Life happened, as it always does. They say that if three or more stressful events occur within a year – such as a death in the family or serious illness – it wears a person down and can cause all kinds of problems. 1993 would be the first of many of those years for me.
My marriage to the kids’ dad had been
shaky for a while, and it finally fell apart completely. Naturally, it would be
easy for me to blame him, but I know in my head that it takes two people
working on it to keep any relationship going. My relationship was mostly with
my babies, and his was with his friends. He moved out in March of 1993, and our
divorce was final on November 11. I insisted on keeping the house because it
was our children’s home. He cooperated in everything.
Don’t I wish that was all that happened that year.
My dad had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s a few years before, and it was
progressing quickly. By April of 1993, Mom was worn to a frazzle taking care of
him. My siblings and I finally convinced her to admit him to the nursing home.
She took Dad in on a Friday morning,
and the next day, he choked on some food – it’s common for people with advanced
dementia to forget how to swallow. This
choking incident resulted in aspiration pneumonia, forcing them to admit him to
the hospital on Sunday.
Unless Mom agreed to put in a feeding
tube, the doctors told her he would continue to choke on his food. We all
agreed that a feeding tube would only prolong a life he was no longer living.
He passed away on Thursday with me and
Mom, his wife of 48 years, by his side.
But that still wasn’t all for that
year.
One September Saturday morning, my
sister Pat woke up with severe abdominal pain. Her husband took her to the ER,
and the next morning, Dr. Skye and the surgeon on call performed an emergency
hysterectomy.
Initially, they thought the large growth in her uterus was an unruly fibroid.
When the pathology came back a few weeks later, the report showed she had
leiomyosarcoma, a rare and very deadly cancer.
A group of specialists discussed her case and decided to keep close tabs on
her. They hoped that all of the cancer cells had been removed during surgery.
She wasn’t only my sister; she was my best friend. My kids were just as close
to her, worshipping the ground she walked on. I can still hear their little
voices announcing, “Aunt Patti’s here,” whenever she drove into our yard.
It had been a bad year, but better years would follow. And so would bad ones.
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| Aunt Patti, Val and Nick, April 18, 1993, four days after Val turned 3 and 11 days before my dad died. |
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