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The question arises because I have been going through the stuff that I brought south from our storage unit in Massachusetts. It turns out that much of what has been stored up there for years is memorabilia – items saved from our many trips in the RV and our cruises. Jett was much more sentimental than I am. Jars of sand from beaches we have visited were very dear to her. To me they trigger some fond memories but they are, ultimately, just jars of sand. They will have absolutely no meaning to whoever is unlucky enough to be saddled with cleaning out the shed when I die. So I figure I am doing someone in the future a great favor by getting rid of this memorabilia now. Goodbye, sand. Farewell daily cruise calendars. So long, campground maps.
All gone, sent to the trash bin. It felt good to be tidy.
But it felt like I was being disloyal to Jett. Sorry, darling.
I had a really hard time finishing this book. I felt that I should be liking it more than I was. I blamed the good weather, the holidays, Jett’s death, demands of a long To Do list.
But now I think that the book just sucked.
This was my first Catherine Coulter book and it will be my last.
Let’s start with the title. Bomb Shell. I have no idea why she chose this for a title other than it catches the eye. There are no bombs in the book. There isn’t even a busty blond.
Next, the plot. Or rather the plots because there are two: a mysterious set of events resulting in murder in a rural Virginia town and the murder of the grandson of the ex-chairman of the Federal Reserve in Washington DC. I expected that these two plotlines would eventually converge. But other than having some of the FBI folks involved in both there was no connection. I think Coulter just had two ideas that she couldn’t turn into stand-alone books so she threw them together. Lazy. I hate that.
Also, the rural Virginia plot involved the MS-13 gang and a world-famous classical musician teaming up to distribute drugs from a cave. I couldn’t help but liken this to a plot from the Hardy Boys books that I read as a pre-teen. Completely ridiculous.
That sounds sadder than it was. It was a very quiet day – just Rusty and me – but I rather enjoyed the solitude. I finished the jigsaw puzzle I was working on, watched some football and a couple of movies, read a bit then cooked myself a nice dinner: pork roast, asparagus, mashed potatoes with pork gravy. This really required no special culinary skills. The pork roast came from the freezer, as did the asparagus. The potatoes were courtesy of Bob Evans and the gravy was in a jar from Heinz. But I cooked the pork perfectly and it all assembled quite nicely. Tasted great.
Thanksgiving dinner
When I was walking Rusty before dinner two neighbors stopped me and invited me to join them. I was touched by their kindness but gracefully declined. I was really enjoying the solitude and was looking forward to the pork roast.
For the evening walk, I took Rusty on the usual around-the-pond path. And encountered a site where the owner must have worked his ass off all day putting up Christmas lights. Very impressive. But I think my Thanksgiving Day was better than his.
Sorry, couldn’t resist. Too damn clever for my own good.
After getting 3 new tires for the truck last week, I got one new tire and one tire repaired today on the RV. The repaired tire was the one that took a nail on the trip south a few weeks ago (seems like years).
Between the two I have spent about $1200 on tires in the past 2 weeks. Well, tires and lugnuts. I had to replace all 32 lugnuts on the truck for reasons that aren’t interesting. But that was nearly $200 of the $1200 paid.
But with the new tires and the hitch reinstalled yesterday (I am getting too old to lift nearly 100 lbs!) the rig is now ready to go. If I decide I want to go somewhere.
It has now been a month since Jett slipped the mortal coil. My life without her is coming into focus. Some of the changes are obvious but others are more subtle and surprising.
First, the obvious. I miss her. Every day. I don’t miss being the 24/7 caregiver that I became in her final months, but I miss her companionship, her wisdom, her unwavering moral compass. I miss being able to share things with her. The other day I witnessed something in the resort and my immediate thought was “Wait ’til Jett hears this“, followed about half a second later by the cold realization that I would never, ever be able to share anything with her again.
The increased responsibilities. Jett, at one time, handled the cooking, most of the cleaning, all of the social engagements, care for Rusty, the laundry and remembering birthdays and arranging for Christmas gifts. With her illness I took over the cooking, cleaning and laundry, but it wasn’t until she was gone that I had to deal with the full burden of care for Rusty and responsibility for birthdays and gifts. I have created a calendar of birthdays and will soon have to figure out who is on the Christmas gift list. I haven’t had many social engagements yet but when they come it will be up to me to handle the arrangements. I can do it all. But I don’t want to.
