There are two popular political signs in Madison
these days. You'll see them in many of our neighbors' yards, or sitting in the
front windows of houses as you drive past. One of the signs says, "In
this house, we believe: Black lives matter, women's rights are human rights, no
human is illegal, science is real, love is love, and kindness is everything."
The other sign says, "No matter where you are from, we're glad you're
our neighbor," and says it in Spanish, English, and Arabic. It ought
to also say it in Chinese, Vietnamese, Russian, and Hmong, and a hundred other
languages, but then the font would be so small you couldn't read it.
Stephanie and I had admired these signs, and
agreed with the sentiment. Our home is an apartment building, though, and yard
signs are against the rules, so we didn't buy the signs.
Well, my first purchase after Steph died was
this web domain, five days after, and the yard signs were my second purchase.
Bought ‘em at the Co-Op, because Steph loved the Co-Op and that's the only
place I know that sells them. One sign now sits inside the building, right
outside our apartment door. The other sign sits in the window, visible to cars
passing on the street and to kids cutting across the lawn. Whenever I see
either sign I think of Stephanie. She'd be happy that we have the signs, but I
should've bought them while she was alive. That's something I regret.
* * * * * * * * * *
Whatever else might be on my mind, give me a
moment and I'll remember something that happened with Steph and I. Most of
those memories are happy, but there's often something I said or did that I
regret, or something I regret never saying or doing. Sometimes it seems there's
always something more to regret. Feels like I'm swimming in regrets, and barely
keeping my head above water.
I vehemently regret every harsh word I ever
spoke toward her. There weren't many harsh words, and we sometimes went a year
without arguing about anything. Of our few arguments, almost all turned out to
be misunderstandings more than disagreements. When we argued, though, we could
be mean, either of us and both of us. I remember and regret the mean things I
said when I last lost my temper toward her. I apologized then, of course, but I
also want to apologize now.
I regret every instance (and there were far too
many) where I wasn't a very good husband. I regret all the times I wasn't
thoughtful enough, wasn't considerate enough, didn't bring home enough bacon,
did other things when I should've been doing my chores around the apartment,
and I especially regret any and all the times when I was doing something,
anything, other than giving Steph the attention and love she deserved.
I regret that we couldn't hold hands as often as
I would've liked. From our start to our finish, it was delightful holding hands
with Stephanie, but we could only do it sitting down. There was too much
difference in our heights; holding hands meant that she was lifting her arm,
which quickly became uncomfortable. If we were standing or walking, she'd hold
my hand for only a few minutes at a time, because it made her feel like she was
being led on a field trip.
I regret that I didn't tell her she was pretty
more often than I did. She was insecure about a lot of things, but especially about
her appearance. She thought she was plain at best, or simply unattractive. I
always, always found her attractive, and more so as the years went by. She was
pretty, sexy, seductive, whatever words would've helped, and I said those words
often — but should've said those words more often.
Stephanie was hard on herself, precarious not
just about her looks but about all sorts of things she should've been proud
about — her brains, her writing, her overall worth as a human being. Many times
she called herself a failure or a bad wife, and I argued, told her she was a
success and that a better wife was metaphysically impossible. But when Steph
was blue, there was no talking her out of criticizing herself, so we would go a
second round and a third, with her insisting she was a failure and me insisting
that she wasn't. After a while, having spoken my piece, told her she was
mistaken and explained why she was mistaken, the conversation would fade or we'd
switch to some other subject. Gotta say, I regret that. I should've never let
the argument end until she agreed that she was excellent in every way. Because
really, she was.
Early in our marriage, a friend who soon became
an ex-friend pulled me aside, to tell me it was unwise for Steph and I to spend
so much time together. That's canned wisdom I've heard from other sources, too,
and sometimes, I suppose, it's true. I did know a guy who spent all his waking
hours with his wife, and after a few years she divorced him. So there's
probably a kernel of truth to that canard, but mostly it's a canard. With
Stephanie and I, almost any moment we weren't at work was time we spent
together, and that is never, never going to be something to regret. On that
topic, my only regret is that we didn't have more time together.
Sometimes I worked overtime, when the office was
swamped. We needed the money, yeah, but I wish I could have all those Saturday
mornings and weekday late-afternoons back, and spend that time with her. On the
other hand, if it wasn't for some overtime shifts during the summer when she
died, I would've had to borrow money from my in-laws to pay for Stephanie's
cremation, which would've been a bit embarrassing.
