When "I Love You" Just Isn't Enough

Well, after being released from HSC very late on Monday night Wes and I decided we would spend the night at the CanadInns there in the hospital.  We were both tired and I was certainly ok with not driving home when everyone was talking about the fact that the roads were not that great.  Wes seemed to be struggling with energy when we arrived home and then on Wednesday seemed to bounce back a bit.  Enough that we went to town, even went out for lunch and then home.  He changed oil on the semi that day, it took him a while to do it but he did it.  The kids and the grandkids came for supper on Thursday night and though he had slept most of the day he seemed to perk up a bit when they were there and even managed to stay up with me for a while.  He still wasn’t talking but I thought he was tired from all the excitement of the week before.

Unfortunately that was not the case.

We had a very busy night, he was up constantly and I couldn’t seem to keep up.  He just couldn’t or wouldn’t  settle down and he was rubbing his head as though looking for some relief.  Around 5:30 a.m. I missed him getting out of bed and that was when I heard a loud bang.  Oh boy!  This was not good!  I ran to the bathroom and didn’t see him, I ran back into the bedroom to grab my glasses because a 55 year old near-sighted woman running around in the dark without them was not a good idea!  I knocked over his water glass that I always had ready to give him his meds throughout the night.  Dang it!  Water flew out all over the place, even out into the hall and that’s when I saw him lying there on his back.  I knelt down beside him to see if he was conscious which he was and then I wondered how in the world I was going to get this guy up and back to bed.  I maneuvered one of our dining room chairs close to him and between me lifting and him leveraging we managed to get him up.  That apparently was going to be the easy part, now to get him to bed while he struggles to walk.  We met a couple of walls on our way, slammed into the footrest at the end of the bed and finally made it to home plate.  I realized that I needed to stay up to continue watching him in case he got up and sure enough 10 minutes later he was on the move again.  I kept saying we should go to the hospital to get things checked out but he simply ignored me and kept on motoring.  The last time he was up I followed him to the thermostat which he had been adjusting all night.  The doctor explained to me later that potentially the tumor has the power to change your internal temperature so he was understandably only comfortable in one temperature range for only a short period of time, so sometimes the air conditioning was on and sometimes it was the furnace.  And here I thought it was my hot flashes giving me issues.  Sheesh! 

I was overtired from getting up with him every few minutes so I thought I may as well get up and make myself a coffee to stay awake and don't you think he walked into the living room and sat down in his lazy boy beside me and again just constantly rubbing his head. This is not working!  I knelt down in front of him and said that I was so sorry but I needed to take him to the hospital.  He seemed stable enough for me to simply walk to the truck but when I tried to help him put his sleeping pants on I realized that this was not going to be that easy.  His right side was not functioning the way it should and so the simple task of helping him get dressed let alone getting him to the truck just became a lot more complicated.  I made a quick decision to simply call 911 to get an ambulance to transport him there safely.  I’m glad I did.

He’s been in BTHC ever since and he’s still not able to speak and I’m not sure what he all truly understands, but I was so pleased yesterday morning when  at one point he looked at me and winked.  That has always been our ‘thing’, when he wants me to know he loves me and it’s not the appropriate time to say the words or he’s across the room, he’ll wink.  That wink came across many a time when he sat in front of the sound booth on a Sunday morning while I was working.  He would turn, act surprised to see me there, smile and wink and turn back to the front.

But then my skeptical heart wondered if it had just been a reflex and not what I was hoping for, but I prayed please Father let it be more than that.  About an hour later he woke up again, looked into my eyes and winked.  There it was!  My heart was filled to overflowing.  His mouth could no longer express his love, but in that one wink I knew that boy still wants to say I love you in the only way he had left. 

He’s been sleeping a lot, not eating and only drinking small amounts of water and they are talking about moving him to palliative care this afternoon.  Palliative means to soothe or calm, the word itself doesn’t mean death.  Though that is the end result in those rooms, the word itself means help and peace.  And I’m holding onto that.

Though the word palliative feels ominous and even life threatening and the minute you hear it your heart cries out that you’d rather not go there, at some point you have to accept where God is leading and though you may not like where’s He’s leading you you have to keep reminding yourself, He’s got this.  And you also have to know that God is right there not just in front or behind, not above or below, but he is everywhere, his love surrounds us and his presence, his spirit is holding onto you as tightly as you are holding onto him and sadly this is now the time when you have to let go of the world’s big dream of happily ever after.  You have to let go of the ideal that you have in your head that you will always have the opportunity to hear the words “I love you” and this is the point when you move past those two simple words that you spoke so long ago, “I Do” and you begin to understand the true meaning of “Til death do us part” 

So, this is our time in the valley of the shadow of death.  But, I will settle, no, I will cling to that wink from those pretty blue eyes because in that one tiny movement my entire world just became a world full of “I love you’s”.

I found this on the bench in the gym a few months ago

and thought it was an appropriate way to end this post