Thanksgiving is tough for me. I still cook my chunky butt off, but I no longer feel the joy. This year I couldn’t even taste the food. If I can’t taste the food there’s definitely something wrong!
I have reason to dislike Thanksgiving day. It’s not the date, I don’t even remember what the date was. But it was Thanksgiving day when my husband didn’t wake up. I snuck out of bed early and started to make something special for him. He loved cornbread dressing. I (personally) hate the stuff, but he’d had a stroke a couple weeks earlier and was finally at home with me. I’d brought him home the night before Thanksgiving. So I was going to make exactly what he wanted.
At 11 am I realized he still wasn’t up. I thought perhaps he was having some trouble getting out of the bed on his own. I went into the bedroom and shook him. He didn’t budge. Then I realized his body was hot! I tried to wake him again. I rushed to the phone and called 911 and Pat’s niece. She arrived just as the ambulance was pulling away. We drove to the hospital and they allowed us both into the treatment room with him.
He had a fever of 103. Over the past two weeks they had completely missed the infection in his heart. It had caused the original stroke. Now the race was on to kill the infection.
To make a long story short, after four different hospitals, a double valve replacement in his heart and three severe brain bleeds my husband finally succumbed to his illness on January 8, 2011. I’d spent Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year in the hospital alone with him. I’d put up the tree and had whispered to him (though he never answered) that I would keep the tree up until he came home. I finally gave in some time in August and took it down.
So if I take a few days off during the holidays please try to understand that I’m having a hard time. And thank you for taking the time to read this.
