Your Dying Spouse 74 - Surrender

We're linked with Messy Marriage's Wedded Wednesday/

Note to caregivers...your spouse may be kind of like the person described below. Adversity does weird things to people.

Recently I heard a TV preacher telling her congregation to raise their hands in a gesture of surrender to God. She said we should be soft.

I turned the channel, because I never learned how to surrender, and I am certainly not about to start learning now. And I am the hardest individual you might hope never to meet.

This may sound like defiance toward the Almighty, about a stiff-necked sort of pride that stands between me and God.

Not the case.

I'm terminally ill, and I accept that. I accept that it is part of God's plan, at least to the point of it being an unfortunate operational necessity. Terminal illness is an artifact of a world in which free will is operative. The things that give us the ability to choose God also make disease and pain a part of our lives.

God is my CO; and He may well send me to my death, if that is a mission which he believes is worth that cost. he will not do it without sorrow, or without the reassurance that He has given me the resources to bear the assigned burden.

It's just that I may not survive, that's all. And that's OK. He gives the orders, I carry them out. Period. Chain of command.

And that's where surrender goes out the window. We're on the same side. You don';t surrender to HQ!

If I'm truly Jesus' brother, and God's son, I don't have to 'surrender' to them. They outrank me; I do the best I can to follow orders.

And I don't surrender to illness. The days have gone much darker, but the harder it gets, the harder I push myself. I may lose, but this malignant thing is going to die with me. Little joke there. Kind of.

And so, softness...what's that?

I'm a hard person. I'm ruthless with myself. Pain hurts, yes, vomiting is unpleasant, and incontinence is humiliating, but so what? I have the same 24 hours, and it may be tougher to get things done...but if I don't do that which I think is important, who will?

I can be 'nice' to myself, and watch passing the time I could have used, or I can kick myself in the butt, wipe up the vomit, and keep going.

I try not to do it, but I do kick other butts as well. Ruthlessness begins at home.

And at the end of the day, I'm glad I didn't surrender. And I'm glad I was not soft.

And when I meet God and Jesus I'll salute, but I won't look away. And they had best not look away either.

Your Dying Spouse 73 - A Fierce Joy {FMF}

Back again with Kate Motaung's Five Minute Friday, the timed keyword-inspired writing challenge.

We're also linked with Messy Marriage's Wedded Wednesday/

This week's word is JOY.

Execute.

Every time I think things can't get worse, they do. Realizing that you need to get to the bathroom, and all you can do is crawl...and you don't make it...what do you call that?

Living the dream.

I'm living the dream because, please, fellow Brits (by way of Mongolia), pardon me...I AM STILL BLOODY HERE.

This hasn't knocked me off yet, and with the pain, and the humiliation (both physical and in regard to some relationships, I am beating this.

Because I am still alive, and I am still looking forward to tomorrow.

Sure, today was kind of lost to anything but just maintaining position. I wasn't able to do more than take care of the dogs and watch a couple of DVDs as reference to writing projects.

But I am looking forward to a better tomorrow. Cancer, you can't take that away from me!

And there is joy in this fight.

My main allies on the spot are dogs; better than people, they are closer to blood and bone. They get it.

And this is a fight of blood and bone. I have to talk my way through everything I do..."Okay, just do this...and now do that..."

One step at a time.

And there is joy in this. There is joy in kicking this illness in the face, by finding life to be something worthwhile.

There is joy in sharing this, that a death sentence can be something to be celebrated (as long as you have to be there) because you can witness to life's value, and not waste time in stupid sentimental pathos.

"Oh, poor me, I'm going to DIE-eee!"

Pardon me again, but the veriest HELL with that sort of rubbish.

I am going to enjoy this fight. I am enjoying it.

AND I HAVE ALREADY WON, BECAUSE I AM HERE NOW!

Endex.

"We are in the place of honour, and we must accept it."

Squadron Leader Philip Hunter, 264 Sdrn. RAF, shortly before he was killed in the Battle of Britain

Gods of War - #BlogBattle

Time for this week's keyword-driven flash fiction contest, hosted by Rachael Ritchey.

Today's keyword is Mars.

