Improvise, Adapt and Overcome

I've been thinking about Randy a lot the past few days, more than normal. This time last year we were in Rochester, MN at Mayo waiting for Randy to be discharged from the hospital after his surgery. He spent 10 days in the hospital before he was discharged, and we headed back home to Tennessee for him to recover. I remember we had strict instructions from the doctors to stop every couple of hours for Randy to get out and walk to prevent blood clots. I did stop, much to Randy's annoyance because he just wanted to get home, but in the end it made the 900 and something mile drive more manageable for him.  During the drive he was quiet at times and at one point he broke down because he was just so grateful to be alive and have such a wonderful prognosis. What a difference a year makes. 

Thursday was a rough day for me. I was feeling overwhelmed with everything - house stuff, Randy's stuff, work, even what to eat - like I said, everything. It doesn't help that the seasons are changing and fall was Randy's favorite time of year - it's football season, the humidity is gone, the AC isn't running nonstop, we could work on projects outside, and it's just beautiful here this time of year. It's also the time of year when we first met.  I went into our room, laid down on his side of the bed and cried. In the middle of my crying, my phone rang. I had left it in the kitchen so I got up to see who was calling (it was a workday after all) and it was a spam caller. I think it was Randy's way of telling me to improvise, adapt and overcome - that's what he said when things went sideways. I managed to get it together and made it through the week.

I've been gone the past couple of weekends, so Saturday was spent running errands and getting things done around the house. I took the trash to the dump, cleaned out the old cedar shavings and put fresh cedar in Frackie's dog house, sprayed for bugs, put away the Halloween decorations and put out the Thanksgiving decor (Randy was amazed that I had kitchen towels for every holiday) and got rid of dead flowers and planted new ones. I walked by a big box of kitchen things in the garage at least 20 times during the day so decided to unpack it. It was actually an assortment of kitchen stuff along with papers that were trash or needed to be shredded, but I did find some of our pictures and a card that Randy gave me that brought me to tears. 

Cancer was one thing that Randy could not overcome. He did improvise and adapt though, right until the end. At his memorial service I went inside his Mom's house because I just needed a minute. His brother Jay was inside and I told him that Randy was not supposed to leave me. Jay told me "But Jenny, he didn't want to leave" and believe it or not, remembering that helps just a little bit.


 


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