I tried posting last night, but something appears to be wrong with AOHell's journal software at the moment. I lost that post from last night. No great loss though. It was at best mediocre.
I really do not have time to be sitting here attempting to post right now. I am supposed to be getting ready to leave for my regularly scheduled Geekfest Coffee Klatch on Wednesday Morning. Also known as Coffee with the Carriage Guy. Tom is the Carriage Guy btw. I think he has been there maybe twice in all these coffee guzzling extravaganzas at Myrtie Mae's in the last two months. But that is neither here nor there either.
What I really wanted to make sure got out of my head and down here was a conversation I had with Alec the Boy on Monday. I don't remember how we got to this point in the conversation where she asked me THE question. I think we were talking about having power of attorney over your significant other and she wanted to know why I had the right to pull the plug on Debbie. The truth is, Debbie also still had the right to pull the plug on me too. We had power of attorney drawn up back in 1985 when I was about to go have surgery. Neither of us ever had it revoked. Her death revoked it, saving me lots of money at the lawyer's office.
What that conversation led to was Alec asking me what it was like to pull that plug. I never signed the papers, Gina did. All I did was grill 5 or 6 neuro specialists into the ground trying to see if there was any hope whatsoever for a recovery. All I did was hold Gina's hand while she signed the papers. All I did was council her to sign the papers because she was incapable of making that decision for herself at that exact moment.
Then Alec asked me what it was like watching Debbie die. That was an amazing question. That was THE question. Debbie took 5 days to actually stop functioning, despite the fact they told us she would expire within an hour of being removed from life support. So I never really saw her "die". Although the truth is, she was long gone before they pulled those plugs.
So then Alec asked me what Debbie looked like there in that hospital bed, brain dead. That was when I finally broke down in this conversation and cried. So I told her what I experienced of Debbie as she lay the brain dead and gone.
She looked like she was sleeping. She looked 5 years older than the last time I had seen her. She looked like my wife, just a little older, with fine lines beginning to develop on her face and some serious hints of gray in her long curly hair. My wife, softly sleeping, in a strange room, in the city where we had made our home so many years before.
I told Alec what it was like to sit there holding her hand and weeping softly to myself. What it was like to watch a huge part of your life dying before your eyes. Touching her soft hair, stroking her face, telling her I loved and how very sad I was that this illness had destroyed our life together.
Debbie's illness, btw, was the cathartic thing that happened 16 years ago that caused that paradigm shift that changed me forever. Had she not gotten ill and then in her illness attempted to kill me, I would never have left that world, that life, that way of being. I would in fact most probably still be with her to this day.
Alec's question touched me deeply within. I don't know exactly why either. It's not like I haven't thought about Debbie laying there dying a thousand times before. Maybe it was the way she asked the question, maybe it was the way the wind was blowing, I don't know and don't care anymore. I just know that it still feels like yesterday, all of it, every detail etched into my heart.
I couldn't go to Debbie's memorial service, I was in New York City that day, and frankly, I could not have afforded to fly back out to LA for a second time in 2 weeks to attend. And truthfully, I did not want to see Doris. I knew I would have gone off on her. I knew in my grief that I would have crushed her evil ass into the ground. Stomped her for being the sneeky, lying, manipulative, conniving bitch that she is/was.
It was better that the next time I saw Doris was at Gina's wedding. That was a happy time. I was strong and certainly not in grief. Although I must say there was a certain amount of bittersweet memory at being present at the wedding of our only child. Debbie would have been at her regal best that day had she been there physically. She would have been the radiant Mother of the Bride. She was there, she passed right through me that day. I have seldom felt such love as the spirit of another touched my being.
The interesting thing about that day was the way people treated me. I knew that day that Gina had never forgotten the bond of love we had with each other. People I did not know came up to me and began telling me stories Gina had related to them about our relationship and what it was like to have me as a parent. I cried a whole lot that day. And then some sweet soul brought the rose that was Debbie's up to me and presented it to me (apparently Doris had tried to nab it and they took it from her and brought it to me instead). I fell apart at that point, broke down and sobbed like a baby.
Daughter of my heart. Whom I love beyond all time and space. My child, my beloved one. I cried a whole lot that day you wed.
What was it like watching Debbie die? Grief beyond words my friend. Her skin still warm, her face soft and without expression, like she was sleeping. Her spirit already gone. She was not there in that room, watching her body stop functioning. It was like watching yourself die, the whole of your life passing before you. All your youthful dreams, gone, with this one person. Peacefully, departing your presence.
But she is here still, often. She who I gave my heart and my life to so very many years ago. She is not sick anymore. She is the spirit I knew and loved so deeply before the illness over took her brain and made her the creature no one knew.
Why do you ask me questions like that Boy? Do you like to watch this old man cry? Do you know how deeply inside myself I go when we have these kinds of conversations? It's ok Boy, old men like me like to be reflective. It makes us believe we have learned valuable life lessons that have made us grow onward in this passion play of life. Ask away my son. Ask me anything you wish.
I suppose I better get going. It's after 9:30, the time I should have arrived at Myrtie Mae's and I still have a 20 minute drive into town to arrive for my usual fashionably late entrance.
Ciao.
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