* * * * * * * * * *
With her medical issues, doctors sometimes
scolded Stephanie, telling her that years of less than fully-controlled
diabetes were a contributing factor. And indeed, consistently elevated glucose
levels are known to damage kidneys, blood vessels, the
eyes, the heart, and the nervous system — pretty much everything that's in
Stephanie's medical chart. So in hindsight, we didn't
take her diabetes seriously enough.
When she was first diagnosed with it in the late
1990s, Stephanie did most of the things doctors told her to do — she watched
her sugars, counted her carbs, poked herself with needles, exercised more, ate
boring foods, etc. And I tried very hard to be supportive, reminding her when
it was time to poke, going on more walks with her, and such. But Steph didn't
do everything they advised, and there were too many "cheat nights"
when she had a Snickers bar or a bowl of ice cream. That's a major regret. Oh,
yeah.
These days, when anyone mentions that they've
been diagnosed with diabetes, I say, Take it seriously. And by the way,
is there an epidemic of diabetes? In just the few months since Stephanie died,
three people have told me they've been diagnosed with diabetes. Considering
that I have virtually no social life and speak with almost no-one, it seems
like a lot of people have diabetes. If you're one of them, please take it
seriously.
* * * * * * * * * *
Stephanie lost about fifty pounds over her last
few years, and her wedding ring slipped off her finger somewhere. We never
found it, and we talked about replacing it, but we never did. We certainly
weren't held back by the expense — there were no jewels, and our original
wedding ring set was purchased from a sidewalk vendor in San Francisco, $10 for
both rings. We were planning the replacement set at a similar price (I need a new
ring, too, as I've lost weight and it's a little loose), so we bought a
ring-sizer kit, and measured our fingers. We went on-line, and narrowed the
selection down to four finalists. But we didn't decide which design we wanted,
and didn't place the order.
Well, I picked the design and placed the order a
few weeks after Stephanie died, and I hope she would approve of the rings we've
received. I'd love to put this ring on her finger and hold her hand (sitting
down), but instead, her new ring is displayed in the Shrine.
And my new wedding band? They can slip it off at
the funeral home after I croak, and I won't care what they do with it. But
until then, my new ring stays on my finger, and my old ring is on my key chain.
* * * * * * * * * *
I regret not getting us out of this apartment.
Stephanie was perfectly healthy when we moved in, but she was in a wheelchair
for the last several years of her life, and our building is not
wheelchair-accessible. Our apartment is on the first floor of a two-story
building, but there are four steps leading to the building's front door. Once
Stephanie was in the wheelchair, those steps were an obstacle.
So we'd purchased a portable ramp made of metal,
and kept it leaning against the wall in the living room. To take her out — to dinner,
to a movie, to a doctor's appointment — I would carry the ramp to the building's
front door, lay it over the stairs, wheel Steph down to the sidewalk, and then
briefly leave her there (or in the car, if it was raining or cold out) while I carried
the ramp back to the living room, and locked up the apartment.
For me, this was a minor chore — a few minutes
of work, coming and going. For Steph, though, it meant she couldn't leave the
building without me. The ramp weighs thirty pounds and it's five feet long; in
her wheelchair, she couldn't have maneuvered it down the hallway and out the
front door. Even if she somehow could, then after she'd rolled herself down the
stairs and onto the sidewalk she'd have no way to bring the ramp back in to the
apartment.
Looking for a wheelchair-accessible place to
live, and then packing and moving, was on our radar, but I'm old and she was
disabled, so we knew it would be a major undertaking. When we talked about
moving, Stephanie always said she wanted to be walking first, on her prosthetic
leg. "If we're moving because I can't walk, that would mean I'm spending
the rest of my life in a wheelchair, and I refuse to accept that," she
said.
Thus, our plan was that she'd be walking on her
prosthetic leg, before we would seriously talk about moving. And indeed, when
she wore the fake leg and practiced walking, she was frequently at the front
door, carefully descending and then climbing those four steps.
Eventually, it became clear that the prosthetic
was too painful and poorly-fitted for Stephanie to use, but she remained
adamant that she'd be going back to the prostheticist, demanding to have the
leg re-measured and re-constructed into something walkable. Stephanie decided
that Hanger — the company that made her prosthetic — was going to fix it or
re-make it, and she would walk again. That was the only solution she wanted to
discuss. "We're not moving until I can walk."
