I just couldn’t stop and go to bed.  I needed, I NEEDED, to empty the bedroom of everything I could find that reminded me of what we have been through with the Parkinson’s .  Gratefully, the Hospice folks had taken all the medicine bottles and the items they brought that were of no further use to us now that Mary Ann is free of the damned disease.  It did its worst, and she still won.  She has let go of it so that it has no power over her any longer.  She has a life that is as free as a butterfly, a favorite image of hers, especially in the early years.

I am not about to let the Parkinson’s Disease and the Parkinson’s Disease Dementia (a Dementia with Lewy Bodies) remain the dominant feature of our lives any more.  Pretending it never happened would be silly and deny who we became as we faced it down and refused to let it steal from us meaning and joy and fulfillment.  With that said, I don’t have to allow it to come along any longer on my journey, just as she no longer has its company in her new life.

For both of us, we now are living life after Parkinson’s.  I stripped the bed and put on fresh bedding.  At this point, I don’t even remember all the things I threw away — nothing that needed to be kept any longer.  Finally, I went to bed.  It was a fitful sleep, up a couple of times, now for no good reason.  This morning beginning at about 4:30am, my mind started working.  Every time I thought of something that I needed to do, I got up headed down the hall to my office, wrote it down and came back to bed.  I did that four or five times between then and a little before 7am.

Today has included lots of tasks.  Throughout the day, I have been reading comments on this blog and on Facebook that have provided comfort and the recognition that we are not going through this alone.  We have welcomed more food and enjoyed eating part or most of much of it, while freezing for later what we cannot consume now.  There are some really fine cooks in our circle of support.  I was able to get a much needed freely given haircut from friend and former parishioner Doug this afternoon.  Marikay’s Volunteering with Mary Ann was doing her hair there at their shop.

Son Micah wrote the obituary for us this morning so that we could take it with us to meet with Pat the Funeral Director working with us.  As I mentioned in last night’s post we were treated more like friends than clients as we went through all the necessary steps.  Having made the arrangements in advance seven years ago, it was a relatively painless process.  It still took a couple of hours to go through all the paperwork that is required.  The web site with Mary Ann’s obituary is http://www.penwellgabeltopeka.com.  Enter Mary Ann Tremain in the search box and then when her name comes up, click on her name to see the obituary.  I think the link we provided on Facebook will take you right to it in one step. Having done the pre-need plan at the cemetery, that visit was only a few minutes.

We stopped at church for a while.  The Staff there was a sort of family for the over twelve years I served there.  They listened as I shared the daily struggles.  They provided a wonderful, nurturing community.  We dropped off what has turned out to be an elegantly done, indescribably beautiful book mark that will serve as a thank you to those who have volunteered in any way to help Mary Ann over the years.

The main reason for stopping at the church was to talk about the music with Young, the Director of Worship and the Organist.  She led us to the balcony and sat down at the console to play some of what she will use as processional and recessional music as well as a hymn prelude and accompaniment.  I have absolutely no defense mechanisms capable of deflecting the power of a full organ playing music that simply soars heavenward.  It is not sweet and gentle or somber and sad.  It is energizing and thrilling and victorious.  I simply melted.  Each time she stopped and asked if that was all right, I could only nod, yes.  I could not talk.  I am in real trouble as far as trying to keep my composure on Thursday is concerned.

Later in the afternoon, I was by myself with some time to fill between the cemetery trip and the haircut.  I stopped at Lowe’s to look for some much needed deck chairs and a hose caddy.  I wandered into Barnes and Noble just to spend time before going for the haircut.  I got scared, especially when I walked around Barnes and Noble.  Everything that has given me purpose for my lifetime up to now has ended.  I have completed a career, I am done living with and caring for Mary Ann.  She is even what I have written about, her care the content of the blog.  I got scared about what I will do when the funeral and memorial up north are over, the house is in order and the thank you cards written.  Will I be wandering about aimlessly, a pathetic old man with no where to go and nothing to do.  It just scared me for a moment.

With that said, I will be fine.  Very many other people who lose a spouse after retiring have exactly the same problem.  “What do I do now?”  Gratefully, there will be time to think about that later.  Right now, there is a lot that will be going on in the next couple of weeks.

When I returned home after the haircut, Son Micah had orchestrated the removal of some of the bigger items in the house because of the Parkinson’s. I had shared with him earlier my need to rid the place of all the signs that it was ever present.  They took up the protective mesh from the ceramic tile floor in the bathroom.  We put it down after Mary Ann did some real damage in a fall.  They took up the matting for the same purpose in the garage.  The rolling shower chair, the wheel chair in the car, the support handles around the toilet stools were all removed to the garage for the moment.

Yes, part of it is that I need time to forget the horrible sight of Mary Ann suffering so much at the end.  I need not to remain immersed in remembering and focusing on the caregiving tasks of the last decade.  I need to remember Mary Ann, the person, “a force to be reckoned with” someone said, and a wonderful, exciting life’s partner.  Yes, we have been shaped by responding to the challenge; we have grown.  At the same time, we are far more than the disease.  I want to remember the “more.”

Now that she is gone, I have nothing to write about.  While I try to decide whether to just stop writing, I will describe and reflect on what is going on during these first  transitional days.  I will write a post or two on the beginnings and development of our life together.  There is a huge hole filled with pain right now.  I need to remember, reconstruct the memory of that life, lift the fog of the Parkinson’s so that the wonder of it will reappear.  I expect what I write to be boring and self-serving, but that is just the way it is.  I started writing these posts each night to find the perspective I needed to survive, to make some sense out of something that makes no sense.  I hoped they would help anyone in similar circumstances who happened upon the blog.  I have been blown away by how many have become a part of our journey in the past couple of years and especially the past few weeks.

As little as I could predict about what we would encounter day by day as we fought the Parkinson’s and the Dementia, I know even less now about what will come next.  Mary Ann is experiencing a spectacular new beginning beyond our knowing.  I am also experiencing a new beginning.  As cliche as it is to say it, today actually is the first day in the rest of my life. So far I am not liking it very well, but given time, that will change.

Plans are now final.  The Mary Ann’s funeral will be at 11:30am on Thursday at the church with a visitation at the funeral home tomorrow evening from 6pm to 8pm.  She will lie in state there from 2pm on tomorrow.  We will have private family time with her at noon. She will lie in state at church an hour before the funeral.  There will be a meal afterward at church to which we hope as many as can attend will come.  On Friday we will have a very short inurnment service with mostly family at the graveside.

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