I wrote this in my personal journal on Valentine's Day, 2014:

". . . since reading Wild I've been thinking of my whole life as a journey, and everything in it as a step along the trail. At the end, Strayed said "Thank you" (to God? to the universe? impossible to tell) for her journey and when I sat down to meditate yesterday that's what rose to the surface in me, just not for a hike but for everything on my 61½-year journey.


In my meditation, I felt gratitude for all the through-hikers and day-hikers I met along the way, for the scenery and the animals. Mr. Simply and I have shared the trail for over 40 years now -- 2/3rds of our lives. We've got through it by putting one foot in front of the other, no matter how much our feet hurt, or how steep and rocky or icy or muddy the trail, or how rotten the weather and there's been some damn fine moments along the way that made it worth every blister."

Simply,

I wrote this during the last winter of Mr. Simply's life, before we knew:

Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

-From "The Summer Day", by Mary Oliver

What I planned to do, I have mostly already done. They may not have always, or even mostly, been the right ones, but I have made plenty of decisions: I once bought a convertible sports car. I moved to Atlanta, married, went to Outward Bound school, became a therapist, bought a house, started my own practice (now there was a leap of faith), adopted a child. I've accepted a dog as a gift, sight unseen, and loved her for a decade and a half. I've bought a dog, bred and raised two more, and adopted another one. I've rescued a cat and re-homed two parrots. And I have done a fair job with most of these things. Not great jobs, but I haven't, I hope, made complete hashes of any of them.

Some of the most wild and precious things about my life weren't planned at all. I've slept outside and listened to a little island deer call its mother, and heard her reply; that same night I heard an owl hoot from a tree directly over my tent. I've paddled the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, and heard the loons calling there. I've watched an eagle snatch a fish out of a lake in the Great North Woods -- right in front of me, in a place so quiet, so wild that I heard his wings beating long before I ever saw him. I've lain in my tent at night with Daisy and listened to foxes bark, and sat on my sister's back porch and listened to the Whippoorwills calling in the woods behind her pasture.

I've smoked dope, drunk too much, and sobered up. I've ridden horseback, traveled the world, swum, and hiked -- until I thought I would die of heat stroke, until my leg blistered under my brace, until I crossed trails with a timber wolf. I've been lost in the woods and come upon fields of flowers with clouds of butterflies. I've watched a puppy chase a butterfly. I have eaten pancakes made over a camp-fire with blackberries picked from beside the trail (thanks to Mom for that one). I have birded and taken photographs, and tried to write. I can identify 223 birds by sight, and some by sound. I have seen Woodcocks in their courting flights and heard them peent. I have read some of the most wonderful books! I've laughed out loud in public over passages from A Prayer for Owen Meany, and tried to hide the tears streaming down my cheeks while I read The Art of Racing in the Rain.

I have sat through close to 50,000 psychotherapy sessions, and at that I think I have been pretty good. I can hypnotize people. I may now have only a couple of hundred sessions left in me.
 
Many things I'd hoped to do, I never will. I will not walk the AT (certainly not with Mr. Simply's dad), ever take Mr. Simply to Europe, or learn to fly. It is too late for that.

Instead, I will watch the birds slipping around on the ice, and if careful observation is a prayer, then I will prayerfully discover that what I thought was one Yellow-rumped Warbler is in fact two distinct, recognizable individuals. I will praise Mr. Simply for shoveling the drive today because it makes him feel useful, which he in fact is not much any more. I will finish Cheryl Strayed's Wild, which is what started this whole meditation, sip hot cocoa with whipped cream. I will stay in touch with friends and family, keep counting birds, and make my yard a better place for wildlife.

And above all I will remember this: All life, even an old, tired, dried-up life, is still wild and precious.


Simply,

Love

I'm doing a meditation on experiencing the world accepting me just as I am and having trouble understanding even what that means, never mind experiencing it. But there was a strip in the comics today, in Mutts, about exactly that. And I thought this evening as the glow intensified and those fat yellow blooms bobbed in the fading light that yes, they are saying to me, We love you darling. They were a gift of love from my grandmother when she dug them, shook off the soil, and packed them and sent them from the Sedgefield post office all those years ago. It was an act of love when Mr. Simply and I bought this house together and I sat in the dirt and sweated and dug and planted them for us, for our future. And they were a gift of love from the universe, from the soil and the rains and the sun, when they came up and bloomed the following spring--as they have done every spring since for about 30 years. Every year, a drift of I love you, Darlings under the pine trees, waiting for me by the curb when I come home in the evening; saying Good morning, Darling, we love you from outside my window when I open the curtains every day.

I think I get it now.

Simply,

No, I Am Not Going to Shut Up

I have no desire to live in an echo chamber, or to alienate Trump voters wholesale, both of which many of us are being accused of. But here's the thing: It's impossible to confront fascism (and the racism and other isms that come with it) without naming it. I tried the other night in an email to my father and by the time I got done editing it there was nothing left.

