Thursday, November 20, 2008

Bizarre turn of events....and a heavy heart

Oh, my gosh..... life can be so strange. I'm sorry it's taken me so long to get back here... but this event has been front and foremost in my mind... and I haven't been sure how to deal with it on my blog. We have dear friends who had lived across the street from us for seventeen years. We celebrated every birthday with them for all those years....got together with them at Christmas time, etc...etc...etc.... They have grown kids, who live out of the area, so they spoiled ours! The bizarre turn-of-events, in a nutshell: He got a wild-hair to build a log home on the property that they had bought in the '70's, over on the Siletz River. So, even though he talked her into moving, we knew that something wasn't right about it. It made no sense for them to do it. She had an adorable little house with a garden that she had tended all those years..... so beautiful in the summer!! People would go into Incahoots and ask about the flowers that were at such-and-such a house.... after a while, they knew whose house they were talking about...hers!! She was very involved in quilting and knitting groups here in town. She would be taken away from all of that. But, she went along with it and in August of '07, they moved. We couldn't even have a neighborhood going-away BBQ, because she'd be too sad to face anyone. I'd be too sad, too! So, they move and three months later, he tells her that he wants a divorce!! These are people who've been married for over 30 years.... who, for all intents and purposes, seemed perfectly happy!! Of course, you never know what goes on in a marriage....we don't know everything. However, if it was just the divorce, that'd be sad enough; but he started doing bizarre things. I won't go into them, but it was as if something in his brain "clicked". Something had changed, and drastically!! My husband and I talked about the possibility of him having a brain tumor or something going on in his brain that was causing such bizarre actions. His wife had tried to get him to go to the doctor, but he refused. Apparently, she was the one who needed to go to the doctor!

He moved out several months ago. He went up to spend Father's Day at one of their daughter's houses and she mentioned them having been there the previous Christmas. He had no recollection of that. In fact, she thought he was joking around about not being there... and he thought she was joking... but it did concern him a bit, it seems, because he asked her husband about it later. His birthday is in August, so this same daughter sent him a gift of money; a week afterwards, he remembered receiving the money. Two weeks later, he had no idea what she was talking about! And, he didn't remember being there for Father's Day!! I don't know about you, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that something is wrong with this picture!!!

One of the issues for him was his failing business. He had to make that business successful, at all costs...but it wasn't working. So, he took off to Texas, to find "hurricane" work, apparently. About two weeks later, he was up on a ladder and came down, saying he had a lot of pain in his chest and back. I don't know who was there, but apparently they didn't know how to do CPR or not very well, anyway.....and it took twenty minutes for the paramedics to arrive... so he was without oxygen for twenty minutes. :(

His wife (they were still married) and their kids and other family members were all there, rallying around him. They didn't find out until about ten days after he went in that there had been no brain activity the entire time. She wouldn't have put him on life-support had she known that. They did say, though, that the EEG's showed that he'd been having lots of mini-strokes for quite some time. I'm convinced that that had something to do with his irrational actions, but maybe I'm just in denial. It is weird to have someone that you think you've known for all those years do things that make you question whether you really knew them at all. We talked about how it kind of makes you question everyone around you for a while! Do you really know this or that person??

I was hoping that his massive heart attack was a blessing in disguise; that they'd figure out that something else was going on in his brain which was affecting his emotions/decision-making functions, etc... and hopefully, they could help him and the nightmare would be over; that he really didn't want a divorce..... but, no such luck. When she found out there had been no brain activity, they all agreed that they couldn't keep him hooked up... it was time to let him go. Now, she'll never really know what was going on. He left the planet on November 14th.

A few nights later, our fifteen-year-old son said that he felt odd because he didn't really feel much about this person dying. Our astute eighteen-year-old said something to the effect of, "That's because, to us, he died a year ago." So true.

It's a lot to process... I'm still reeling from the news that they were getting divorced!! And, I feel badly for her, for obvious reasons, but also because I'm afraid she's going to find that he's left a tangled mess that she has to deal with.

So, if you have a happy marriage and you're healthy, be Grateful!!

Count your blessings on Thanksgiving......

Teri

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