As September turned to October in 2016, and the one year anniversary of Mark’s death came and went, leaving us emotionally shipwrecked once again, we found that our involvement in my MIL’s life was turning into a nearly daily adventure. Her Alzheimer’s was slowly worsening, leaving her unable to keep track of time. She refused to change clothes, wasn’t showering. She was driving less and less as time went by (only once between mid-September and mid-October)…but we were still terrified, and began to plan how to remove the car (again). And to anticipate how terribly difficult that would be (again).

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A list of things I feel have been given to me over the past few months – really in the form of “sudden knowledge” from out of the blue, usually just as I was rising to consciousness in the morning – or stuff I’ve figured out as the trauma has slowly worn off.

(1) That Mark was not afraid or in great pain, in those few hours after the accident and before he died during surgery. I’ve thought a lot about what the nurses – both in the ER and the trauma center – told us about Mark: that he never asked for pain meds (but was given some because THEY thought he needed them, given his multiple fractures and injuries); that he was “alert” and “talking” and everyone mentioned his great personality and how kind he was; that he asked, with humor but also rhetorically, whether he would be able to attend the VT football game the next day (and answered  Continue reading →