And we cannot pretend that this race was not about fascism and the racism that is part and parcel of it. How white were his rallies? Look at the way the vote split along racial lines! The KKK endorsed him, for God's sake. And so forth and so on, along each -ism you care to use to measure by.

If the vote were about jobs for the working class, killing TPP and rebuilding infrastructure, why didn't the white working class all vote for Bernie in the primaries? How could they not see all the jobs Mr. Obama has brought back and vote accordingly? The insurance he provided some 20 million of them with that they did not have before, ditto? The one-year extension to unemployment voted through by Democrats? and so forth.

If it was really about "draining the swamp," how do you explain that nobody saw (or cared) that he wouldn't release his own tax filings and that he surrounded himself with insiders and lobbyists?

If it was really about being heard, about bringing about change, don't you think they would have wanted someone with a track record of concern for the working class (Bernie, for example), someone with experience who understood how the system works (almost anybody else running, for example)?

If it weren't about race and gender and sexual identity or orientation and immigrant status and disability and religion, then why do you think members of all these non-WASP groups are so terrified right now? Are we all delusional?

Nope, I'm not buyin' it.

Sure, a lot of perfectly nice people probably held their noses and voted for him anyway because he was the Republican nominee. And they probably don't consider themselves racists, and probably they are not terribly comfortable with a lot of his other -isms either.

But here's the thing. I, too, know many Trump voters who seem(ed) "perfectly nice", as one editorial put it this week, but scratch the surface and the -isms are all there, every one. Maybe they follow the rules--they grant mortgages fairly, their churches admit Black families. But is it not racist to perpetuate the myth among themselves and their children that (mostly brown) illegal immigrants are taking their jobs, to sincerely believe in their heart of hearts and to teach their students that all (mostly brown) Muslims are terrorists, to behave as if Black people account for most of welfare recipients when debating entitlement programs? How do you define "racism"? To me, merely harboring bias qualifies. Expressing prejudice is over the line for sure.

In Buddhist thinking, many values are expressed as negatives--it is, as I understand it, simply the nature of the Pali language that this is so but it also has profound implications for how you think about a thing. Take the First Precept, for example, which says, "I shall endeavor not to harm any sentient being." We could have 1000 rules about what to do (I shall endeavor to obey the speed limit, eat vegetarian, wear cotton not wool, catch bugs and put them outside alive and well, etc.) and they would never manage to cover every exigency. But if you express it as not-harm, well then. It covers every conceivable base as we try to put it into play in our daily lives.

So. How about explicitly not-racist acts? The ethical question each Trump voter faces is, "What is the not-racist thing to do here?" Ask yourself: Are they calling upon their candidate to walk back his campaign promise to register Muslims? Have they asked him for some kind of statement about his old policy of not renting to Blacks? Have they confronted him about his followers' Jew-S-A chanting? Did they demand that he forcefully repudiate the Klan endorsement? Are they asking him now to please not give Brannon a White House job? No? Then where's the not-racism you speak of?

Buddhism is big on restraint as an ethic. Most precepts as originally formulated specify that not only do we refrain, but also we don't cause anyone else to do those things (steal, lie, etc.) either. We might ask, then, are Trump voters not-racist? Is it not-racist behavior when they say, "I am not a racist, but. . . ?" Are they not-racist when they give that man a pass on all this, when they not only overlook it but actively reward it with their votes?

I'm not seeing it. Are you?

And so I would argue that Trump voters are overwhelmingly not not-racist, at the very least, and that we would not be in this pickle right now if that were not so. We could use the terms fascism and not-fascism and have exactly the same conversation about NATO and the wall and the registry and on down the list and come to exactly the same conclusion. And I believe that this not-fascism is going to be the death of this country if we don't deal with it directly and forcefully.

It scares and saddens me to see so many thinkers and writers asking us to hunker down and fight what is to come one symptom at a time as if this were politics as normal. Medicare "reform"? Tamp it down. A registry for Muslims? Tamp that down. It's like my physician telling me, "Never mind the virus, that's not important (and it's your imagination running away with you anyway). Let's just focus on getting your fever down! You'll be fine. And here's some salve for those blisters." While my heart is damaged and my kidneys are threatening to shut down and.

So, no. I am not going to stop participating in discussions about why/how this happened, about what the real causes are. I am not going to stop calling out racism or any other -ism when I see it. And hard pass on the request that we all stop already with the Hitler metaphors (which isn't metaphorical anyway--look it up). This is not conservative politics as usual: This was a vote for the very soul of our country and the sooner we recognize that, the sooner we can redeem it from purgatory.

As the t-shirt says: You thought I was a nasty woman before? Buckle up, Buttercup.

Simply,

Update on Mr. Simply, and a bit of backstory -- plus another request

I wrote this e-mail last year about my husband, to his friends:

As most of you probably know by now, Mr. Simply did not come home today. He had a fever, was throwing up, and is confused, so. He held it together pretty well for a visit from Stanley, but trust me when I tell you, he's confused. Also, his pain still isn't well-controlled. He has a pain pump now. Maybe tomorrow.

