bjack on 8/5/2019 at 05:16
I still like you and want you to be alive and well. There is a God and he is a nasty dude who is testing you. You are passing, but miserable in the process. Let it go somewhat and try your best to enjoy the little things. That is the only way I get by. If I did not, I would have taken a dirt nap long ago. Your love for her is strong. Let her love for you sustain you. It is all about a matter of perspective. Hope. It's all we have. It is real. If a dude 1/2 the way across the Earth cares enough to write this to you, then there is hope. Peace be with you brother, if I may call you that. Go out and do something for someone else and try to keep out of your head. I find dwelling within is a nightmare. Occupy your time with love for others and you will find peace.
Gray on 9/5/2019 at 02:41
Thank you. Your words mean a lot to me.
I want to expand on the love theme. I know, I'm known for being a sarcastic grumpy asshole, but there is love in my heart. It was always there, but she brought it out. All of those things I did not have words for, she found. When I say she changed me, I don't mean that casually. I mean, in a life changing way. Like a beam of pure love shot straight into my face. It was like staring into pure sunlight. I was blinded. I was awestruck. I have now seen the true face of pure love. I feel very fortunate. If I can only hold on to this memory, I'll be annoyingly happy for the rest of my life.
Next time I whine about pointless crap in some other thread, please remind me of this. Just say "sunshine", and I'll shut up and dream away.
Tocky on 9/5/2019 at 03:29
Actually Gray, you don't sound that different from me with the exception I DO smoke pot on occasion and also am reasonably gregarious on most occasions. I don't find you unlikable. Despising most everything seems like a reasonable response to today's world. Hell, I had ten more years of the good old days so I can confirm it's more than reasonable. BTW I recommend at least trying some weed before you shuffle off this mortal coil. You can't tell me Shakespeare wouldn't have burned one henceforth and forsooth once upon a fortnight or two. It might even help you sleep.
Maybe it is all random chance but it sure doesn't feel like it. It feels like wonderful happenstance. Kismet when you meet the one. If there is any magic in life at all it is that. So if your story sounds like a magic trick then it's just walking like a duck. She sounds like she carried a pocket full of magic just in case of doubters. You know you wouldn't have missed knowing her for anything and you aren't fooling any of us. That kind of magic is worth even this kind of pain. It just doesn't feel like it right now. Your story of her is a wonderful tribute and lets us know exactly how worth it love is.
Okay the CFS thing sucks ass at helping you climb out of this hole. Still gotta fight it. I gotta go with bjack on the helping others thing too. It keeps me from feeling like such a worthless prick. It even puts enough back in the bank to go full on worthless prick every now and then. Overall it may be best to avoid it but the words fuck it were made for just such occasions. Don't be too hard on yourself. Give yourself slack. There was someone who thought you deserved it and I have to agree. To hold a hand to the very end, aside from being your privilege, is also the best gift of devotion anyone could ever give.
I hope the best for you, dude. That adds up to exactly jack shit and change but I hope it anyway.
PigLick on 9/5/2019 at 13:06
Also, are you sure its CFS? After 20 years I guess you must have had it diagnosed, but I suffer from a whole friendly club of auto-immune conditions, and a lot of my symptoms could well fit into the CFS category. There are drugs which can actually help, though they can be costly without some kind of medicare.
Gray on 14/5/2019 at 00:38
CFS is not a proper diagnosis, it's just an umbrella term to gather up a vast range of symptoms, of which I have all of them (took me a while to develop muscle pain, but I have that now as well), so eventually my doctors figured it would be the most likely thing, so they settled on it. Better to have a name for something than to continuously claim I was perfectly fine and just making it up. If I was making it up I wouldn't have kept arguing for 10 years. No known cure, because it's not the one thing. I find it quite likely to have been triggered by an auto-immune reaction I had when I was 12, but I have no proof of that, just a very vague hypothesis. It didn't kick in until I was in my late 20s, but it feels now like it did when I was 12, except stronger. But that's no proof either. The only thing I can say for sure is how very limited a life I can have now.
So yes, doctors gave up on me because they didn't know what else to do. By then, I was so used to fighting to prove I was actually ill, and I just accepted CFS as the most likely thing. Nothing has changed in the last 12 years, except I'm still getting slowly worse, like I have been for 20 years. I wouldn't know where to go or how to get tested now, since I'm in a foreign country.
