One hurdle at a time

Yesterday was a hard day. I'd slept even less well than usual the night before, and when I finally crawled out of bed and got to my computer, there were annoying fires to put out on several work projects. Honestly, my emotional investment in my work is so low right now that I have no patience for complications.

I kept choking up all morning, sobbing unexpectedly, and that continued as I ran my errands in the afternoon. I stopped to compose myself several times before entering buildings or interacting with people.

I went to the credit union to deposit some checks. One of them was a refund from a healthcare company, a check made out to Sandy that arrived a couple of days ago. I wasn't sure what to do with it. I closed out her estate account several weeks ago, and we legally closed her estate itself a couple of weeks ago, so I no longer have valid status as her personal representative; I didn't want to reopen her estate for a $25 check. But I mentioned that her name is still on our joint checking account, and the teller said he could just deposit the check without her or my signature.  I'd been fine, relieved that we could deposit the check that easily, laughing with the guy. But then he said, with an expression that appeared both urgent and critical, as if I'd been irresponsible, "We need to start taking her name off that account." I started crying again, and said "Not now. I have to take things slowly." He softened, said "I understand," and I left.

We spent a lot of time at Group Health, especially with chemo.
In 2006, some of Sandy's closest friends bought her a
video iPod to help entertain her as she started chemo.

The hardest task was still ahead. I needed to have my blood drawn. My naturopath gave me new supplements in April and asked me to have my blood tested in late June. But Sandy was in the hospital then and my routine health care was a low priority for me. After she died, I didn't have the energy. And then, as the months have gone on, I've realized how much I've been dreading walking into that building. We last passed the lab on July 5, heading back to the car after we'd met with the oncologist and she told us Sandy had only a few weeks to live. I hadn't been in any Group Health building since July 8, when Sandy was in Urgent Care before we transferred to Bailey Boushay.

I'd been dreading getting my blood drawn, and that dread had made it an even bigger deal, an even more challenging hurdle. I knew that I needed to do it and get it over with, meet my demons head on. So I steeled myself, crossing the street from the credit union to the building that holds the lab, ducked into a restroom to finish sobbing and dry myself off, and then went down and did it.

Sandy and I used to talk about "scary things," as in "How many scary things do you have to do today?" We tried to recognize the effort it took to get through them, support each other in them, honor our accomplishments, and limit the number we had to do on any given day. Scary things could be anything from challenging work tasks to dealing with water in the basement, calling a friend who's mad at you, asking for a refund on something, anything that our instinct was to run away from.

Now I have another category: "hard things" are the things I have to do because Sandy died, or the things I need to do that feel different because Sandy died. Some days everything is a hard thing. But in general, I've tried to space them out, do them slowly. Yesterday I jumped one more hurdle, re-entering the health care structure where we'd learned she was about to die.