It is heartening to him how y'all care about him, and your calls and visits have meant more than I can say. Hospice was an incredibly difficult decision to make and even after it was made, continued to be a struggle for him to accept. You know how they always say, 'you have no idea until you have been through it yourself'? I had no idea. No earthly idea.

Here's how we got here from there: As most of y'all may already know, Stage IV cancer is incurable by definition. But sometimes one can hold off the inevitable for a year or even longer, and he tried hard this summer to do just that. He was at an excellent treatment center -- his surgeon from last spring teaches doctors at other clinics around the nation how to do the kind of surgery Mr. Simply had, just for one example. And the study he was almost in is cutting edge, internationally.

We thought we had more time -- maybe even as much as two years more.

But it was already too late last year for a cure -- it was already in his circulatory system, which we suspected might be the case from the pathology report then. So when it came back, any treatment would be what they call "palliative," which is to say, it might help with symptoms and might buy him some extra time. At that point, his prognosis was approximately six months to live without treatment, nine or so with -- although there were a few folk in studies still living at 18 and 20 months, mets to the bone are a poor prognostic indicator, and he had those right from the beginning of his progression. He'd had a new biopsy and the results came back that he had a couple of mutations with studies going for them, but they were out of state and therefore completely unreachable for us. The trouble was also that most of the most important studies going on were for driver mutations he didn't have. And in any event, you always want to try the proven treatments before the unproven. Studies are a last resort, for obvious reasons.

Ergo, the chemo he got. This was the recommended "salvage" therapy for people who've had chemo before and had recurrences or progressions. And it failed. Spectacularly. Not only did it not slow the cancer down, it put him in the hospital and he experienced "extensive" spread of his cancer while he was in the treatment so that by this time, I guess around mid-summer, he now had mets to multiple ribs, his clavicle, his kidney, the one already on his liver and the ones on his spine were growing fast, a new one on his pelvis, and one on his skull.

Next they tried to get him in the cutting edge study going on right here, for which he also had the correct markers in his liver tumor biopsy, but he was already too sick. His pain was not under control (one of many requirements to enter most studies) and by the time they got that in order (temporarily, as it turned out) and tried to get him into the study a second time, his labs were abnormal (another requirement -- that all your labs be in range). He was going to make a last-ditch effort, starting a round of chemo last Thursday, to shrink the tumors and get the pain and labs back within parameters and attempt the study one more time, but he didn't make it to Thursday.

You have to be ambulatory for chemo, and besides it would have taken weeks for it to work, if it did at all (for this last one there was a less than 5% chance that it would even slow the progression, never mind reduce his tumor load) and he could not have stood the pain for that long. Nobody could. It was so bad that when the rescue crew knelt on the bed to check his vitals, the mattress movement alone made him scream.

As sick as he is, there is no study he will qualify for now. And there is absolutely no scientific support for any of the other stuff such as drinking vinegar, taking thousands of mg of Vitamin C, or even smoking dope, that has been suggested to us this summer. Everybody's professor who cured himself with C is an urban myth tracing back to Linus Pauling, a professor to be sure, but one who died of cancer while choking down bales of the stuff. And what dope will get you is arrested and your house and car seized. Besides which, in Georgia cancer patients can get the pills by Rx. So why take the risk? Nor do various and sundry Chinese herbs and Korean tree bark or anything else cure cancer. Some even trigger it. There have been some studies done on all of these things, and they are either coming up goose eggs or inconsistent.

Please believe me when I tell you that if there was a treatment out there that would work for him, or a study that would take him, he'd be in it.

His oncologist could no longer control his pain, but hospice can, and it gives him a shot at a peaceful, calm death at home, completely free of pain and surrounded by the people and pets he loves. Any further attempts at treatment will likely only make him sicker, weaken him further, and maybe even kill him sooner -- and in any event he could not possibly do it: By Tuesday, remember, he could no longer get out of bed. How would we get him there? How could he have possibly stood it? When I tell you he was screaming when he tried to get up, I am not exaggerating. He was in agony. They had to shoot him full of Fentanyl before they could move him, and he was still crying out.

Hospice has that pain down to next to nothing, and is the only route by which he could have gotten there.

His oncologist told us last week that he would likely live "less than three months". One week of that has already gone by. He can spend the last weeks of his life in agony, getting treatments that have a 19:1 chance of making him worse instead of better, traveling by ambulance (it takes a minimum of four agonizing transfers to go anywhere and come back, don't forget) [at $900 each way -Ed.] to consult quacks or at best new doctors who are not going to be any better than the ones he's got. . . or he can spend it at home, comfortable and in the loving embrace of you and me and the animals. Studies do show that people who go into hospice early not only have a better quality of life in their remaining days but also live slightly longer than people who continue to pursue aggressive treatment to the bitter end.

So the best gift we can give him now, as hard as it is going to be to let him go, is our acceptance of his death, our compassion, and our support.

