Your Dying Spouse 554 - What Do I Do NOW??? {FMF}

Another really bad symptom, and it's not going away.

I call it 'Death In The Dunny', and if you're curious, you can look up the symptoms for pancreatic cancer. I won't describe it further except to say that it signals a badly compromised pancreas.

I face it several times a day, and it's frightening every time. Well, not frightening. Terrifying and disheartening, that's maybe more like it.

Today Joseph Prince said on the telly that god wants to heal me. I'm thinking...maybe He lost my address?

And He wants to make me rich...where do I send my routing and account numbers?

I speak in jest, but if I only used a selective reading of Scripture I might actually believe that twaddle.

God wants something far more difficult. He wants to save my immortal soul, and He sent His Son into mortal life to die horribly as the price I could never pay.

And the privilege I receive is the opportunity to bear witness to His Love in my life, to the fact that when your health is wrecked and recreational activities are pretty well reduced to watching DVDs between dreaded trips to the dunny, life is still worth living, and love is still worth giving.

He loved me from His agony on the Cross.

I can love others from my agony on the dunny.

Music from 30 Seconds To Mars, with Do Or Die.

Thanks to Carol Ashby, Blessed Are The Pure Of Heart is back on Kindle, and will be available in paperback soon.

Friends are everything. I couldn't have done it.

Marley, the canine waif from Afghanistan, whom WE helped save, has a Facebook page! Please drop by to see how happy he is today.

Below are my recent releases on Kindle -please excuse their presence in the body of the blog. I haven't the energy to get them up as 'buttons' in the sidebar. You can click on the covers to go to the Amazon links.

Your Dying Spouse 553 - Gotta Be Careful About Christmas

A couple of years ago I wrote a short book called PTSD And The Holidays; if you're curious, scroll down and you'll see the cover (which is a link to Amazon).

But the holidays are kind of hard when you're dying, too. The sentimentality that goes along ith a lot of Christmas songs and traditions can cause a sudden black wall of depression, even despair, to rise in the heart.

Maybe it's the "let's all be happy together" thing, and one feels like one's looking in through a closed window. Maybe it's memories of Christmases Past, when pain and unstoppable dry heaves (and worse) weren't a part of every moment, waking or not.

I can't remember the good Christmases. I can't remember what it was like to feel good. Or even 'ok'.

I remember faces that are missing, though. Too many.

So I'm being careful. Barb's got a Christmas special on the telly in the living room. I'm at the other end of the house, rocking out to The Digital Age.

It's a self-preservation thing.

So here's The Digital Age, with Captured.

Thanks to Carol Ashby, Blessed Are The Pure Of Heart is back on Kindle, and will be available in paperback soon.

Friends are everything. I couldn't have done it.

Marley, the canine waif from Afghanistan, whom WE helped save, has a Facebook page! Please drop by to see how happy he is today.

Below are my recent releases on Kindle -please excuse their presence in the body of the blog. I haven't the energy to get them up as 'buttons' in the sidebar. You can click on the covers to go to the Amazon links.

Your Dying Spouse 552 - The Kind Of Faith Worth Having?

After a 'perfect storm' weekend of things in my physical state going really wrong, I'm not up to writing much tonight.

There has to be meaning in lie past cancer; when the hopes and dreams fade, and the screams rise in the night, there's got to be something at the core that's worthwhile.

When you're alone facing a destiny that you don't want, there's got to be a rightnes to what's happening, even if you can't see it.

Faith.

It doesn't have to be strong; maybe it's better that it's flickering, even, because then you have to care for it, understand what nurtures it and what stomps it.

Maybe an unexamined faith isn't worth having.

Music from Guardians Of The Galaxy, Vol. 2. Enjoy!

Thanks to Carol Ashby, Blessed Are The Pure Of Heart is back on Kindle, and will be available in paperback soon.

Friends are everything. I couldn't have done it.

Marley, the canine waif from Afghanistan, whom WE helped save, has a Facebook page! Please drop by to see how happy he is today.

