Found

While going through my wonderful, sweet man’s papers, I found part of a notepad. It was a diary, of sorts, from a few months in 2004/2005. This was back when I was majorly illin’. It was from when I was undergoing stereotactic fractionated radiation – the hope was that it’d shrink the bully-boy neuromas and, thus, preserve my hearing.

Nope. Didn’t work – just made me, 24/7, sicker than a binge drinking college kid but without the fun, sloppy protestations of LURV or ill advised hook ups. I’d get up in the morning, shower, dress, puke and head out to the car for the inbound commute with Jen and Oni. At that point, reliably, I'd lose my cookies all over the driveway and then head back to bed.

This went on for an obscenely long time – six months to a year mebbe? (yes, there were breaks in this lovely routine but not many) In that time, the docs played with the beam so’s it wouldn’t hit the hurl portion of my brain quite so much. They weren’t entirely successful BUT I was able to, eventually, make it to work for a few hours on most days.

In any case, this was a bad time. I slept an awful lot and TAB wrote to me. He said that he wanted to record what was going on in our world just so’s I would know. It was also his way of continuing our endless, ongoing convos and reflections.

From January of 2005

I was just thinking that a lot of shit has happened in our lives, mutually and respectively, since we got hitched in that wonderfully bizarre ceremony in 2002.

Since then, we’ve moved from East Cambridge to Quincy (AKA Valhalla) and become house-owners versus exploited tenants. And since becoming house-owners we’ve dealt with replacing a water heater, a gas furnace, sewer pipes and the Little Big Dig between our houses.

Since then, I went from full to part-time to laid off to retired and you’ve dealt with new employers and tons of responsibility with no help.

In February of 2002 we had our last ASL class with Bob (AKA Sign Language Bob).

In March, on Jack Kerouac’s birthdate, you had spinal surgery. In October of 2003 I had a stent stuck in my heart, followed by useless artery exploration and later a colonoscopy (which was definitely a pain in the ass). And in August of 2002 your mother had her surgery.

In May of 2002, Miles started his job at Channel 8 in D.C.

Oh and we had that tree chopped down and hauled away (it was huge and, very sadly, diseased).

I’m sure I must be forgetting a lot of other significant stuff but it has been an eventful three years, has it not?

Yeah, this wasn’t the most cheerful or snarkarific of his notes but it’s the one that really hit me first. My man was feeling the weight of our vida loca which'd gone into overdrive.

I’ll be sure to post his reflections on Hunter S. Thompson’s death, gamma ray shooting neutron stars (and how that could, possibly, have effected us), our crazy cat herd, contractor woes and more, soon.