Results of the Visit

Second post for today because I did not want to sound all doom and gloom and I did promise to talk a little more about the results of our visit.

One of the most noticeable changes since the visit, believe it or not, has been with my 15 year old. He had the most anger and seemed to be the most distant at times. Part of that, I am told is just because he is 15. He was not openly looking forward to the visit because in his words "More crying", but I managed to keep that in check and had a virtually tearless vacation. I think he had the opportunity to look around the visitors room and see all the other kids there visiting their dads. Suddenly he was not the only person in the world going through all of this. He was impressed with the way his Dad had looked and how he was trying to improve what he could. Mind you, he would never admit this, but I think that is how he felt. The benefit for me is that he is a different kid at home now. Yes, he still picks on his brother and sister and gives me grief about not having the right kind of mayonnaise, but there is a change. Suddenly the lawn is getting mowed without me asking, he is even commenting that it needs to be mowed again.

He is suddenly more responsible and being helpful with the bigger stuff. He still whines about emptying the dishwasher though. I have come home from work and he has started dinner or has made more of an effort to find a ride occasionally for all his practices. Don't get me wrong, he is still 15 and sometimes a pain but suddenly I am seeing glimpses of the man he will someday be and I like what I see.

The phone calls now are harder. I don't know if I can explain why. Is it because I don't know when I will see him again? Or is it because we did see him, that it reopened all the wounds that we had finally gotten past? Is is a reminder of all the feelings, and that we can't be together as a family? I want to be able to take the kids more often to see him, I want to see him more. The calls are a reminder that we can't do that. I am anxious for a letter in the mail, or the day when I know he will call, then he calls and the beep that signals the end of the call is coming and I seem to fall apart. It has been almost 8 months, does this ever go away?

The kids are more relaxed in knowing where their Dad is and what it all looks like. So they are not as stressed about the conditions, although just last night my daughter talked about what things would be like and when Dad could come home, so it is always still in the back of their minds.

I have become much closer to Rick's aunt and believe that she is the added blessing from this trip. We e-mail often and she keeps up on how the kids are doing and offered to help out with all the back to school supplies.

Hopefully I have shared enough of the positives of the visit with my husbands parents, that they would be inclined to visit him as well. They are planning a trip to the area but have not fully committed to a visit. I just remind my husband to not be disappointed if they do not come and enjoy whatever time he has if they do.

We have all changed after the visit and for the better I think. We do not know when the next opportunity for a visit will come along but we will adapt to the new feelings and situations that we now face everyday. Hey...we have made it this far.

The Price We Pay

Whether you believe in God, Karma, a greater being, or the absolute randomness of the universe, you have to sit back and wonder why things happen the way they do. In my last post I talked about how good things were with our visit and felt like things were looking up, and that was the case for about a week and a half. Then the world knocked on my door and just barged in screaming.

One afternoon I got a call from my sister-in-law telling me that she was in the hospital for surgery and my Mom had been admitted down the hall. Turns out my sister-in-law had a sooner than planned surgery but my mom was in there for new blood clots. Long story short, she actually has cancer on her kidney and is still in the hospital 2 weeks later. My Dad's dementia is getting progressively worse, he had a good day Saturday, but a bad day Sunday when we went for a visit.

When I drove the kids out for one weekend to see her in the hospital, as we were getting off the highway, the transmission slipped. We made it back home, but the oil change light and the service engine light both came on during the trip. So now I am driving a vehicle that is not running right, and according to my mechanic needs to have an overhaul of the transmission...translation...lots of money.

One of our cats came home the other day and I knew right away he was not doing well. He had been to the vet in the spring and they had fixed the problem $500.00 later, but of course there were no guarantees that it would not come back. Well, it came back. I don't have the money for another large vet bill, so we are all dealing with the possibility of losing a family pet.

Lots of shut off notices in the mail this month, and juggling them to stay ahead of them all seems to be a little more than I can handle at times. But there are moments when I simply have to sit back and laugh in the face of it all and wonder what could possibly be around the next corner. However most of my time is spent trying to figure out how to handle that moment's most pressing problem while still trying to find solutions for all the other ones lurking up ahead.

So is this the price we pay for having 4 days of happiness and leaving the rest of the world behind? For thinking that there is light at the end of the tunnel? It is a rude reminder that we are all still knee deep in the worst experience of our lives and onward we keep moving.

Four Days of Joy

Well, we just recently returned from our first visit. I had not seen my husband in 6 months and we had to drive 11 hours to do that. His aunt helped make the trip possible, she made all the arrangements, drove her car and did whatever she could to make the trip enjoyable for me and the kids. The trip down took a little longer than we had planned because of some traffic issues, but we arrived in time to go visit for a few hours and go through the process for the first time. It was not as bad as one might imagine, but the officers quickly realized that it was our first time, and they "softened" up a bit. We had to fill out paperwork, wait. Move up to the correct building when called and wait. Hand in our ID and paperwork, then wait. Get photographed (only happens on your first visit), remove our shoes, empty pockets, pass through the metal detector, get your hand stamped and stand in line and wait. We were then taken through one set of doors and waited for permission to go through the second set of doors. We were told where to sit and then we impatiently waited to see him.

I did not see him come in the room, my back was to the door that he entered the room through. Suddenly the kids were saying "There's Dad!". I immediately started looking around the room but I did not see him, finally the kids where able to point him out to me. Oh my! I did not recognize him at all. The warmer climate certainly agrees with him, he has lost over 30 lbs, new hair cut and much healthier. Hugs and kisses all the way around. My littlest admitted that he thought we would be talking to him over the phone with a piece of glass between us, imagine how surprised he was when he got to sit on Dad's lap. My oldest got to see how tall he was compared to Dad and my daughter was glad to see her Dad.

The kids went back with me the next morning and I went alone the last day by myself. The last day was difficult because it meant that we would be leaving without him again shortly without knowing when we would be able to see him again. We did spend the rest of our afternoons like vacation, amusement parks, swimming, beaches and site seeing thanks to his aunt.

Overall it was the best 4 days our family has had in a very long time, only a hint of what the future holds for us as a family. So much has come out of the trip that there is not enough room in one entry, so I will save that for another day but all I can say is a grateful thank you to a wonderful aunt who will never really appreciate how much what she did meant to all of us.