But another battle was in line, ahead of her
lousy prosthetic leg. Steph was doing in-center dialysis from 2016 until late
2017, which obliterated three days of every week for her. The other four days
every week were spent, first, living her life and, second, battling the kidney
crew for a transfer back to home dialysis — and winning that battle took
more than a year. All the while, Steph didn't want to fight the prosthetics war
until the dialysis war had been won, and she didn't want to worry about moving
until the prosthetics war had been won, too.
And so, Stephanie was housebound. On a sunny
day, if she had a whim to walk around the block, she couldn't do it — not
without me helping her out of the building. Something as simple as going to the
coffee shop two blocks from home was impossible, unless I accompanied her, and
took her up and down those four steps at the door. When I spent eight hours at
work, it meant Stephanie spent eight hours in the apartment.
But she never complained about the stairs and
the ramp, not even once. She often thanked me for helping her up or down those
four steps. I occasionally mentioned how frustrating it must be for her, being
unable to leave the apartment without me, and she agreed that it was less than
ideal, but she never brought the subject up herself.
Still, it must have been so difficult for her.
She was an independent woman, who lost much of her independence when she lost
her left leg. I should've gone apartment-hunting, and moved us into an
accessible apartment, where she could have come and gone as she pleased. It's
one of my larger regrets, to be sure.
* * * * * * * * * *
Once she was disabled and no longer working,
Stephanie started spending more of her time in the bedroom and less in the
living room. Our TV, however, was in the living room. So a year or so ago, we
bought a second TV for the bedroom, and she was so happy. She could spend the
day in bed if she wanted to, and still watch her judge shows. But, there was a
problem — the new TV was frustrating and hard to figure out.
At first we chalked it up to the learning curve
for a new device, but after weeks became months we decided we'd simply
purchased a smart TV that wasn't very smart. It had a tiny remote that
normal-sized fingers had a hard time with, and a click-the-menu system that
seemed far too complicated. Turning the TV on, it always forgot its settings
from the previous time it was on, so every time you clicked the "on"
button was just like the first time you clicked the "on" button.
Always, it took eleven clicks on the tiny remote through confusing menus to
reach choices that shouldn't be complicated, such as "watch TV" or "watch
Netflix."
I was planning to say to heck with it, get rid
of that new TV, and replace it with a TV of the same make and model as the one
in our living room. I never mentioned this to Stephanie, because it was going
to be a surprise, and because she would've tried to talk me out of it. "Such
a waste of money," she would've said. But she also would've been a happier
lady watching a better TV. Well, I had the idea to replace that TV perhaps two
months before Steph died, but never got around to doing it. Another regret.
* * * * * * * * * *
For all the years we were together, I brought
Stephanie flowers every few weeks or few months, depending on her spirits and
our budget. She had allergies, so I'd learned which flowers to purchase —
alstroemeria, dahlias, hibiscus — that were pretty to look at but had less of a
scent than roses and lilies and lilacs and such. During her big health scare of
2016, when she ended up in a nursing home for several months, I brought flowers
perhaps more frequently than we could afford, but I wanted to do anything to
lift her spirits, and she did love the flowers.
And then, when she had recovered and came home,
I had a "brilliant" money-saving idea. Instead of fresh flowers, I
purchased two bouquets of nice-looking, high quality fake flowers. After that,
I displayed the fake flowers in a vase for a week at a time, alternating
between the different fake flower sets. She said they were lovely, thanked me
several times, and I did occasionally bring her real flowers too, but … only
occasionally.
Fake flowers — what a stupid idea, and what a tone-deaf
way to save a little money. If I could have a do-over, there would only be real
flowers, and there would be more of them, more often.
* * * * * * * * * *
I've mentioned that Stephanie had problems with
her vision. She saw an eye doctor, of course, and took prescription eye drops,
and we'd re-arranged the furniture in the living room so she'd be sitting
closer to the television. Once, I suggested bringing the lamp nearer to the
desk, but Stephanie said "Nah," and I didn't mention it again and
completely forgot about it until I was moving stuff to set up her Shrine. The
lamp needed to be relocated to make way for a shelf, so I unplugged the lamp
from the wall — twenty feet away — and plugged it in on the other side of the
room — perhaps six feet from the desk. Suddenly the desk was noticeably more
illuminated. Big dumb boy, why didn't you move the lamp when it would've been
helpful?
