The last month of my life has been more than rough . When left alone with my own thoughts I’ve been trapped in hell. Why? you may ask. Thanks for asking, I’m so glad I can share.
Middle of July, the contract I was employed under was terminated for reasons largely unknown to me. I felt as if the rug had been pulled out from under me. I had started to do a lot of things at work, get into quite a few projects and was even planning what to do after I was done with the first round. I was just confident in what I was doing. It’s probable that my confidence was my downfall, but I seriously doubt it. I was enjoying my work and felt successful enough that we even started looking at houses to buy. I should have known I was headed down the wrong path when house after house we looked at had problems we could just couldn’t deal with causing us to back out of house after house. Shortly after the deal on the last house came to an end, that’s when I lost the job.
I felt like such a failure to myself and my wife. Losing a job isn’t in itself such a problem for me but now I had a responsibility to my wife to take care of her and her needs and I couldn’t do that without a job. The thought of not living up to my responsibilities as a man and as a husband devastated me. For days I didn’t feel like getting out of bed and I still can’t turn off my brain. I thought my world was coming to an end and I still have to go to bed when I’m totally exhausted otherwise I toss and turn for hours. I’m sure normal people don’t take things like this so hard but I’m far from that. I’d quit my job of near 3 years, a job that was stable and paid quite well to take a chance on something new; something I thought was better. It was great while it lasted. Searching for jobs for online for a few weeks turned up little to nothing so I started hitting the streets. I looked to the area factories to apply only to be met with signs on their doors stating they weren’t hiring or weren’t taking applications.
[SARCASM]It’s a good thing we’re not in any kind of recession or anything. What with fuel and food costs steadily rising, a recession or even worse a depression would bring hard times on the entire country! [/SARCASM]
Boy though, with me being out of work it’s a good thing nothing else could go wrong, right? Wrong. Sarah started having trouble with her bad knee. She’s had 6 operations on her one knee in previous years, resulting in weakness in that knee and an inability to participate in sports. Off to the orthopedist we went. Let me give anyone reading this an inside tip. when a specialist doesn’t know what to do with your situation, things aren’t good.
Luckily, you can get a second opinion on these matters. The ortho referred her to a specialist. The specialist presented three options the first was to remove the knee cap which would permanently weaken the knee to the point where standing for long periods of time seemed impossible from my view. The second was to fuse the leg straight at the knee, resulting in an inability to bend at the knee. Uh, hello? Sound crazy much? And the third option was arthroscopic surgery to tighten muscle and clean up some bone spurs but that was without any guarantee that anything would change. Sarah opted for the arthroscopic surgery and was told that after the operation she’d be out of work for 4 to 6 weeks. (Queue dramatic music)
Whew! If that was the worst thing that could go wrong, I suppose things aren’t as bad as they can be. Damn! That will teach me to be an optimist. Next time I being to think there’s a silver lining to every cloud, I’m gonna stab my brain with a q-tip or something. Two weeks ago, after being with Sarah at the doctor’s offices all day I sat down at my computer hoping to relax a mysterious number shows on my caller id and my cell phone is ringing. Jeeze, nothing could be wrong could it? Yep. Naturally. It was my aunt on the other end letting me know that my mother had unexpectedly passed away and that I needed to come back to the Chicago area right away.
Damn it! I mean, seriously. Damn it! Not that I was on good terms with my mother, having not seen her in years but nobody ever really wants their mother to die nor does anyone ever want to bury their mother. I wasn’t ready for this shit. I really wasn’t ready for the shit at all. I packed my crap up and since Sarah was in no shape to travel her brother came along with. Since my aunt made it seem necessary for me to be there right away, I headed out Friday evening. Once I got there, I realized there was jack shit I could do until the following Monday. Since I was the next of kin legally I had to handle everything. Oh,and I had to have everything wrapped up and be on the road by Wednesday since Sarah had surgery that Thursday and her brother started school that day as well.
I spent all of that day Monday running around from government office to government office trying to get things set so she could get her burial paid for being that she didn’t have an estate and I wasn’t working and the rest of the family wouldn’t couldn’t assist. At first I felt ok. I mean mentally, spiritually, and emotionally fine. I was in acceptance of the situation and I felt that I could handle everything. In between dealing with the living members of the family and worrying about my wife I managed to get everything taken care of. The day before the funeral, I just felt like crap and started to break down a little bit. It was just a whole hell of a lot to handle. All in all I ended up being in and around Chicago for about 5 days before heading back to take my place beside my wife while he had her operation.
Now that that’s all over with, I can only sit and wait and see what happens.