Time Marches

Six months.

We recently passed a landmark. On January 8, we marked six months since the day my father-in-law, Les, ended his life.  So much has happened in that time. On that horrible day, Barb was still in the hospital, recovering from a cardiac arrest. She was very weak and still struggling to keep her thoughts straight. She is doing so much better now. She is moving out of assisted living to a single bedroom, independent living apartment (within the same building). She is much stronger physically and much sharper mentally, with only a few memory lapses now.  In the intervening months, we helped Barb plan Les’s funeral and somehow made it through that difficult day. We helped Barb as she picked out a headstone for the grave. We have driven back and forth to Austin more than 50 times. We have hugged and cried and loved and prayed and shopped and helped as best we know how. We celebrated our first Thanksgiving and our first Christmas without this dear man. I have mentioned before that I always made a Shutterfly calendar for Les each year, as a Christmas gift. Chris (R.J.’s youngest brother) requested one this year, so I still made one. This year, I cried the tears Les would have cried as I looked at the calendar and thought about him.

Life is different now, and we don’t really know what to expect. Even six months later, we are still learning. Barb is still learning. We need to make decisions about the future, and it’s hard. Les should be in on these decisions, but he isn’t – and that hurts. Just yesterday, for example, I went shopping with Barb. She wanted a new La-Z-Boy chair as she gets ready to move to a new room. She has been using Les’s chair, but it doesn’t fit her. She decided it was time to get her own chair, which I consider a healthy step in the process of healing. But every time we talk about Les’s chair, we scratch our heads. It is confusing that he bought a beautiful, brand new chair for himself just a couple of weeks before he ended his life.

There are still moments of anger, and there are still moments of profound sorrow. I miss Les’s sense of humor. I miss his complaints about the general state of the world around us. I miss hearing about his trivia-wins at the local radio station. I miss watching him interact with my grown-up kids. I miss observing his care and devotion to his wife. It has been a hard six months.

One thing I have been thinking about recently is the Sunday before his death. Les talked/argued a lot about religion that day. Somehow, we got on the topic of heaven. He was in an argumentative mood – as usual, on the topic of faith/religion. He was pretty sure death was either pure nothingness (he hoped for that) or heaven (he agreed that my mom would be in heaven) and had no thought of anything else existing (like hell).  Looking back on that conversation, it is clear he was searching, reaching, thinking…. I am not sure if anything we said made sense to him. I am not sure what he thought about that night, or the next night, in the quiet of his empty house.  I am not sure, and that troubles me.

Les would have turned 74 this week (January 22). In honor of that day, I am including a few of the pictures I put on the calendar this year, pictures of Les in his youth. He always loved thinking of the days of his youth, so let’s do that. Each one of you could remember your own family members who have passed on, and spend a moment thinking of the days gone by. And while you’re at it, think of Barb as well. January 22 could very well be a difficult day for her, after a whole six months of difficult days.