Hi.  When I was 4, I lost my grandfather to cancer.  He'd worked the coal mines of the Kentucky mountains back before they had anything to protect their breathing.  He had black lung and was a chain smoker.  There were at least 2 others in my family who died the same way.  I remember him lying in bed and the room being dark and he would ask me to get him things, small things like a box of tissues, and when I would come back, he would call me his Little Nurse.  His nickname for me was Little Bit.  He was taking chemo shots at home and when they decided to stop, they kept morphine at home and gave that to him.  It spread all over and to his brain. At the end, he didn't even know who we were.  I was so young that I never really felt the pain of that loss.  Until now.  Because it was driven home when my husband died August 13, 2015, from side effects of the chemo he was on for stage 4 lung cancer.  He'd only had 4 treatments.  That's all.  And one of the side effects was the possibility of developing an abdominal aortic aneurism.  He had trouble with having to go to the bathroom and strain due to diarrhea.  This stemmed from his Stage 3 colon cancer from 3 years before.  He went to the bathroom and when he came out and got to the bed, he said he couldn't breathe.  It was heart failure caused by blood loss.  He had no chest pain, no pressure.  He just couldn't breathe.  His pulse was no discernable.  My grandfather had died while on morphine.  My mother died July 13, 2015, while on morphine and unconscious for 3 days from hemorrhagic pancreatitis.  But my husband sat there, terrified.  We were supposed to have another 5 years.  But I know it would have been 5 years of so much suffering for him.  For him being spared anymore of it, I was grateful.  For my emptiness and loneliness and being torn away from my soul mate and living as only half of a whole now...The pain is so unbearable at times.  And when my stepdaughter came last weekend, she and her boyfriend are so very much in love.  And then he called her "Beautiful!" as a proper noun...a name.  My husband called me that all the time.  He didn't know.  But God, that hurt!!!  I just wanted to be alone after that.  I couldn't stop crying all weekend.  When they left, I spent an hour just screaming and beating on myself...because the pain is so intense, so devastating that it just feels like more than I can take.  I was devastated losing my mother so suddenly.  But that paled in comparison with losing my soul mate.  There is no comparison.  We had 13 years and the last couple of years just got better and better and we fell more deeply in love every day.  They were beautiful!  In May, his sister sent us to the beach, something he had been wanting to do for a while.  We took my daughters for a day and then brought them home before going back for a couple of days.  He was tired, always having been so since his last bout of cancer and chemo.  But not overly so.  We stayed in the room for a lot of it, just sitting outside on the balcony watching the water.  It was so wonderful.  I miss him so terribly.  There is no joy in me for anything.  I laugh, but it is not with the laughter being in my heart.  it's superficial and there's no true feeling of anything other than emptiness...total emptiness and loneliness.  I miss him so very, very much.  Nothing is worth expending the energy to do anymore.  I knew every little breath he took.  After all he went through with the cancer before, I learned every breath, every raise of the eyebrow, every twitch of his mouth, each look, the sighs that meant something was bothering him, the times he didn't feel like answering a question when he was irritated and pretended he didn't hear me (he had bad hearing in one ear), the way he always whispered "I love you" every time he woke up at night, thinking I didn't hear him.  And all the "I love you's" he cried out to me between cries for help when he couldn't breathe and he was dying in front of me.  I am so grateful for those.  They were one of his most precious gifts to me. 

I guess I'm one of the few who still believe in the good of God.  Because what my husband had coming, how selfish would I have been to choose for him to go through all of that when he already found parts of it unbearable.  God will not give us more than we can bear with His strength. 

My husband was at peace with God and knew where he was going to go.  My faith was lost a long time ago and he brought me back.  But I have never regained the childlike utter, complete faith I once had in Him.  And I know it is wrong and I must desire Him above all things, but I want to be right with God so I can see my husband again!  I can't stand the thought of never being with him again!  So, I'm trying to renew my faith.  To find that same peace my husband had found.  I have little anger toward God, for he saved my husband from so  much suffering and pain.  But I want him back, healed, well. 

He was 15 years older than I and I knew that he would go before me just because of that.  He told me I was strong and would be fine, but if I went before him, he would curl up and become nothing.  He never believed what I told him would happen to me.  And here it is happening. 

But I thank God every day for sparing him what the cancer would have done to him and all the suffering he would have had to endure and maybe even having to live with him not even knowing me in later years.  I mourn his loss to me, but rejoice in his eternal delight and ecstatic joy in heaven.  I only pray that one day I will be strong enough in faith to join him.  I loved him more than anything in the world!!!  He was my everything.  My absolute everything. 

Sleep tight, My Love.  I'll see you in the morning!  I promise!  Even if I have to pick the locks of the pearly gates.  *sad laugh*

Until the morning when we awaken in one another's arms, once more. 

I love you, my sweet Shadow Warrior, my Love, my Light, my Lover, my "Poo".

Love Always, Pookie