Two years and counting
The last two years have been an emotional and personal roller coaster.
While this was nowhere near the worst part of the past two years, this is how it started out~
Covid-19 had started turning the world upside down, when, on April 1, 2020 (Yes, April fucking fools day) I lost my job. The two sister newspapers I’d worked for since 2011 closed…just like that! The owner-publisher had been trying to sell for some time. He was ready to retire and could not sell. The place was losing money and it was time. I was actually more relieved than upset. Staying home, away from people and safe seemed like a good plan.
A few months later, the local development board had purchased both newspapers and combined them, expecting to run the business with volunteer help. When it became apparent that they needed to actually hire someone, I was the first person they reached out to and I accepted. For a lot of reasons, it was not the same as working for a real newspaper guy. And after a particular story of mine about one family’s struggle with Covid-19 was cut because the powers that be were trying to downplay the virus, I began looking for another job. I had learned to report the news, not a Pollyanna version of what a development board wants the news to be.
Also playing into this decision, my husband’s health was not the best, and although we didn’t know what the problem was, it became apparent he would probably be retiring in another year. Or so we thought. He couldn’t last a full shift at work, he’d come home after a few hours and just want to sleep. He had lost weight and his back hurt. We chalked it up to normal aging. At least that’s what he convinced me (and probably himself) of. He went to his PA often, and nothing real serious was ever found. He would soon be eligible for Medicare, but I’m a few years younger and needed to find a job that offered health insurance. I found one at a local bank. I didn’t like anything about this job except the regular hours and unheard of amount of paid holidays. But I figured I could stick it out a few years. I didn’t go for the insurance right away, and about the time I did, the bank informed me this was not working out and they wanted me to resign. They weren’t going to “fire” me. They wanted me to quit, but they would give me time to find something else. I suppose this is how they cover their asses. I have since learned that this is a normal business practice for them.
I was offered a job back at the newspaper on a part time basis with flexible hours. This was a good safety net, because ….
In the midst of all this, we discovered that the reason my husband was so tired and achy wasn’t just normal aging, but that he had stage 4 lung cancer that had spread to the lymph nodes, adrenals, ribs, jawbone, sternum, and God knows where else. His oncologist was wonderful. She didn’t try to blow smoke up our asses. She told him it was past the point of surgery being helpful. It just had spread to too many places. She said chemo could buy a little time, and said if he wanted to do that, she would be willing to do it, but that he’d feel pretty sick for a lot of that time. We looked into immunotherapy, and wasted a month waiting for test results that determined he was not a good candidate for that. So we opted for quality of time rather than quantity. No chemo, no radiation, but we avoided a lot of stress. He hated medical tests, procedures, etc. and I believed his doctor when she said a good dose of chemo might kill him before the cancer would. The day she looked him in the eye and said she was very sorry but he didn’t have much longer left to live, and wanted to set us up with hospice, I don’t think he really digested exactly what she was saying. He figured I would be going to work the next day like everything was normal. Bullshit to that. I called the bank president at home that evening and said, okay I am done right now. Sorry, no notice. There was no way I could have gone in to work and been nice to people.
Turns out his quality of life, even without chemo wasn’t that great. I thought maybe we could do something he enjoyed, but he did not feel like doing anything. We didn’t talk about things we needed to talk about. He spent most of the next few weeks on the bed in the living room, or sitting on the porch having a cigarette. (I’d complained for years, but by now it didn’t make any difference.) Our two grown sons did come home often.
We went from them finding a spot on his lung in August, to him dying at home the first week in November. It does not seem real. The hardest part was that he didn’t seem to accept the fact that he was dying. We didn’t have the important talks. Just like we had done for the past 42 years, we stuck our heads in the sand and took the approach that if we don’t admit it, it wasn’t true. I think it hit him about a day and a half before he died. The hospice nurse told him if there is anything he wanted to do before he passed away, we should do it today. He mentioned taking a drive out to the family farm. She said she could help with that, getting him into the car, coming along to help, but then he backed off saying “Well, it’s going to be dark soon. We’ll do it another time. There was no other time.
Along with all of this, we became great-grandparents to two babies this year. Our oldest son’s stepdaughter had a baby boy in July and Neil did get to meet and hold him. We knew he was sick by the time he saw him, but we didn’t know how sick. He enjoyed holding that little guy.
And our grandson and wife had a baby girl who was born the day after her great-grandpa’s funeral, so that was bittersweet. They got married a couple weeks before and grandpa was not feeling well enough to attend the wedding. There were a lot of anti-vax people there, including the bride’s entire family. But that is an entirely different rant for another day!
Oh and as we sneak up on the two-year anniversary of the day the paper closed, I am quitting for a second time. What happens next will be fodder for my next story….when I figure that out!
