June 8 2017

I finished with my therapies by 11 AM today. 11 is really early since I'm scheduled for 85 minutes/day.
So, now I'm bored.
They are now letting me have ibuprofen and I'm feeling better.  It's funny that feeling better leads to boredom.  I have my computer, kindle and TV for entertainment.  I had hoped to be exploring Portland during June, not recuperating.

I laid down from 11-12:30.  My butt hurt so bad from the lumpy mattress that I got into my wheelchair.  I sat outside for awhile. Now I'm in the dining room waiting for bingo to start.  I hope it's not too too lame.

Bingo was okay. Play is slow for the more handicapped people.

I've engaged a lawyer to help me with the bus company responsible for my injury.  She has a good reputation.  It's an Oregon law that cases do not drag on for years.

This is the third time that my life was changed in an instant.  In 1969 a car rammed my car into a tree.  I lost my kneecap causing a permanent injury.  At the time of the accident I was midway in my second year in college.  I had to miss 2 semesters to recuperate.

In 2010 my husband and best friend fell injuring his spinal cord and became quadriplegic.  My life as I had known it ended.  For months I took care of him and my elderly mother.  Besides the amount of work I also was suffering from a kind of post traumatic stress disorder.  Visiting TIRR, the specialty hospital for spinal cord injuries, exposed me to so much pain and suffering.  Young wives would be pushing baby carriages next to their husbands in wheelchairs.  There were  people suffering brain injuries screaming and crying.  Then, of course, I had to learn how to take care of my permanently paralyzed husband. (It turned out that he also had a brain injury.  Subsequently, he decided he never loved me and we were divorced.)

Now it's 2017.  I worked so so hard to move to Portland.  I had to sort all my possessions.  Pack up what I could and sell my house.  I arrived in Portland on May 19, 2017 ready to make a new life for myself.  3 days later I was walking my dog and was hit by a city bus.  My hip was broken, suffered a concussion and many cuts and bruises.  I had emergency surgery and stayed at a trauma hospital for 4 days.  Now I'm in my third week at a skilled nursing facility.  I am thrilled that I did not suffer a brain or spinal cord injury.  Nonetheless, my life has been changed and set on a different course.

I now have a permanently injured right hip.  I'm learning how to walk with a walker.  I'm using some of the same equipment here that was used at TIRR.  I'm surrounded by injured people.  It's very difficult for me.  I can't help but relive some of the memories of the pain I suffered during my husband's stay at TIRR.

I am working hard at rehab.  It hurts- a lot.  But, that's the only way that I can recuperate.  I don't know how much of a disability this injury will cause me.

This is definitely not how I imagined my life would be like in Portland.  The injury will make my transition so much more difficult.  I can't go out and explore the city.  I'm lucky that I can use the walker to make it down the hall.

Maybe this will be the last major life altering incident that will happen to me.  But, then again, maybe not.

January 31, 2017

I finished!  I've packed up all non-essentials in the house.  It took me a month of sorting, organizing, donating, packing to get to this point.  Tonight was my first evening "off."

It's been a painful process.  I bought my house with loads of promise.  I didn't have to do all the work. I had a partner.  Now, I'm selling the house - alone.

 It is no blessing to have a good memory.  I remember who gave me the various gifts for my first wedding or my second wedding-  for marriages that were supposed to last a lifetime.  I've found cards swearing eternal love from both of my ex-husbands.  No point in holding on to them so I threw those notes away.

I'm so envious of people who have had long and mostly happy marriages.  Where did I go wrong?  I guess I made bad choices.  I know I have my shortcomings.  Things became difficult but I always remained loyal to my husbands.  Unfortunately I did not inspire their loyalty to me.

I'll move to Portland soon and get a fresh start on a new life.  I won't be alone there.  My son and his family will be my support system.

