12/8/15 - Here I am, now what are your other two wishes (bumper sticker from my Sister)

I have been thinking of sharing my life after the loss of my wife for several months now ... so here I am. The purpose of this blog is to share my life and hopefully get discussions going between fellow widowers. I have searched the web and have not found anything much about widowers, lots about widows. I guess women like to chat more than men. Oppps, was that a sexist remark? (Oh, by the way, the photo is me at my cabin in the Adirondacks. I have over 20 acres with trails that I have cleared. The sidearm is only to make noise to scare large animals away and plink at dead trees).

My wife died in 2011 from breast cancer which she had 25 years ago. The chemo therapy affected her heart which over the years resulted in heart failure at the age of 65. The last two years of her life was spent in and out of the hospital with pacemakers, LVAD (google that one), strokes and a whole bunch of other shit. I was with her every day and even bought monthly parking passes to the hospital parking lot. I guess the only good thing that came of the time in the hospital is that we designed our head stone, bought matching funeral urns, and said plenty of "I love you". In the end, we had completed out journey and were content in the inevitable.

Fortunately we have/had Living Wills. So when the doctors said she had a week to live and could die at any time, I chose a day and time to stop the life support systems. I gathered her family, my family, and friends to her bed side. She said good by to one and all between gasps of oxygen. Then as they removed each piece of equipment I held her in my arms and told her about all the good times we had: sandy beaches in the Caribbean, ocean cruises, trips to Italy ... and then all was still.

As agreed, we had no wake, no mourning. We had a Mass in which many members of the family participated in the readings and other ceremonial tasks. What we did have was a Celebration of Life party in which the guests were asked to tell the fun things or funny stories about my wife. Having an open bar and good food helped things along.

I opened the funny stories with my favorite one about when we were traveling in Italy. We both spoke Italian to some extent. A man in the Piazza del Duomo (open space in front of the cathedral) in Sicily was calling his dog saying "viene, viene". My wife turned to me and said "that dog understands Ital...", and never finished the sentence. Duh, we were in Italy! (viene in Italian means "come").

Enough  for now ... more to come: my drinking, my loneliness, my growth, and my new life.