Pyrian on 14/5/2019 at 01:13
I had a friend diagnosed with CFS for a couple decades. One doctor eventually found a serious problem with a random organ (I don't remember which) and she's much better (albeit still rather south of "well") now. ...Wish I could turn that anecdote into usable advice, lol.
Gray on 14/5/2019 at 02:45
I'd much appreciate it if you could bother to ask her what the problem was. It might not be the same for me, but at least that'd be something to exclude.
Gray on 23/5/2019 at 02:48
Tomorrow is the day. The scattering of the ashes. Finally, after a year of waiting, perhaps a bit of closure. I wrote a few words to say tomorrow, but half of it is in Swedish, so quite pointless to post here. The rest is just stolen from songs she liked. Her daughter planned the event, it will be all sorts of crap I could not care any less about. Releasing some doves. Poetry. Bible quotes. Fine. I understand that my wife was not mine alone, she was also a mother, sister, cousin, friend. She was very much loved. Everybody who ever met her loved her, she was amazing. Everybody should have their say. But when it's my time, I think you'd struggle to find five people to say "well, he wasn't ALWAYS a complete bastard. Sometimes he wasn't even almost very grumpy." With her, the words will be much kinder.
Don't get me wrong, I love my stepdaughter, we're just very different people with very different views on the world. She values things I think are quite pointless. I appreciate everything she's done. It is very important to her to get this right, because she loved her mother. And her mother loved her. I'm sure tomorrow with go smoothly.
Tocky on 23/5/2019 at 04:59
The structure of ceremony is a comfort somehow. Maybe it's having a concrete thing to do when there is nothing you can really do. My favorite (if you can have one) part of a funeral is swapping stories of the deceased. It's finding another facet of someone you love. Folks always underestimate their own facets. A hundred different people see a hundred different facets. We think the little things we do are of no import but they are remembered. Everything we are is disseminated among everyone we know and it lives on in them.
My favorite doctor was a grump. I never knew anyone who didn't like him. You think he knew but maybe he didn't. It wouldn't have changed him either way. That too was part of his charm.
Gray on 24/5/2019 at 00:51
We finally did the ashes today. I suppose that will be some kind of closure. I'm not quite done with it yet, I need to talk to them again about getting a plaque with her name on it.
It was a nice ceremony. A bit windy, but this is Glasgow, so it would be. My nephew John, who is a very good public speaker, read out a few words written by other people, mostly by my stepdaughter, my sister-in-law and a couple of lines from the bible. As an atheist, I wasn't necessarily too thrilled with the Jesusy stuff, but this day wasn't for me, it was for everyone who missed her, about a dozen of us there. I got to say a few words as well. I'm not as good a public speaker as John is, so my voice broke and I had to struggle to get the words out, but I got there. Mostly in English, but some in Swedish. Then we scattered the ashes. There was some short debate over who should do it, my stepson declined, so his sister and her daughter did it. Given the wind, this could have turned into a Big Lebowski joke, but it did not, the director must have been used to doing this several times, and told them where to stand, and it was fine. I was then handed a live white dove, to be released after a poem was read. I'm not a very gentle person, quite clumsy, and the dove looked up at me as if it was thinking "you better not damn well crush me with your big stupid ogre hands", so I tried my best. I was startled by one of the family who came up to get a closer look at the bird, so I let go of it a couple of seconds too early, but that was probably better than the other option, which was to hold onto it too tightly and maybe crush it.
We later went to a restaurant, and chatted for a couple of hours about how much she meant to all of us. I had brought some photo albums, since my stepdaughter asked me to, so there was a lot of reminiscing and telling stories. Some I knew, some I'd never heard before. Like Tocky said, we swapped stories. Good times. Good memories.
After we disbanded, me and my stepdaughter and granddaughter went out for a meal. We talked a bit more about her mother. I showed them some photos from my phone they hadn't seen before, and told a few stories they didn't hear earlier with all the family about.
Then later in the evening, I went to see a live band that meant a lot to me and my wife. It just so happened that they played in our town this very same day. They even played our song. And I sang every line of it. But that's another story.
[Edit: typos fixed]