To that end, I am begging you, please do not talk to him any more about trials, cures, miracles, or 'fighting'. When you do, you are implying that he, his doctors, and I have not already done everything we/they could, and I'm sure, knowing you all as I do, that that's not what you mean to say at all. I know you are all only trying to help, that you do have his best interests at heart, that you only love him and want to see him live.

He has already been brave and tough -- braver and tougher than you will ever know. He went through the pain of the surgery, and the sickness from the chemo (and the pain from the neulasta each time) and all the scans and the pain from the mets in his bones and and and. All without flinching or complaining or any sign of fear. He's fought his fight, and fought it far better than I ever would have had the shoe been on the other foot. Leave him be on that one, please: Stop implying to him that he's somehow giving up. He hasn't. He has been and continues to be, even in the face of death, the single most courageous person I have ever known.

Hospice is his miracle now, dying with grace and dignity is his battle. All he needs from you for this to happen is your loving support.

Thank you, from the bottom of my heart.

Simply,

On Becoming an Old Crone

I never understood what was meant by the wisdom of our elders, I just took it for granted that they were. Wise, I mean. And I tried to listen to what they had to share, I really did. I tried to live mindfully. I wrote gratitude lists. But I never really understood.

Until now.

My handy-dandy on-line journal minder tells me that on this day three years ago I was suffering from disappointment. Mr. Simply and I were at my state professional association's annual conference in the mountains, which coincided with a photography club shoot that weekend. There was to be a meteor shower of epic proportion, and there was a mountain-top park nearby that would have made for perfect viewing.

Had it not rained, and the mountain been socked in by the fog.

I had rented a very nice prime lens and a primo tripod for the occasion, and was bemoaning the expense, given that I could use them for absolutely nothing else. 

My point?

I know now that none of that matters. We were in the mountains, for gods' sakes! The azaleas were in bloom. There were woods dripping wet and filled with bird song right outside the door to our room. We ate fabulous meals at a nearby roadhouse. Two of our friends were up there, too, for the weekend.

We were alive!

That's all that matters.

His bird likes to ask, "What? What? What?" This morning I told her I didn't know. I was still learning. Things I wish I'd known 10, 20, 30 years ago. I would have been a lot happier, and maybe Mr. Simply would have been, too.

I know you can't tell people these things. Without the lived experience, it means nothing. But I'm still thinking about setting up as the old crone on the outskirts of the village, that people come to see, bringing little gifts or doing little chores around her cottage. (Think Grandpa Sam Reaches in Thunderheart).

Go watch it again. And then think about coming by tomorrow, or maybe the next day. Bring fresh-laid eggs. I will tell you what I have learned. Maybe it won't be too late for you.

Simply,

Glory

I wrote this a year ago today in my Penzu​ journal, under the title "Frozen". Sorry, it's long, but seems so apropos to the grieving.

It was one of those moments I wished I could freeze in time, but of course one can't. I remember once, standing outside the gates at [my college] with [my college boyfriend], the light just so, at the end of the school year, I guess, and we were saying goodbye for the summer (pretty much forever, as it turned out), and I wanted to freeze-frame that one. Of course I'd done it before -- bound to have -- and certainly have done it since, but I was conscious of the effort then and kind of startled by it. Daisy and the butterfly was another one such moment. The bluebird in the snow on the branch of the blooming dogwood in our yard yet another. The eagle in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area during my Outward Bound vision quest. The foxes barking when I was camped with Daisy at her first hunting trial. 

This morning it was the snow. It was piled high on all the branches, which were stark against a grey sky. The cardinals were at the feeder in back and in the dying dogwood tree, the male a brilliant red against the white snow/black bark/gray sky, the only real color around. It was like the winters we had when I was growing up in NC. I feel blessed to have had not one, but two good snows this winter, when with global warming I've had such a sense of loss and sadness that I'd probably never see another one. And now to have two! 

I was glad to have been up to see it before it started to melt, which it is doing pretty rapidly. I was sorry to see the sun start to peek through. But as Cheryl Strayed wrote towards the end of Wild, "There was no way to go back, to make it stay. There was never that." 

Just being present for what is, as it is and as it changes, is the hardest thing when what I want with every cell in my body is to go back, to make something or someone stay, to freeze a moment, to hold on to the feeling of wonder and joy that I had this morning when I first opened the drapes and looked out on the magical world. 

And as I typed those words, feeling sad and empty, the phoebe flew into the yard for the first time in days (if not a week or more), and I felt that same surge of joy again to see him, and tears came to my eyes. He's so beautiful today: He fills me up all over again. 

One glorious thing gives way to another. 

So although I can still hear Paula's laugh, see the puppy Daisy lunging at the end of her check cord for that brilliant yellow butterfly, feel that bitty animal scampering over my sleeping bag that chilly August night on Lake Superior, it is over. There is no way to go back, to make it stay. There never was.

--And as I was reading this, and thinking that I have to believe that one glorious thing will go on giving way to another, as has been true time immemorial and forever shall be, that the good life isn't over because Mr. Simply died and I'm getting old, and not having much faith in any of that, a Sharp-shinned Hawk flew into the yard, landed right outside my window for a few seconds, looked right at me, and flew on. 

