Sunday, December 30, 2018

It’s been Ten Years

When I started this blog ten years ago, I’d just been through a difficult year. My mother had died in late 2007 and my daughter-in-law got diagnosed with breast cancer on December 31, 2007. Most of early 2008 was spent traveling to where she and my son and baby granddaughter lived. I made twelve trips between January and July. I cooked and cleaned and tended to the baby while my DIL recovered from a double mastectomy and chemotherapy treatments.

While this was going on, my husband was in the end stages of renal failure. In these last ten years, he’s gone on kidney dialysis, gotten a kidney transplant, had two cervical fusion surgeries and broken his back. Through it all, I’ve been the caregiver.

I’m very grateful that I’m healthy and strong. Stronger than I ever knew. My baby granddaughter started having seizures when she was 18 months old and has been under treatment for epilepsy since then. My son had problems with addiction during his wife’s trauma with breast cancer and he finally went to inpatient treatment. Now, he’s sober, has completed graduate school and started a new job as a school counselor.

Sadly, he and his wife divorced. But, they have both re-married to very wonderful people and are teaming up to do a wonderful job parenting my granddaughter.

So much has happened as I reflect on these past ten years. My middle son has gotten married, had three children and bought a home. My youngest son’s wife had a bleed-out stroke the day my husband came home from the hospital after having kidney transplant. We almost lost her. But, amazingly, she survived, finished her undergraduate degree, got a Master’s degree and had a second baby. Now, she’s pregnant with my seventh grandchild.

I truly believe that everything happens for a reason. We may or may not figure it out. Why do young women get breast cancer or babies suffer epilepsy or young women have strokes? Yet, we’ve all learned many things through these experiences, not the least of which is that we are stronger than we think.