Life Happens and some days you are not prepared for the curve ball it throws you

When you love some one, you will go to the ends of the Earth for them. You will make sacrifices that for anyone else, you'd turn and walk away.  I came into the house, the kids were gone and there before  me sat this broken man. He had been trying to keep it all together and it just crumbled.  He was going through a divorce and that had to weigh on his mind, yet he never shared it with me. He was opening a new restaurant and there is so much work involved in an opening. He had bought a new home and moved all within months and he was struggling.  He thought he had to do it alone, but he didn't, I  was there, but the women in his life before, had always sucked him dry, they were not there to support him, to help him, to be his partner.  I came over to the couch and straddled his lap.  I leaned down into his face and gave him a kiss, "I love you, I always will, no matter what,  tell me what happened."

"I am a piece of shit and you should run as far away from me as you can and never look back."  I didn't believe him for a minute.  

"Do you  remember "through thick and thin?", OK, so we've hit a thin spot, we move through it, together, and I'm not going to preach some thing that I will  not stand by, what happened?"

He sat there and told me all of his problems. He was behind two payments on his car and they took it.  "Let's go get it. What do we have to do?"

"Cindy, it's  not that easy.  In Indiana if they repo your car, you have to pay it off to get it back, you don't just catch up on your payments."

"So, let's go get it."

"I owe fourteen thousand dollars on that car.  I  don't have fourteen thousand and I don't really want the car anymore, I got it because Bonnie couldn't afford it."

"What do  we have to do to get a car for you?"

"I can't get a car.  My credit sucks. I don't have money to buy one. I don't have money to put down on one.  How do people do this? I'll just walk to work."  He lived about a mile from the restaurant, but I was not going to let him walk to work.

"No. That is not an option.  You will get up tomorrow and take me to work.  I will get you a rental car until we can figure out what we are going to do and you'll pick me up tomorrow night at work."

He got up Monday and drove me to work.  I made arrangements to get a rental car and looked at the fleet cars that were for sale at my employer. When a company car reached 50,000 miles, it was  turned  in for a new one and the car was posted for employees to buy first, you submitted a sealed bid by a certain date and if your bid was the highest, you could purchase the car. There were three Grand Prix for sale.   I went out to the parking lot and inspected each one and called Bill, "what color do you want?"  He didn't care, so I bid on the one that was in the best shape. All we had to do was wait for the bidding to close and if we were the highest, he'd have a car.

Bill and I at his 30th Reunion

A week later, I got the call, we owned a car!  I went downstairs, wrote a check and did the paper work.  After work I drove out to pick up Bill as I needed him to drive it home. It was a really nice car. I paid six thousand dollars for it.  We drove it up to my house and he detailed this car until it shined like it was brand new.  He loved it. I told him he didn't have to worry about a car payment it was free and clear, but he worried that he owed me.

"Bill, we are getting married, sooner or later, it's all going to belong to us.  Just do me a favor and put both of our names on the title, you know, in case you get hit by a bus or something, I'll get the car back to sell."  I was kidding and he knew it. But I wanted to make sure if some thing happened, my name was on the title.  I don't know why this crossed my mind, but it did.

In September he was headed to Orlando to a managers meeting and the discussion was on growth and employee benefits.  Unbeknownst to me, he made changes to his plans, making me the beneficiary on every thing. I never knew until months later.

He had been tired of late.  I had  noticed a bothersome cough that he had when I first met him and mentioned it to him, but he brushed it off as just dry air. I didn't know him that well to know any different.  He'd come home in the middle of the day with back pain, but he wrote it off to an old injury when he slipped and fell years ago.  He gained a little weight, not a lot and Ashley told me he did this when he was stressed and he'd drop it.  All these things and having not known him for long, were just over looked as what he said was " it's normal."

He decided to go for a physical after he returned from this manager's meeting.  I don't know why, maybe because he discovered his benefits were greater than he thought or maybe he wasn't feeling well and didn't tell me.

It was mid October when he went in for his physical and he had a bunch of tests run. He didn't say a word to me, just that he had a physical.  A month  later though he kept wondering why he hadn't received the test results back on a CT scan.  I told him that he should have heard by now, but he brushed it off.  He thought he had the flu, he was sick to his stomach and didn't feel well.  He never complained of pain, he never said he didn't feel well and he never stayed home because he wasn't feeling well.

It was early December and he was in the bathroom.  He came out with this look on his face of fear.  He had blood in his stool and he didn't know what to do.  I thought he should have it checked out, but he brushed it off, he was too busy. December 10, 2004, the new hospital that had been built in his back yard practically was opening that day.  He called me late and left a message, "Don't worry.  I'm at the Emergency Room at the  new Clarian.  I think I have the stomach flu. I should be out of there soon, no need to come over, love you."  That was it.  By the time I got the message, he was home.

The Emergency room was not running efficiently.  It was the first day they were open and Bill had been there two hours and had not seen a doctor, he grew impatient and left. He still didn't feel good, but he just thought he had the flu.

Christmas was nearing and I had been telling the girls all year long, they had better get their father a gift for Christmas, or they could stay home.  I was not going to tolerate the way they had treated him on his birthday or last Christmas.  After his birthday, he told me that we'd never make plans with them again, he was tired of being disappointed in them and always coming in last place.

We had decided to move in together, it had been over a year and that honeymoon phase was over.  We would live in my house and rent his out.  I cleared a closet for  him and we started making plans on the transition.  Christmas was going to be at my home.  He called the girls and once again, the same old story, they were too busy.  Lobster had been bought, relatives were dying, it was always drama.  I spoke to both of them individually and I told them that they needed to make time for their father.  We'd  have

Christmas 2004

Christmas on Christmas Eve since they couldn't make it on Christmas Day.  They were not happy and I didn't care, I did this for Bill.  I made it clear, don't show up without a gift!  I used the example of "What if this is his last Christmas with you?  Do you want to live with the guilt that you were too busy to spend a day with him?"  I had no idea the impact those words would carry in the very near future. It just came out, as a means to make a point, nothing else.

Bill had met with a bankruptcy attorney and was considering filing but you had to have eight hundred dollars and he didn't, nor would he take it from me.  He had asked his father for help, but was turned away. 

Christmas Eve day, Ashley, Nikki and her boyfriend came over.  They brought one gift.  It appeared to be a little battered as it had been wrapped for some time now.  It was the picture they had taken the Christmas before that they were waiting to have developed and were not able to give  him that year.  He was so disappointed, but again, he always was with them.  He loved them dearly, but they were so much like their mother and he struggled with that.

It was our last Christmas together.  I was quitting my job, working for Joe.  I'd accepted a new position with a company out of Minnesota.  I was going to open a branch claims office in Indianapolis for them.  My last day at work would have been New Year's Eve.  I woke up that morning and decided I had better things to do than to go into that office.  I had to take Bill to the hospital.