Glorious.

Simply,

It's the Little Things

Mr. Simply's hunting clothes are mostly in the back of the truck now, ready to go to Goodwill tomorrow morning. Looking at his side of the closet, standing almost half empty now, makes me sad.

The boots were the most difficult to let go of for some reason -- his Herman Survivors, the work boots he loved, and his hunting boots. There was something especially touching about the hunting boots, still caked with last year's dirt and smelling faintly of doe lure. They brought back memories of lying in bed in the dark at 4:30 of a Saturday morning as he dressed in the light from the closet, trying not to disturb me. His camo, his boots, his suspenders. . . and then he would tell me goodbye, and I would always tell him to Stay safe, have fun, don't forget to call me, tell everybody I said Hi and he'd be off to meet the guys for breakfast at the Waffle House in Newnan. So many seasons, so many mornings like that.

He used to say that an hour in his tree stand was worth three in therapy.

By July his bucket list had shrunk to two things: one last trip to visit with family, one last hunting season. Why all his stuff was still here, why he didn't give it away with his fishing gear and his climbing stand last summer.

When it became apparent he wouldn't live even that long, he began to hope for just one last opening day. The guys spent all summer building a special stand for him where he could sit, under cover and wouldn't have to climb, and Chris C. was set to take him, to stay with him for a morning. But by the time opening day rolled around he was too sick, half out of his mind, weak, incontinent, his bones too fragile to go anywhere, never mind into the woods. In two weeks he would be dead.

I had to take a photo of the boots, like I did my hikers, before I was finally able to let them go. I hope they'll make some other guy as happy as they made Mr. Simply, and that they'll bring him luck too.
 
Simply,

Charlie Mike

It means, "Continue the Mission." When I was working at the mental health center, I read a novel called Charlie Mike, written by Leonard B. Scott, a veteran of Viet Nam. His theory of PTSD, not a bad one at the time, was that when you are in the shit you don't have time for tears or navel-gazing. If you are going to stay alive, if your buddies are going to stay alive, you have to Charlie Mike -- Continue the Mission. It's only when you are back in The World and nobody's shooting at you any more that you think about those things, and feel them.

I think most of last summer and fall I was Charlie Miking. This afternoon, while fixing lunch of all things, I burst into tears remembering how he didn't get into the study, and how much I would have given for two more years. (His doctor had told us that there was a "little statistical tail" of people in the study who were still alive after two years. Whereas, according to all predictions, Mr. Simply at that point had less than two months.)

Two more years! How rich that would have seemed! Instead, in four short days he was in hospice and dying. In six weeks he would be gone.

I don't remember if I cried the day he called me and said he'd been rejected from the study again, this time because of his liver function. But I sure as hell did this afternoon.

Simply,

Someone posted on one of the widows' pages on Facebook that I belong to that she felt today that her life was a test for which she had not studied. I hit "Like" and then immediately un-Liked it, for I realized that I did not feel that way at all. Which kind of surprised me.

I've been thinking about her all day, but now I can't find the post to respond to it. What I have to say is probably a bit long for a Facebook post anyway, so.

I realized that I've been studying for this since I got sober some 28 years ago, give or take. The purpose of AA is, after all, to fit us to live life on life's terms, is it not? In one of my favorite stories in the Big Book, "Doctor, Alcoholic, Addict" it says that ". . . acceptance is the answer to all my problems today. When I am disturbed, it is because I find some person, place, thing or situation - some fact of my life - unacceptable to me, and I can find no serenity until I accept that person, place, thing or situation as being exactly the way it is supposed to be at this moment." And well over 10,000 recitations of the Serenity Prayer will go a long way to teaching you acceptance.

Plus, I've been practicing Zen sitting meditation for years. Studying Buddhism and meditating has helped me develop a degree of non-attachment. Buddhism teaches a Nine-Point Meditation (Buddhists, like widows, seem to like to count things) that says we are all going to die. We likely will not know when or how. And when it happens, our friends and family can't help us, our things and money can't help us, our own bodies can't help us. The only thing that can prepare us is meditation.

Have these things helped? I believe so. I am better than I used to be about not clinging to things, being afraid, wishing things were different (nay, demanding that things be different!), bargaining, lashing out when things do not suit me. I think I added to my own suffering in these ways last summer and fall far less than I might have 30 years ago, or even five years ago.

It is possible to look at life as a test, although that is not a point of view that I recommend. But if it is, then Mr. Simply's death was the mid-term. I'll pass my finals if I can face my own death with the same kind of grace, equanimity, courage and generosity as he did.

Simply,

Don't You Worry 'Bout a Thing

Was looking for music to put on a soundtrack of our lives to play at Mr. Simply's memorial and found this:

"Don't you worry 'bout a thing
Don't you worry 'bout a thing, pretty mama
'Cause I'll be standing in the wings
When you check it out"

-- Don't You Worry 'Bout a Thing
 Stevie Wonder (1973)

It came out the year we started dating. Not long after I added it to my playlist, I got a package and went out to get it. My leg was bothering me, sore and weak, my arms were bothering me, and I felt a moment of real fear. What if?