We're also linked with Messy Marriage's Wedded Wednesday/

(A note to the reader - it was not uncommon at the time for Vietnamese men who were close friends to hold hands; it didn't imply homosexuality.)

God of War

Another day, another road sweep, but this one was special, because the Ruff Puffs were coming out to play.

The Regional Force / Popular Force guys had a great reputation for a gentle, peace-loving nature. Unfortunately, their job was to kill Charlie.

They were sure interesting, though.  A patrol with them might mean that some chickens and pigs were coming along, and the guys toted the weirdest variety of weapons outside a museum. From old Nazi MG34s to BARs to Swedish Ks to machetes...these guys had it all. Sometimes they brought along ammunition, too.

And some of them patrolled holding hands.

It was a short run, one ville to the e next, but the Rome plows hadn't cut back toe bush as far as they'd been told, so we had the Ruff Puffs with us a foot-mobiles. If one tripped and fell into Charlie's spider hole, we knew we had a problem.

"TC?"

"Dude?"

"New Guy tanks's running away again."

I sighed. New Guy tank had point, and it must have been Timex driving, because they were slowly creeping ahead of the Ruff Puffs, who were in turn doing a reverse accordion to cluster around Ship of Fools.

I wondered if the two watches Timex wore, one on each wrist, made him afraid that he was going to be late for something.

"You want me to catch up to him?"

"No, the Puffies can't run that fast. I'll see if I can rein him in." The New Guy TC was about to get a tongue-lashing, and I was kind of looking forward to it.

I flipped to the common preset, and was about to tell New Guy TC to get his head out of his...

WHANGGGG!

A B-40 shot out of the bush, hit the turret of the New Guy tank, and shot straight up trailing a cloud of yellow-white smoke.

There was wailing around Ship of Fools, as the Ruff Puffs were reminded that there was a war out there.

New Guy TC and his loader had been in eyeball defilade, hatches cracked and only enough of their heads showing so they could see out.

Now the loaders hatch clanged shut as he made like a prairie dog...but the TC hatch flipped open, and New Guy TC rocketed upward, arms and legs churning. He literally hit the ground running, and ran straight at the place where the B-40 had been launched.

Meanwhile, his tank went barreling down the road, fading into the heat-haze.

If Charlie had been there, I bet he was crapping his pants, seeing a lone American running into the teeth of whatever fire Charles might choose to offer.

But Charles didn't know that his assailant was in a blind panic.

"Dude, stop the tank, and go get that idiot!". The Dude had the fastest feet in the tank, and he levered himself through the hatch and down the glacis and the tank groaned to a halt. Sonny jumped off the turret and disappeared into the driver's hatch. "Up!" he said, putting on The Dude's helmet and mike.

The Dude was going hard, but the idiot had a big lead, and I could see dust starting to kick up from the dead ground they were crossing. "Gunner, traverse right, hit the treeline!"

"TC, we got cannister in the tube!"

Crap. Biff was right. We were shooting too close to our own guys, and we'd shred them. "Get on the coax, and keep Charlie's head down!"

The thrity started hosing tracer, just past where ou boys were running. Biff was controlling the bursts so he didn't burn out the barrel.

The Dude looked back, then dug harder. New Guy Idiot TC was flagging, and as out rounds crossed with Charlie's in the air around them, The Dude tackled our boy and they rolled to the ground in a cloud of dust.

And then the coax stopped. "Coax is down!"

"Clear it!"

"TC, I can't!" There was hammering from inside the turret, and Charlie's volume of fire increased. The Dude and The Idiot were not going anywhere soon. Alive, I mean.

"Crap" was beginning to be a useful descriptor for the day. "Sonny, roll toward them, see if we can't..."

BOOM!

We'd just run over a mine, and the end of a severed track clattered sadly off its idlers.

But I'd forgotten about the Ruff Puffs (forgetting about them had been something of a dream...).

Two skinny Vietnamese ran from behind the left side of the tank. One was carrying an MG34, the other, two boxes of 7.92.

And instead of running away, they made straight for where The Dude and The Idiot had gone to ground.

This was not normal behavior for Ruff Puffs.