September 4, 2016: Clean Out Time

I've been cleaning out my sewing room - again. This time I'm emptying the walk in closet so I can rip out the carpet in it. I had 2 huge bins that I called my memory boxes. I was able to toss out enough to get it all into one. Plus I cleaned out 2 smaller boxes and put the remains into that remaining one, too. I threw away high school yearbooks, old film negatives and tons of handwritten letters. My recycling bin and trash can are now totally filled up.I remember looking through my mother's old photos when I was a kid. Everything looked so old. Now my high school and college memorabilia look ancient. I had papers from my first year in college. There was a letter in the box that I wrote in 1970. I was home from Albany State for a weekend. I described how horrible I felt. My father would be nice one second and horribly nasty the next. I swore I would never feel homesick again. I said that I had no home to be homesick for. I swore that I would not feel homesick when I went on my semester abroad in 1971. That was a very important letter in my life. It explains why I stuck out my semester in Austria until the end. During my first 2 weeks in Graz my roommate and I went on a date with 2 guys that we met in the student cafeteria. I was beaten and my roommate was raped. We reported them to the police. I had to be x-rayed to look for a concussion. We had to go through a court hearing and then shake hands with the 2 of them at the end of it. During the last couple weeks of the semester we would run into them around town and they would taunt us.

It was very hard because I had no one to talk to. My roommate didn't act upset like I did. She barely spoke to me after that episode. I tried to speak to other students in the program but they just seemed to blow me off. I was traumatized. I had just met Ken in October of 1970 at a frat party. I felt like I had gotten over my fear of boys. So, naturally after the that experience in Austria, when I returned home I stuck with Ken.

Then I married him. I ended up marrying an emotionally-absent man who acted like my dad had in many ways. I couldn't share with him. He just wasn't available to me emotionally. He hadn't listened to me while we were dating. He knew that I was handicapped when he married me. But, after we were married he wanted to play tennis with me, ride horses, go skiing. He bought a man's bicycle for me that was so hard for me to get on and off of that I would have to ride up to something and hold on to it in order to dismount.

In the last cruise we took together I couldn't jump down into the Isle of Capris shuttle boat. I climbed back up the stairs and spent the day alone on board. He was so angry with me about that that he brought it up at our marriage counseling.

Anyway I'm digressing. I meant to write about cleaning my closet. The trouble is that I read so many of the papers in the memory box so I could decide what to keep and what to discard.

An avalanche of memories are bombarding me. I kept diaries from 1962 on. There weren't continuous day to day accounts. But, they were consistent. One includes my early marriage. I was never happy in that marriage. I was so thrilled when I had babies. Finally someone to talk to! I welcomed his parents' visits because I loved having company. I enjoyed my parents' visits, too. But, my dad was always a problem. The kids wouldn't play games with him because he made fun of them when he won. He just couldn't connect with them, or me. I was surprised that when my brother did our father's eulogy that he was so upset. I was not at all unhappy about his death, other than feeling sorry for my mom being alone. I knew she was better off alone. Then she could come live with me.

I threw out a lot of the memorabilia from my marriage with Jim after the divorce in 2012. I do have the shutterfly photo albums. I still don't look at them. I'll never recover from the injuries that he caused me. It's hard to believe that he could turn from such a loving man to someone so nasty and underhanded. I know it was from the traumatic injury he suffered but still....

My memory boxes, diaries and this blog show how I came to be who I am today. I am now a single 65 year old woman. I try not to think of the future. Life scares me. What will happen next?

I try to take care of myself so I will stay as healthy as possible as I get older and older. I used to think of suicide. I don't anymore. It would hurt my children too badly. The antidepressants keep life tolerable and even happy at times. I hope I don't live long enough to be a horrible burden. The trouble with my generation is that we know what it is like to get older. Many of us took care of our elderly parents. I loved my momma. I felt bad putting her into the assisted living home. But she was just too difficult for me to care for, especially after my husband became an invalid, too.

I think assisted dying should be an option. I don't want to go through senile dementia like both my parents. Old age is scary. I might have another 15 to 20 years of keeping my mind in tact. Can't I just exit the planet after that?