We are so vulnerable when we lose a mate, when our life partner is no longer there in the wings to step up, pitch in, catch us when we fall. 

Mr. Simply was quite the caretaker, and when we met set right out trying to do things for me and worrying about me even in areas in which I had been functioning quite competently, thank you very much. He wanted to find me a rollbar for Orville (my 1973 MGB). He worried about how I'd get to work if there was ice on the sidewalks and parking lots, and on the stairs at my apartment building. And over the years, I became more and more dependent, forgetting quite literally how to do some things, just getting out of the habit of others. And then of course there were the myriad ways in which even normal healthy couples do for each other.

He didn't get my graduate degrees for me, but he was "in the wings" both times, supporting me (literally and figuratively) every step of the way. He was literally in the wings when I defended, slipping in and out to check on Daisy's progress in emergency surgery and signaling me with a thumbs up from the back of the room each time he returned from talking to the vet.

Over the last few years, he was doing less and less, and I was doing more.  And what we couldn't do just didn't get done. The yard hasn't been raked in so long, for example, that the leaves and pine needles are becoming soil and changing the shape of the yard and the way rainwater flows around the house -- or doesn't any more, to be perfectly frank.

But still. Even after he got cancer the first time, he managed to move my office for me not once, but three times. Three times! Of course, the last time I was down to some boxes of files, but still. He did all the grocery shopping, right up until he went into chemo last year and was too sick to, because my legs would no longer support me that far or that long.

Two years ago, he took money out of his IRA to buy me a van to carry my scooter, and a lift to get it in and out of said van. There were the new windows on the house that he paid for, also out of his retirement fund, last summer. The old ones were so old (and so was I, for that matter) and sticky that I could no longer manage them. And he was always there for emotional support or just to bounce things off of.

Last spring, he came to the hospital, even as he was dying, to be with me when I needed him. "Do you want me to come down?" he asked on the phone. I had not even wanted him to know until after I got home that evening and it was just a funny story, but then they decided to admit me for observation overnight and I had to tell him. "Yes," I said. And he came, even though he was loaded up on pain pills and had to get a neighbor to drive him. He came when I needed him.

I'll never have that again.

Simply,

An Open Letter to My Late Husband's Oncologist

Dear Dr. A- :

Of course you know by now that Mr. Simply died November 2 -- you signed the death certificate. You had been his doctor for about 18 months by that point, and I have no complaints whatsoever about his medical care. Neither did he. I am convinced that he got as good a care at N--- Center as he could have gotten anywhere else in the country. We discussed this more than once, particularly when his treatments failed and we briefly considered getting a consultation elsewhere, so I know that he agreed. And he liked you personally, trusted you, was grateful to you for everything you did, not only for him, but for his friend Donnie as well.

But we do need to talk about your compliance -- or lack of it -- with the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA). Every time I brought him up there, and over an 18-month period that adds up to a lot of visits, I had to struggle to overcome obstacles from the minute I rolled off the elevator.

Parking always seemed adequate, wheelchair lanes were plentiful and wide, and the curb cuts were easy to locate and use. But once I rolled off the elevator into your suite, everything changed. In the first place, there's that sofa directly across from the doors, and the unused wheelchairs parked there, and the unnecessary silk trees in giant pots. Add in any foot traffic at all, and of course there's always bound to be some, and there was no longer enough room for me to exit the elevator on my scooter!

The reception counters are too high for someone in a wheelchair to use comfortably, as are the computerized sign-in kiosks. There are rules, with the force of law, I might add, about this.

The in-house pharmacy around the corner is nearly impossible for a wheelchair user to access, as it is off on a narrow, dead-end corridor which is partially blocked, one again, by waiting chairs.

Speaking of chairs, there are way too many chairs in the waiting room: The rows are too long, and too close together to meet ADA rules. There are rules about how wide travel lanes need to be between rows: You probably need to remove at least one full pair of back-to-back rows in order to make the spaces in between wide enough. Keep in mind that those rows look great when you first arrive in the morning to open up. But when you put people in them, of course their legs and feet stick out, and the lanes become too narrow for a wheel-chair user to navigate without inconveniencing and annoying everyone. And let me tell you, it is no fun, no fun at all, to get the side-eye from a dozen people, coming and going, every single time I had to visit your practice.

You also have rows that are too long. Not only is there nowhere for me to sit in my scooter except out in the middle of the room, but the rows run too close to the walls at each end, and I can't get around them if I need to get to the water fountain in the back corner. You probably need to remove at least one chair from each end of each row, not only to allow travel around the ends, but also to allow us to sit in a row like every one else does. You could probably easily afford to remove chairs: I was there on some pretty busy days, but I never saw them all filled.

That's a key phrase, by the way, "like everyone else". The ADA is about civil rights, about being able to have the same access to businesses and facilities that every other citizen has. It is federal law. But I digress.

