I wouldn't wish my situation on my worst enemy.
In the past two weeks, the medical wallahs have decided that after she heals and rehabs from her bad ulcer, my wife is in too bad a shape to come home. Ever. She has to finish out her days in a nursing facility.
I have another family member almost into end-stage cancer.
Two "long good-byes" running at the same time. We warriors understand death. Deaths happen, it's part of life and war. This, to have the two in my family I've loved the most, taking months more to die from incurable disease is VERY hard to take.
Today, I have family and and friends coming over to this big lonely house to begin the process of emptying it out so it can be sold. Seems straightforward enough, it's just logistics, right?
Everything that must be discarded or sold has some history, some significance to me and the almost-departed ones. It's like ripping out a small piece of me with every kitchen gew-gaw I toss out. I can remember when my dear wife WORE these clothes I'm putting aside to donate, and she WAS a clothes-horse, so there is a lot of clothing. Shoes, I can't imagine having that many shoes.
A man might get by with five or six pairs, a dozen, tops, but a woman feels under-dressed if she can't select from fifty or sixty pair.
To make matters worse, my wife has a wasting disease, has had it for 25 years. She has slowly shrunken from a Size 12 down to now a Size TWO! I guess this disease led her to some anguish, because she never threw out many of the oversize clothes, and there are three walk-in closets full of them. Formal dresses for evening. We used to do a lot of that. She was a big wheel in the Officers' Wives Club at my last permanent station, KI Sawyer AFB, MI. The base closed out 25 years ago, and now she is closing out her life.
This wouldn't be so bad if I could just call some service to do it all for me, but I can't afford that, since I will probably have to pay for her nursing home life, and around here, that will be north of $6K/month.
Selling the house and spending down the proceeds will get me by for about 40 months.
I guess my dreams of moving somewhere warm and living in a villa with servants will have to wait for MY next life, but in the meanwhile, I have to take time to say another good-bye to one of my children who isn't going to out-live me now.
WTH, if Life was (a) fair, some barker would be selling tickets to see it, but it isn't fair, and now I have to see this through by myself.
I'll manage. Facebook helps with that, except they just put me in "Jail" because I used a common Spanish slang expression to describe two ugly male cross-dressers...
UPDATE: 041420 2334 PDT:
My wife of 43 years, Blanche, passed across the Rainbow Bridge on March 30th.