Below are my recent releases on Kindle -please excuse their presence in the body of the blog. I haven't the energy to get them up as 'buttons' in the sidebar. You can click on the covers to go to the Amazon links.

Your Dying Spouse 551 - Spending Christmas Alone {FMF}

No one wants to spend Christmas alone, right? I mean, it's Christmas, for Pete's sake, the day of jollity and feasting and fellowship (and, as Donkey said in Shrek The Halls, Christmas isn't Christmas until somebody cries).

You'd think this, that no one wants to be alone, and in most cases you'd be right, but not here.

I'll be alone, and it's by design.

I'll be dead before so very long, and Barb will have to go on. Sentiment would say, well, spend as much time as you can together while you can...

...but sentiment is stupid.

The relationships that my wife will need to sustain her after my death have to be built now, in relative peace and stability. The friends-that-may-be have to have the best chance to know her, now when things are more-or-less-OK, rather than when she's in crisis.

Holidays are a good get-together day, so I'm encouraging her...if you're invited, go.

I live by Big Boys' Rules, and while Barb's absence on those festive days isn't by any means my preferred choice, it's the right thing to do for her. 

And I'll be OK, with the dogs and some cigars and maybe The Santa Clause on the DVD player.

When you're doing the right thing, you'll always be OK.

It's not about me. It's about the team. And this team stands tall.

Speaking of The Santa Clause, here's some music from the imaginatively-named third film in the series, The Santa Clause 3. The song is The Greatest Time Of Year, by Aly and AJ.

Thanks to Carol Ashby, Blessed Are The Pure Of Heart is back on Kindle, and will be available in paperback soon.

Friends are everything. I couldn't have done it.

Marley, the canine waif from Afghanistan, whom WE helped save, has a Facebook page! Please drop by to see how happy he is today.

Below are my recent releases on Kindle -please excuse their presence in the body of the blog. I haven't the energy to get them up as 'buttons' in the sidebar. You can click on the covers to go to the Amazon links.

Your Dying Spouse 550 - Keeping It Real

One of the real balancing acts in being terminal is just how much to share, at home, via email (no more phones for me), and through my blog.

Obviously, there are some details that simply won't be shared, because they're physically and emotionally humiliating. Although...I have touched on incontinence, because it's hard for both patient and caregiver, and I thought I might throw some useful light on it.

The problem is that the physical, the emotional, and the spiritual are all very closely connected, and pretense ("God is with me, and I fear nothing") serves no useful purpose.

God is with me, but this is still scarier than anything I could imagine, and remember that Jesus was really scared too, in the Garden of Gethsemane. You don't sweat blood for the fun of it.

But there's another danger, giving a laundry-list of ills that becomes either boring, or looks like a plea for sympathy.

Don't get me wrong. I welcome sympathy. I'm a hardass, but a human hardass.

The balance, I guess, if found in the details, the details that will help both patients and caregivers, both current and potential, understand what exactly is involved in this kind of dying.

It's frightening and painful, and it can leave everyone involved completely undone, but there is still joy.

It's hopeless, but that very feeling of futility can, if faced, give birth to the most profound hope, and to victory over despair.

It's exhausting, but I am carried further and faster by Love than I could ever move on my own, even in perfect health.

So I guess I just have to tell pretty much everything, so that the darkest bits help to make the Light more visible, and brighter to our eyes.

And in this life, only against the stench of misery's ordure can we discern the true fragrance of Christ.

Music from The Seekers with Georgy Girl, simply because I really like the song.

Thanks to Carol Ashby, Blessed Are The Pure Of Heart is back on Kindle, and will be available in paperback soon.

Friends are everything. I couldn't have done it.

Marley, the canine waif from Afghanistan, whom WE helped save, has a Facebook page! Please drop by to see how happy he is today.

Below are my recent releases on Kindle -please excuse their presence in the body of the blog. I haven't the energy to get them up as 'buttons' in the sidebar. You can click on the covers to go to the Amazon links.