ALRIGHT, the first one is a tease. Not that we hadn't *planned* it. We'd actually planned to stop at Victoria's Secret while we were out of town by ourselves for a change, picking up the Krispy Kremes for our daughter's fundraiser, but the trip ended up being too quick to waste the time.
It was a terrible weekend, and on the way home it got worse. His cell phone rang and it was his ex. First of the month, should have expected it. I knew she'd be calling wanting money sometime soon. He put her off by telling her he'd call her back later. We tried not to let it ruin our day, but it was pretty much impossible.
When we got home, it was a runaround to deliver the donuts, the daughter was still in a tizzy about ordering her new cell phone, and there was a crisis in between involving my ex and some information we needed to provide for him. I made dinner while he went out to call her back to see what she'd wanted, figuring we'd get it out of the way early. Dinner came and went, but no B. Finally, when he came in, I could see that it had been a doozy. He came in and ate while I kept him company. We sat in silence while I waited for him to open up.
No matter the motive for her phone call, it had the desired result. B crashed hard. Last night was incredibly difficult. The crushing fatigue. The depression. The shuffle. Emotions that were all over the board. Insomnia when he did try to go to bed, his body wracked with pain. And when I came to bed and we tried to snuggle, the tremor, this time not little fine jitters, but big shuddering muscle jerks all up and down his legs, causing him great distress. He paced around the house for hours, up and down, back and forth. We got less than four hours of sleep last night, to cap off the four the night before. At one point we stood in the silence of the garage and I held him, head drooped on my shoulder in defeat, stroking his hair as I felt the back and forth movement of his lower body, as if he were swaying to music only he could hear. He took another Sinemet, and finally he was able to sleep.
This morning I'm discouraged. I'm sure most of it is from lack of sleep. But I'm angry too. For all the progress we've made, for all the good time we've spent, the last month between my work schedule and all of our household crises has put a distance between us that is incredibly painful. I know a lot of it is the disease. We're still weathering these storms in each other's harbor, clinging together for dear life. But it has to stop. I can't bear the way it's tearing him apart. Last night he was so depressed he talked about giving up his job, just retiring right now. And he was getting so much satisfaction out of it...
I want to know how to change things for him, and I feel so helpless. He spoke his greatest fear last night when he got up distraught over the dyskinesia. I heard the weight with which it dropped from his lips. "These are signs of things to come."
Not necessarily. Not sooner. Hopefully later. God only knows.
Please, God. Hold my husband's heart in your hands and soothe his soul. Let us have some peace. This is my prayer for a Tuesday morning.
No comments:
Post a Comment