They ran past our friends, and went prone on a low earthen berm, really just a little mound. The 34 opened up with its characteristic ripped-fabric sound, and as Charlie's fire slackened, The Dude and The Idiot leapt to their feet...The Dude making sure The Idiot went the right way this time.

They reached Ship of Fools completely winded, and as they climbed up onto the rear deck The Dude said, "Who are those guys?"

"Ruff Puffs." They were still firing, but with a broken tank, how could we help them? Charlie had by now realized that the potentially valuable Americans had eluded his grasp, and all he had now was a Ruff Puff machine-gun team on his doorstep.

We couldn't do anything, and in less than a minute a fast flurry of fire made doing anything unnecessary. The guys on the gun were gone, and Charlie abruptly quit playing, and faded into the trees.

The rest of the Ruff Puffs were using the tank as defilade, and when they saw their guys get creamed...they started crying.

And holding hands.

The Dude was watching them, and abruptly turned away, one hand to his eyes.

Funny. Something got in my eyes, too.

Your Dying Spouse 72 - Taking Over

We're linked with Messy Marriage's "Wedded Wednesday"; please check it out for some great marriage resources

Terminal illness takes away a lot; first, the ability of do anything outside of work, then, the ability to be in the workforce...and finally, it takes the responsibilities that go with a shared life.

And yet, we all need work of some kind. Shakespeare recognized this when he wrote -

"If all the years were playing holidays
to sport would be as tedious as to work."

As a caregiver, one of the best things you can do is to make sure that your terminally ill spouse does have a sphere of responsibility, and 'work'; even if that's relatively minor, it should be something that he or she is expected to do. It might be dishes, or laundry, or paying the bills; but it should be theirs.

Until it can't be.

There will come when it's obvious that you have to take over, but it may not be obvious to your mate, and how do you take the work from his or her hands without crushing the spirit, even more than illness has crushed it?

Gently. Very, very gently.

First...if possible, wait to be asked. It's by far the best way, if your mate asks to be relieved of duties through the self-awareness that things have just gotten too hard.

Second...offer to take over on a one-time basis..."If you're not feeling well today, would you like me to do that for you?" Chances are that if it's more than a one-day loss of energy, you'll end up taking over by default, and it will be something of a relief to your spouse to be able to let go.

Third...trade jobs...hand over something you do that's less critical, in exchange for a must-do that is becoming beyond your loved one's capabilities. You'll know...and they'll know...what's going on. But it provides a way to save face...and saving face is critical. Lose self respect, and you lose the will to live.

Fourth...here is what you must (almost) never, ever say..."You're getting worse, and it looks like I'm going to have to take over."This is a killer, and unless it's something like bill-paying...and your spouse refuses to relinquish it even though critical bills are not being paid on time...this is something of the 'nuclear option'. Its ets a person back, hard.

Unless you can get outside help, eventually everything your spouse did as part of shared responsibility will eventually devolve onto you. Your task is to make that transition as graceful and painless as possible.

For both of you.

Your Dying Spouse 71 - Overwritten

Memories are forever, except when they aren't.

One of the truly nasty things about a terminal illness is that the experiences you're sharing with your dying spouse now will, and I repeat will overwhelm and subsume the happy memories you had of a normal life together.

Medication and bedpans will replace marriage vows and birthdays.

Vomit will cover the memories of vacations. Pardon the bluntness - this is reality.

And you will find that as death approaches, it will be something of a relief, and the shared joys will be as pictures in someone else's family album.

There is a remedy.

Reinforce the good memories.

Talk about them. Watch the videos, spin up the  photo albums, and write things down

Write down the remembered conversations you cherished.

And, again bluntly, write down how you felt about your physical love. It'll feel weird. It'll feel maybe improper.

Just like Solomon's feelings for his Shulamite bride were improper, eh?

I guarantee you this...when you set yourself to that task, when you tell someone who loves you and who is going to die that you are working to preserve the memories of your life together, you will do more good than a passel of preachers.

We all want to be remembered well. We all want to live on in the memories of those we love, as a reminder of happy times.

We don't want to be remembered in the way we died. This isn't a stupid Hallmark movie, where death comes with dignity and violins.