Once we left the waiting room, there was the issue of blocked corridors. The ADA specifies that hallways need to be a certain minimum width, and that they can't be cluttered with furniture and storage items. Yours are, beginning with the lab waiting chairs in that first hallway. Once people sit in them, their legs and feet and purses close off enough of the corridor so that it no longer meets federal standards. It is virtually impossible to navigate without everyone having to shift as I come by in order to give me room to pass. And again with the side-eyes, you know?

Once there, there was nowhere for me to park while I waited for Mr. Simply to get his labs drawn except smack in the middle of the hallway, rendering it impassable for staff and other patients. If you are going to have rows of chairs out there, I would suggest at least having the rows short enough that a wheelchair user could back his chair in alongside, or that someone in a scooter like mine could at least pull out of traffic onto the shoulder, as it were.

The back hallways are even worse, given that they are not only narrower but also cluttered with computer carts and such. The examining rooms are so small that there is barely room for me to back my scooter in so that I could participate in Mr. Simply's consultations with you. And then you acted irritated that I was in your way whenever you had to reach past me for a blood pressure cuff or something out of one of the cabinets over the sink. At least one of the rooms was so small that even backing in was not an option. Whenever we met you in there, I had to leave the scooter in the hallway -- adding to the illegal clutter.

Then there's the treatment rooms. I understand the need for every possible square foot of this area to be making money for you, but as many people as I observed coming to chemo unaccompanied, I think you could remove some of those guest chairs so that I could have backed my scooter in next to Mr. Simply's treatment chair. Instead, I sometimes had to park my scooter in a storage area (or yet another hallway) and leave it there for an hour or two while he got his infusion. This was an option, however troublesome, for me but is obviously not for a patient or family member with para- or quadriplegia. Once I was instructed to leave it in the walkway at the exit door to the waiting area, blocking that path for everyone else.

It is not beyond the realm of possibility that I myself might one day need your services. But what all of this tells me is that you and your colleagues have not given any thought or care at all to making me welcome there or enabling me to use your services with any degree of comfort. Possibly you do not even care about my needs: I certainly could interpret my experiences there over the last year and a half in just that light.

The thought of having to overcome all those obstacles on a several-times-weekly basis while sick, weak, in pain, and dying is overwhelming even to think about. I personally would be grateful if you would avail yourself of one of the consultants who specialize in bringing practices into compliance with the ADA, and getting your facility cleaned up so that people like me can use it. We make up 20% of the population -- 32% in the over-65 age bracket, which I bet is where you get most of your patients -- and you would more than make your money back if you invested in these small improvements.

I can find another practice if I have to, but I would not want to. So how about it?

Simply,

These are the good old days

. . .  tomorrow we might not be together
I'm no prophet, I don't know nature's way
So I'll try to see into your eyes right now
And stay right here, 'cause these are the good old days. --Carly Simon

When I was young, what I heard was a song about anticipation. Specifically, I heard that anticipating good things was a pleasant experience. I completely missed the message. Completely.

Fast-forward 43 years.

I've been engaging in a fair amount of bitching lately about the rigors of maintaining a household while trying to work and care for two animals and a sick Mr. Simply, all while my own health steadily declines. It started one night when I crashed into my reading chair after dinner and forgot to clean up the kitchen until it was already late, I was tired, and. . .

This.

Over the last couple of days I've been paying careful attention to what, each day, threatens to overwhelm me. The complicated pet-feeding ritual each morning, which includes preparing special drinking-water mixes for each. The dishes, of course. The trash. The laundry.

And then last night it hit me: These are the good old days! I wanted a husband, a house, a dog, a bird to care for. There are aspects of each experience that I did not exactly anticipate but on the whole, I like having a house, Diana, the bird. I like being married. I like what I do for a living, and I like the people I do it for. These are the good old days, when I have a house, a bird, a dog, and a husband to take care of, when I have a job to retire from, when my body is in better shape than it's ever likely to be again. 

So I think I'll stay right here.

Back in '71, I thought that meant that if you were having a pleasant experience, you tried to hold on to it. I understand now that Simon meant something entirely different by this -- now is all we have, and it is good. I might as well stay in it. 

Simply,

Je Suis Prest

Like any good scout, I'm prepared.

I learned the hard way.

Today, we needed to call the after-hours service about a disturbing symptom Mr. Simply was having (on a Saturday, of course -- when else?) and my cell phone would not dial out. Would. Not. I had zero bars, and for whatever reason, Wi-Fi calling wasn't working either. I had 4G -- too bad I can't communicate with Mr. Simply's oncologist via Facebook.

No problem, right? I'll just use the house phone! So I did, and left my message and our number, and waited. And waited. And waited.

It seems we have Call Blocking. Who knew?

So I turned it off, and called back and left another message. And it was at that point that I believe the battery must have died (because I left the phone laying out on the coffee table last night). We only have the one wireless. So of course we didn't hear back. I plugged it in, then couldn't leave the room because as we all know, I can't run to the phone if it rings. But it was too late.

In the meantime, the symptom went away. We decided to have dinner. And I re-booted my cell phone. It took two tries, but it does work now.

