To All Things...

It’s been a rough week, to say the least.  Shawn quit his new job on Friday due to safety concerns and things not being run the way things they ought to be.  I could write pages on the details but I’ll spare you the boredom.  He did get his old job back but his 401(k) will be all screwed up and he won’t have any vacation for a year.

This job thing cost us some money and he was really upset over the whole deal.  With that done and taken care of and the two of us feeling better about the job situation, I got my birthday meal on Saturday.

My sister, her husband and their four kids had made plans three weeks ago for my birthday weekend.  “They didn’t know…” Mom said.

Completely and totally joking I said, “They didn’t know?  My birthday has fallen on the 31st every year for the last twenty-eight!”

Of course I must emphasize how much I was joking because here’s the deal:  Either we could all get together on Easter Sunday and have pie or cake or whatever after dinner, or Mom said she would make chicken fried steak on Saturday.  Guess which one I chose?  I haven’t had Mom’s steak, mashed potatoes and homemade gravy in years.

I was in absolute Heaven.  Dad made a huge peach cobbler which came out perfectly and Mom had bought an Edward’s chocolate pie.  Both were divine, ha ha.

It’s the kind of gif that cannot be ordered or purchased.  To eat a meal that I didn’t cook is really something special to me. 

Ah, and then there’s the other thing.  Marianne had had congential heart disease for years upon years.  She was always in and out of the hospital because once the heart has issues, every other organ seems to follow suit.  I spent a lot of time with Marianne at work, in between things to do, chatting it up.

Last Thursday, Marianne’s husband called the store and said that she would be sent home on hospice care, given two weeks to live.  I brushed it off because Marianne has always gone down and bounced right back up like it was nothing.  “I feel fine.  I’m only sick, because they tell me I’m sick,” she would say, speaking of the doctors.

She once fell into a coma.  The doctors asked her husband what he wanted to do.  “Give it three days.  If she doesn’t wake up after three days, then we’ll do it,” Marianne’s husband had said.

Marianne woke up from her coma on the third day.

Mom called yesterday and asked for Marianne’s last name.  I gave it to her and asked if it was in the obituaries.  It was.

I checked it out online since we don’t get the newspaper and made sure it was Marianne.  There was her husband’s name, followed by the names of her four grown children.  She was fifty-five years old.  And about one of the sweetest people you could ever meet.

Marianne helped me when I had my wisdom tooth pulled.  She was the one who told me to alternate Tylenol and Advil when I couldn’t take Vikodens at work.  She constantly encouraged all my quit -smoking tries.  She was so happy when I quit and always asked how my mother (who she’d never met) was doing with her quitting smoking.

It’s been a rough day because most people go to work to get their minds off things.  My job is so mundane and boring that once a thought enters my head, it just strings along all day.  The folks in the back didn’t spend as much with Marianne as I did so I felt alone for the most part.  My stomach has churned since the moment my feet touched the floor this morning and the faintest smell of food makes me ill.  I feel as though I’m going to throw up and I know this is all simply due to my issues with anxiety.

I can however rejoice in the personal knowledge of Marianne’s faith.  I know she is with God now.  That, I am sure of and I know it deep in my heart.  Never again will she need to spend the night in that awful hospital.

I’m gonna miss you, Marianne.