Death is horrible.

Please, guys...if you take one thing from this series, this last best effort I am making, let it be this...

OVERWRITE DEATH, BY PRESERVING THE MEMORY OF LIFE.

I hope you'll excuse the urgency, and the passion.

You see, we didn't do this. And the good memories...

...are pictures in what feels like someone else's album.

And it can't be fixed.

We're linked with InspireMeMonday and Messy Marriage's Wedded Wednesday.

I treasure your comments - circumstances have made my replies slower than I would like; I hope you'll bear with me.

Your Dying Spouse 70 - Green With Envy {FMF}

Time for Five Minute Friday, the keyword-driven timed writing exercise hosted by Kate Motaung. We're also linked to Wedded Wednesday.

Today's word is GREEN.

That's a tough one. Or maybe not.

Execute.

Life has gotten a lot harder since we met last Friday. Every time I think , well, it can't get worse, atleast for awhile, it does. Now, it's getting really hard to keep food down, and I'l losing weight. Not a good sign.

Things feel ominous.

On Facebook and in other venues I read of friends whose lives are going well...they take vacations, get promotions, get represented by literary agents, get book contracts...I love to read about it.

And I'm not green with envy. I don't envy them at all.

It's not because "I have compensations". I don't. People who say that a terminal illness is a blessing are, pardon me, idiots. This SUCKS. I do not like incontinence, and my service dogs don't like mandatory baths after I puke blood all over them.

I'm not closer to God. he seems awfully far away at the moment, though I still believe in Him. I don't know His plans; I accept what's happening as part of them.

I'm not envious because envy obviates what good I might have been able to do. To wish a changed situation at the very least wishes the deaths of some of the dogs in my care, because the circumstances that brought them here were a direct result of that illness.

Here are two of them, Josie and Reebok. They were puppies, and a day from being euthanized. The first picture is on their way home for the first time, the second is now.

So others may have the vacations, the contracts, the fun. My life may not look like much, but saving a life isn't wasting your life, is it? (If that sounds familiar, it's from the most recent Rambo movie, a film with an unambiguously Christian message).

Endex.

And now, if I may, a brief revisit to last week's keyword, TRUST

I had initially thought to do a piece on the trust inherent in my relationship with the Almighty, but the thoughts didn't gel coherently. Now they have.

I trust God, but there's no way I can have an "Abba-daddy-trust" with Him. I'm being bludgeoned to death by disease, and sniped at by annoyance (did I really need a painful eye injury that refuses to heal, right now? Seriously?)

If there's 'good and not evil' coming, I'm not feeling it.

But I still trust Him. But it has to be the trust of a fully-functioning adult. A soldier in the abattoir of the Anzio beachhead in 1944 famously said (and only partly in jest), "Please, come, God. Come yourself; don't send Jesus. This is no place for children."

I get it. What the man was saying was, "Let me be a man to match what You're demanding of me in this place."

And thattrust has to be that of a grown up. Time to put childish things away.

I trust that He created a world in which free will is necessary for us to become beings who could share eternity with Him. He has His angels; apparently they aren't quite making it. He made us because he wants us. And maybe needs us.

And the only way we can reach Him is through an exercise of free will, to choose him, however imperfectly we think our execution of that choice is. If we saw our motivations from His perspective, I think we might be surprised at their basic purity.

And I trust that given the necessity for illness and painful death, I trust Him to give me the strength to try to help make the world a better place while I'm in it, and the intelligence and insight to know what to say.

And the compassion to try to understand what my wife is going through, as she sees her world irrevocably changed and the future she hoped to share with me passing beyond hope.

I would love your thoughts. Please, help me to understand.

The Scars Unseen - #BlogBattle

Time for this week's #BlogBattle, the weekly keyword-driven flash fiction contest hosted by the lovely and gracious Rachael Ritchey. We're also linked with Wedded Wednesday.

This week's word is SCAR.

The Scars Unseen

Downtime; Oceanview, and the monsoon. The war was on hiatus by mutual consent. Neither Charlie nor the USMC was inclined to fight a war in physical discomfort. But it was cool enough to wait out the afternoon rain in the tank.

