Approaching The Sunset

It is quiet and I have a few more moments at the computer. My husband was having a lot of pain and the IV pain medication wasn’t helping. I gave him some Phenergan to potentiate the pain medication and he is sleeping.

I go in once an hour to check on him. Sometimes I wake him to make sure that he can come out of this deep sleep. I seem to not be able to help myself. He is in such a deep sleep that it looks like he isn’t breathing. When this happens, my heart stops for a moment and then I go to his side and brush his hair  from his face. He stirs and my heart begins beating again.

Last night, I had to give him Zofran. It is a drug that stops vomiting. He slumped over in the recliner and I woke him so that he could lie down in bed. He grunted and said, ” Am I still here? “. I responded with, “Were you going somewhere?” He replied, “No, I just was a little surprised that I woke up this time.”

I don’t think he was joking. He was making a statement of fact. He looks at the unknown just as I do and he is surprised that he hasn’t left us yet. Somehow, he knows that the time isn’t far off. I helped him to bed and he slept. He didn’t wake up until around noon.

He started looking more pale in the late afternoon. I could tell that his pain level was rising and he was feeling weak and tired. He was so tired that when daughter called, he didn’t want to talk. He was feeling really bad…

And so it goes. Another day and then it is night. It is the night that seems so long and hard. I never know what to expect.

Like I said earlier, last night he was sick to his stomach at around 9 P.M. and I gave him medicine for nausea. He woke me again at 3 A.M. He was sick again and I gave him more medicine. There are nights that seem to draw out forever. Last night was one of them.

Our life is full of uncertainty. At first, it seemed that the uncertainty pertained to years…then months…now it is days and nights.

I wish that I could do more for him. He is still able to be up and about but he no longer finds little projects to do. He sits in the recliner most of the day. His big event is going outside and sitting under the tree. Soon, he tires and his pain starts to build, so he goes back indoors to sit in the recliner some more.

The look in his eyes is hollow and he rarely smiles. There are not many things that cause him to rally from his “fog”. There are moments, but they are few and far between. I can’t tell what he is thinking. I could always in the past, but he is shutting me out now. He is just staring at nothing most of the time. That is the fog of the pain medicine.

We are approaching the twilight now…the suns rays are fading and so is he.

I am grateful that we are in a quiet place. It has its moments of peace and contentment. I wish I knew what was coming next, but most likely, I really don’t want to know. I would be anticipating it and I would not find those small moments of peace or contentment because I would be fearing what lies ahead.

I went in to see if he was still sleeping. He looks so unlike the man that I knew. I miss the man he was. I miss this lifeforce that contained the essence of the man. I know that he misses it as well. The next time I see it, it will be in another form, a different reality than what I know now.

He is sleeping, but he is slipping away. Moment by moment, minute by minute. Day by day he walks closer to the sunset and I can’t go with him…I truly miss him and I will miss him for a very long time to come….