Close Please enter your Username and Password
Reset Password
If you've forgotten your password, you can enter your email address below. An email will then be sent with a link to set up a new password.
Cancel
Reset Link Sent
Password reset link sent to
Check your email and enter the confirmation code:
Don't see the email?
  • Resend Confirmation Link
  • Start Over
Close
If you have any questions, please contact Customer Service
Blogs > ChrisChadwick > Letting Go


ChrisChadwick
383 posts
9/20/2014 3:25 pm

Last Read:
10/3/2014 4:00 am
Timing is everything

My brother-in-law died yesterday. I have to confess that I didn't like him much, although my sister seemed to have been a good influence on him over the years--they were together around 30 years, I guess--because he mellowed over the years some. I thought he was a bad combination of dumb, mean, stubborn, and uneducated. Fortunately from my perspective, I wasn't around him much the last 20 or so since I moved away from where I was born and raised.

I'm not going to try to go back for the funeral next Friday. That's the day my wife has her echo, and I don't have anyone to stay with her in any case. I spoke to my sister on the phone yesterday, and she's ok with my not coming. She knows what it's like to care for someone over an extended period of time and how hard it is to juggle things. Her husband had cancer for the last 5 years or so, and he had been doing very poorly recently, so she had come to terms with it.

I hate missing the funeral. I think it's really important to be at those kinds of life-altering changes in the lives of people who are important to us. But trying to juggle making the trip while dealing with my wife's tests and the new job would simply be too much.

I have a bigger confession to make: a part of me is envious of my sister. Her loved one is out of his misery and she can begin to heal.

Such is the state of what Faulkner (ne Falkner) called the human heart in conflict with itself.

Abelle2 83F
31222 posts
9/20/2014 5:27 pm

 I am sorry for what you are going through. I thought those would help.


ChrisChadwick replies on 9/28/2014 4:51 pm:
The issue was finding someone to stay with my wife while I took a couple of days to fly to Cincy and back. I don't have any family here where I live. Could I have asked a friend? Perhaps, though my wife and I had few friends in common and the few we had have long since passed out of our lives. Could I have done it? Maybe.....but in the end I decided that I didn't want to expend the energy to arrange it.

Truth is that men, as a group, don't have the support system that women have, I think. Men try to handle problems on their own, by and large, for better or worse. I think that's true of men generally, but either way, it's true of me, in any case. Added to that, I really didn't want to be apart at what seemed a transitional period in our--my wife's and my--relationship. As I ill indicate in my next post, I still don't know how that piece will turn out, but I know my wife was asking about hospice for the first time, and that just seemed like a very bad time to go play a supportive role with my sister while ignoring the supportive role I needed to play with my wife. Was it the right call? I don't know, but all I can say is that it felt right at the time.

Rocketship 79F
18563 posts
9/20/2014 7:11 pm

 Warm Hugsssss........




×
×