TheBanyanTree: Holes in My Brain

[Bonnie Brace]

I have holes in my brain. I've had them for 6 weeks now and at the moment it feels as if they are never going to  go away. My attention span is short. I have difficulty staying present when I have to see clients. I find my self wandering away in my mind and all those listening skills have just gone out the window. I've gone away.   I feel as if I am just going through the motions. I have trouble sleeping so when it is time to go to work in the morning I am exausted. 

I find myself crying at the most in-opportune moments and I avoid the telephone as much as possible, because I just can't handle talking to friends and listening to their lifes problems or their triumphs at the moment. 

I'm broken. And this time the brokeness is devastating. My beloved man-baby, Bob died 6 weeks ago,  April 6.  It was unexpected and  I am having difficulty because I don't have closure. He lived in NJ and I lived in MA. we saw each other on weekends. We had been together for 9 years. Our weekends and occasional weeks together were perfect for us. He had his responsibilities in NJ and I have mine here in MA. On the weekends he came here and I shared a bit of my life with him. Occasionally I went to NJ and he shared a bit of his life with me. All in all we were like a pair of comfortable slippers. We fit very will together.  I was happy.

The past nine years were actually the best years of my life. Bob taught me a lot. He taught me how to trust again and that there really were good, kind, men out there.  He brought out the best in me and I brought out the best in him. He was an intelligent, funny man with a quick wit.  He loved people, my girls fell in love with him right away. His life here with the girls and I was his escape from the things he had to face in NJ. I think that was why he liked out arriangement. for just a little while he could leave his cares and woes  and come to another place and just be. A place where he was loved and cared for and where we were a happy family, even if it was just for a little while. He called coming here "going on vacation" because that is how he thought of it. A time for him to relax, rest and be spoiled by a house full of women who adored him. And spoil him we did! 

The last 6 months had been difficult for him. He was diagnosed with a neurological disorder that was slowly and painfully weakening him. He was in constant pain with a disease the doctors couldn't name. It wasn't ALS or Parkinsons, they didn't know what it was. All they could say it was degenerative. So they gave him pain meds, narcotics, more and more and more pain meds and pretty soon he had a whole slew of narcotics and he became addicted. Mixed with his other meds it was not a good combination. We talked about his addiction, he knew when he started the pain meds there was a good chance he would get addicted because of his past history which he neglected to tell the docs about. His reasoning was anything was better than the pain. He became addicted and would go through 200 percodan in less than a week and a half. Then cold turkey until he could find another doc to give him more pills. I didn't find this out until after he died. The last 6 months he didn't travel much because he hid a lot of this from me. I knew it was bad, just not to the degree. 

Sunday night I spoke with him, he said he wasn't feeling well. My suggestion was to maybe have some nice hot soup and toast, tea and climb into bed and get some rest. I told him how much I loved him ( billions and billions) and I would check on him tomorrow. He told me he loved me very much and we hung up. The next morning just before noon he fell across his bed and died. I didn't get the call untill 2:30 in the afternoon. April 6, 2009 at 2:30pm was when my heart broke.

I'm trying to put the pieces back together again but the pain and sadness is more than I anticipated. It's not unfamiliar,  just deeper. My heart is broken and I have holes in my brain.