to ride her bike so badly- but she's on morphine. She wants to be able to reorganize the closet I have allowed to become chaotic- but she can't lift stuff. She wants to be able to go downstairs when she wants to. Now we follow her most of the time. The kids and I are sleeping with ears peeled in case of another fall in the night. She wants all of us to allow her some room.

Linda has found grace in her illness- she has been able to be grateful for the extra time she had, for the ability to have a family, for the things we have done and seen and lived. But now she is being faced, daily, with what she will be missing. The children finishing their growing up. College and careers. Grandchildren. The golden years we were supposed to have. They are blossoming as she is fading. We have to work harder to make her a part of their active, busy lives, and to understand what is going on with the meds she has to take. She feels so separated from everyone because she can't participate the way she wants to.

So tomorrow I have to find a card. It's busy weekend, and we have to celebrate. I do not know how. I am so tired, and I am not going to sleep tonight because Linda is having another bad night. I need the birthday angel to show me the perfect card. Yellow roses are a must. Maybe a new rose bush that she will know will live on?

We know this is a part of life, and the cycle of life, and that life's not fair. But this one just isn't fair on a great big level of its own. I will settle for some grace in facing what's coming, faster than even I allowed myself to think.

NOTE: Linda reached her birthday in 2010, and was able to go to church that day and walk up the aisle for the birthday blessing, assisted by our kids. We had cupcakes at the Mission Inn afterward. We didn't get to go out to dinner that night as planned- she slept the rest of the day because she wore herself out, but she was so happy she'd been able to be there.