We loved going to the zoo, and sometimes we'd
stop at the gift shop, and I'd buy Steph a trinket or a magnet. Always I'd offer
to purchase anything that caught her eye, but she would decline unless it was
just a few dollars, citing the price and unwilling to "waste money." But that's not waste; that's the purpose of money —
to buy things that add to your happiness. At Madison's
zoo, they sell a giraffe t-shirt that Stephanie fancied, and we weren't hurting
financially, but it was twenty-some dollars so she said nope. Why didn't I buy
it for her anyway? Add that to my long list of regrets.
I regret doing the laundry too often. I've heard
people say after someone's died, "I held her pillow to my face and it
smelled like her." But I had done the laundry just a few days before Steph
went into the hospital, so her pillow only barely smelled like her, and only
the first time I inhaled it. After that it just smelled like a pillow.
* * * * * * * * * *
I regret that she's gone, of course, but I also
regret that Steph never saw some of the new things coming to Madison, and
specifically to the neighborhood where we lived. She loved our little stretch
of East Isthmus, and the area seems to be on a minor upswing, with some
interesting things announced or under construction within walking distance. We
were looking forward to a new restaurant on Winnebago Street, and an artists'
cooperative being planned for Milwaukee Street. Today I read that a little shop
for baked goods has opened in the mini-mall across Washington Avenue, the same
complex that houses our local library and the veterinarian. Steph would've
wanted to be that shop's first customer.
There's a classy bar that opened several years
ago, just a few blocks from home, called The Malthouse. It specializes in local
and exotic beers, and while we were never "bar people," Steph liked a
good beer and she wanted to go there and have one or two. But something always
came up, and then she was in a wheelchair.
"I know I shouldn't be," she said, "but
sometimes I'm embarrassed to be in the ‘chair. I'm not embarrassed when you
take me to a park, or to a restaurant, or to a movie, but I think I'd be embarrassed
at that place." She couldn't explain the why of it to me, so I can't
explain it to you. But I have some phobias of my own, specific things that make
me nervous when there's no rational reason for it, so I certainly didn't
insist, and we never went there. I don't regret not taking her to The Malthouse
when she didn't want to go, but I do regret not taking her there when she did
want to go, before she was in the wheelchair.
A new sushi place opened a year or so ago just a
few miles from home, and Steph loved sushi. I had promised to take her there,
but I never did.
I'd also promised her dinner at Buraka, the
excellent Ethiopian restaurant, as her birthday present, in July. But she
wasn't feeling good that night, so we postponed it. She frequently wasn't
feeling good over the next month and a half, so we never had her birthday
dinner at Buraka. I regret that, and the only thing I can do to make amends is
to have dinner there next year, on her birthday — alone, of course, but with a
picture of Stephanie on the table. In my mind, I've already made the
reservation.
I'm a little vague on what dim sum is, but as
explained by Stephanie it's small portions of a lot of different Chinese
dishes. Steph wanted to try dim sum at our favorite Chinese restaurant, the
Hong Kong Cafe, and we went as far as calling them to confirm that they serve
dim sum only on the weekends. But Steph wanted to wait until she got her
appetite back to full strength, so we decided to wait a few weeks, and a few
weeks later she was dead.
* * * * * * * * * *
As mentioned elsewhere, I regret not nudging
Steph to see a doctor, more than I did, lots more than I did, during her
last several weeks when she was feeling poorly and not eating well. Always I
will wonder whether an appointment with an MD or nurse would've made a
difference, and always I will be pretty sure that it would have. How I've
shouted at myself over that, so many times. It's still my most regretted
regret, and always will be.
There are other things I'm sorry about but won't
mention here, in deference to Stephanie's privacy. She's gone, and I'm writing
about her at length, but there are certain regrets that were shared only
between me and she — things nobody else needs to know. Those regrets remain in
my heart, not on the website.
And lastly, as she was dying, I regret not
asking the hospital staff to pull her IVs and disconnect the tubes to the
central venous catheter or "access port" in her chest. Stephanie was
a veteran of numerous hospitalizations, and she hated being a patient, being
poked and prodded 24/7, and she especially hated IVs. She never said
this explicitly, and it simply didn't occur to me in the clamor or for days
afterwards, but Steph absolutely wouldn't have wanted to die with an IV in each
arm and tubes leading to an "access port" in her chest. I should've
told someone to yank ‘em, and then refused to leave the room until they did.
I'm sorry about that, among so many other things.