Last time I was at the hospital, Tillie (my scooter) started stopping randomly -- usually in the middle of electronically-operated doors. And so I had meant to break her down and see if there was a loose connection somewhere, which is what happened once before. Except I was frigging exhausted and never got around to doing it. So here we are, on a rainy Saturday afternoon, with phones that won't work and  a sick man and a scooter I can't trust. . . Can't you just see the bitch quitting on me while I'm crossing the street in front of the ER??

So out I go, unload her from the van, tear her down, fortunately it's not raining right this two seconds, find the loose connection (exactly the same one as last time), repair it (I hope), put her back together, load her back in the van. Hopefully now if we do wind up going to the hospital tonight, she'll run.

But that's not all!

I really like to have what I call Pajama Days, in which I do not get dressed. At all. All day. And this has been such a difficult week what with Mr. Simply being in the hospital and all, that I had planned a Pajama Weekend. My pjs, all freshly washed and fluffy and soft, were laid out on the bed before I turned out the lights last night, and my plan was to put them on this morning and not take them off again until I had to go back to work on Monday.

Hah.

Here's the new rule: Get showered and get dressed. 'Cause you never know.

Simply,

I wrote this in my personal diary on June 18, 2014, the summer that Mr. Simply was dying. I found it on the morning of June 18, 2018 and thought I would post it here. I should have written about it before, but somehow never did:

He asked me last night to tell him again why we didn't just move to Oregon. Not recalling having spoken about that previously, I inquired further. "Um, whut?" His reply: "Because they let your doctors kill you there."

So I told him I was doing this here, where my friends and home are, because I have an "after" I have to consider. I also told him not to worry about it, because we could ease him out ourselves without anyone being any the wiser, and that I would do that for him.

It is the first time we've talked about that. But I have thought about it briefly, and knew that I would risk it for him rather than see him in the kind of pain he's in now -- only worse. I don't think it much risk, though, as he will be on massive painkillers, and an "accidental" OD, on his own hook, would be easy to arrange if and when he gets to the point that he wants that. And because he's under a doctor's care, and would be obviously dying anyway by that point, there would be no autopsy as long as no one suspected foul play. And he's filled out all the legal papers necessary to keep them from making him hang on, suffering, beyond any rational point of return. I have them on file, I have a copy in my phone, and I'm not afraid to use them.

It would be hard, but I would do it for him.

I'm hoping, though, that it won't come to that. They say they can control the pain, and that they will. I think he's worried now because the pain isn't currently under control (they're titrating him up to the big guns as we speak), and because I think both of us are secretly afraid that the radiation isn't working. That does not, of course, mean that it won't in the coming days and weeks, or that the chemo won't work. It's just that it doesn't look real good right this two seconds.

He looks like an old man, moving as slowly and carefully as someone 30 years older. And I don't care what the scales say, the man is losing weight. His jeans are literally hanging off of him: I could not see that there were hips or legs in there at all yesterday as I watched him walk up the driveway from the car.

My heart is breaking. Anything that makes me think of him and what he's going through, or about losing him, makes me cry. I am reading, for example, Written In My Own Heart's Blood, and as Claire and Jamie and most of the other main characters are in the middle of a war, death and loss and love are very much the subject. So I keep marking quotes and crying.

I think of things we will never do. Someone randomly posted a beautiful photograph from a national monument and said, "You have to go there" if you've never been, and it of course instantly popped into my mind that when we were young, we'd wanted to move out West after school. We never did. We wanted to travel. We never did. Something as simple as getting back to Hatteras, where we honeymooned, or just going to the beach next week for our anniversary -- will never happen. I got an invitation to the family reunion, and sent regrets, with an explanation. I almost said, "Maybe next year" but did not, and thought to myself that if I did it might well be without him. Which led to thoughts of whether I'd ever have another Christmas or Thanksgiving, at home or anywhere else, with him. This goes on all the time.

I think of more mundane, things, too -- seeing to the yard and house, schlepping the dog or bird to the vet, all the little daily things I'll be doing without him. And it's already starting: He's suggested I start getting food delivered from Schwan's again, and I'm thinking I'm going to have to shop for the new stove this weekend by myself, make my own decision and place my own order. Which leads me to thinking of how he's always been there, how solid he's always been. Even if he's the worry-wart in any big deal in our lives (and not a few not-so-big deals--my therapist used to joke that he had Pre-traumatic Stress Disorder), he's been there, and he's been a trouper. This morning, for some reason, I was thinking about his personal fortitude, remembering that he was the one who took Sam and Lucky to the vet for the last time when I couldn't. I realize now that I could have, and should have, have in fact long known this, but at the time I really believed I just couldn't. And so he did.

He may not have been my soul mate (I think I'm so warped that there is no one who could have) but I'm pretty sure he thinks I'm his. He has always treated me that well. He deserved better in a wife and lover, but I'm getting better every day and I swear by God (yeah, I know) that I am going to be as good to him as I possibly can for every minute of every day he has left.

Simply,