"So what's everyone planning to do when they get out?" Biff was a master of optimism, and the renowned genius of the Unlucky Question. Bad fortune hovered over Viet Nam like a mosquito

"We're not going to get out," I said. "We're part of the landscape. We're just going to repeat the same day forever."

"Ugh." The Dude had been dozing. "Don't scare him, TC. He might run away, and then where would Westmoreland be?"

"Seriously," said Biff. "TC, what about you?"

I had no idea. Surviving the war was enough of a goal. I'd seen what a B-40 could do to a tank. "Accounting. I'll be an accountant."

Dead silence. "Okay," said Biff. "That's kind of hard to imagine."

"Why?"

He looked up. Perhaps the answer to my question was written on the bulkhead. "Well, it's a long way from here. I mean, who would you kill?"

"I'll go into accounts receivable. Pay up, or else."

The Dude shook his head. "You'd be like the dishonest servant, TC."

"The what?" My dander was up. Me, dishonest?

Yeah. Guy Jesus talked about in the Bible. Got found out for skimming, and before he got fired changed the debts that people owed his master. You'd just let people off the hook."

"Says who?" I couldn't think of anything else to say.

"Says me," said The Dude. "Sonny, what about you?"

Sonny had radio watch, but he'd moved one earphone away so he could hear us. "Me?"

"Yes. You."

"Waaalll..." Sonny looked down, and then bit his lip. Clearly, he wanted to go back to the farm, and was trying to hold back nostalgic tears.

"Ah'm fixin to light out for Iz-rah-eel. Gonna join the army. Tanks. They got M48s."

I dropped the cigarette I was nursing, and there was an audible thump when The Dude snapped his head back against the turret bulkhead.

Biff was intrigued and wistful. "Really?"

Sonny shook his head like a bull warding off flies. "Yeah. Ah jest don hold with bullies, an I figgered them Jew-boys got pushed round enough. So ah'm gonna jest lend a hand."

And the Pope is Polish. This was just talk.

"Yeah. It's all arr...uh...urr..."

"Arranged?" asked Biff.

"Yeah. When I DEROS ah ain't gonna DEROS. They's gonna outprocess me heah, and ah'm flahin east till ah get thar. Chaplain's got it ahll fixed up."

I really had to get to know these guys better.

"You okay with all that?" asked Biff. "I mean, you're a...what, Baptist?"

"Yeah, but when ah gets thar I'm gonna get Jewish. Ah mean, ya gotta get wet ta swim. raht?"

This was not a side to Sonny that I had ever expected to hear, and The Dude had gone sheet-white.

"You're going to convert?" Biff didn't close his mouth after speaking.

""Sure, wha not? It's jest a little ol' thang, and Jesus was a Jew-boy, raht?"

The Dude said, "Uh, there are some other things..." Life in a tank was intimate.

Sonny beamed. "Ah know what y'all mean Dude, and it's okay. Jest a little ol' snip, and man, I'm thar...ah'm castrated."

"Umm...Sonny..." said The Dude.

"Wha? It ain't no big deal, ah mean, ah won't even ask fer antiseptic. Don't need ta sleep through it...and besahdes, evr-bady's castrated these days."

"Only if you're married," murmured The Dude.

Unfortunately, Biff had just taken a sip of Coke. I handed him a rag.

"You're serious?" asked The Dude. "Seriously, now."

"More serious then a dead hawg in the sunshahn."

The Dude opened his eyes wide at the metaphor, and then closed them tight, hoping it would go away. "And I was going back to the seminary," he said.

"Whattaya mean?" Sonny was perplexed. "Y'all kin go to the cemetery."

"And who's going to drive your tank?" 

Biff paused in his cleaning duties. "I always wanted to go to Israel, but I didn't really know anyone there..."

Oh, great. Our Kentucky Pied Piper was working some sort of magic.

"Uh, TC?"

I sighed. "Sonny?"

"Mebbe they'll let us-all crew up together?"

"Aren't you guys tired of getting shot at? And c'mon...Israel's hot."

"TC?"

"Dude?"

"It's a dry heat."