Meals. During the final two months I was constantly on the lookout for high-protein foods that I hoped I could get her to eat. She ate very few of the things I bought. As I am too cheap to throw away perfectly good food, I am now consuming the items that I bought for her. High-protein snack bars, Ensure shakes, coffee and chocolate ice cream (okay, not high protein but nutritious and things that she would eat, until the end). I am also trying to clean out the very full freezer that has items like frozen asparagus and cooked shrimp – things that she used for appetizers. I will eat them all. Even when not consuming items that I bought for her or things that she bought to serve to others, my cooking habits have changed. I now eat smaller, quicker meals. I cooked 5 bratwurst and 4 hamburgers on Sunday. Those will be my entrees for a week.
Altered priorities. When we arrived in Florida the item at the top of our priority list was installing the washer/dryer in the shed. That would be the culmination of over 2 years of effort and would thrill Jett who would no longer have to make the tiring trek to the laundromat. Now, with her gone, the urgency is diminished. I can do one trip to the resort laundromat every 2 to 3 weeks, for about $11. How long will it take to break even on a $1500 washer/dryer investment? Years. Yes, the convenience is a factor, but I was driven mostly by a desire to make Jett’s life easier. I think I have a higher tolerance of laundromats than Jett did.
Repurposed table
Freedom to use “her” space. The RV has a bath-and-a-half. The full bath was hers, except when I needed to shower and shave in the morning. The half bath was mine. Now I have full use of the full bath and rarely use the half bath. Similarly, the dining room table was hers, used to keep piles of papers, periodicals and “to do” tasks. Now it is mine and I am using it right now to do a jigsaw puzzle.
Some of these changes are improvements in my life. But I would happily trade all these improvements to have Jett back again.
Last spring, as the “season” was winding down and COVID was ramping up, there seemed to be an air of invincibility in the resort. Lots of going-away parties, nary a mask in sight and no social distancing. It seemed to me that people were taking a lot of risks, but they got away with it – there were no reports of COVID in the park.
This year is different. Shortly after I returned from the funeral (Oct 29) a notice went out that a resident couple had both tested positive and were self-quarantining. Shortly after that a workamper tested positive. Now a pickleball player has tested positive after playing pickleball with 18 people. Pickleball is an outdoor activity so the risk of transmission is reduced, but still… that is 4 confirmed cases and potentially several dozen other people exposed. And the park is no more than 50% full – maybe 300 people, tops. That means that potentially up to 10% of the residents have had some exposure to the virus. It seems inevitable that more cases will follow.
A couple of days ago I ran into (from a distance) one of the regular pickleball players. He invited me to return to the courts and I promised that I would, soon. Well, maybe not so soon now. And I am glad I wasn’t one of the 18 who were exposed last week.
Maybe residents will start to take this pandemic seriously now.
One of the risks of living in Florida is hurricanes. I have no intention of being in an RV in the path of even a minimal Category 1 (75 mph) hurricane. I was fortunate that Florida was not targeted during the two weeks that I was away for Jett’s funeral. But when I returned I had to deal with Hurricane Eta.
Twice.
Yes, in this very busy hurricane season they ran out of names and had to dig into the Greek alphabet – Eta being the 7th letter there. Eta was a very unusual storm. First it devastated Central America as a Category 4 (130-156 mph, hundreds of deaths and over $5B in damage), one of the most powerful storms ever to appear that close to the equator. Then it wandered around the Caribbean Sea like a drunken sailor for many days, crossing Cuba and the Florida Keys and bringing torrential rains to Fort Myers (hit 1), then curving back out to sea for a few more days. Then, on Monday and Tuesday of this week, it finally decided to head straight north, raking the west coast of Florida (hit 2) before making landfall near Sarasota, crossing Florida and continuing up the east coast of the US as a tropical storm.
Frankly, it was little more than a nuisance for me. The main impact was rain. Lots of rain. The first pass dumped maybe 4 inches of rain on my site and the second pass probably added 2 to 3 more. The winds were strong, but the highest gusts were probably around 50 mph. Enough to rock the RV, but not particularly worrisome. While many sites in the resort experienced minor flooding, mine had none at all. The drainage ditch behind the site filled but didn’t overflow. As the RV is on wheels and the shed is on blocks, even a foot of water would have caused no real damage. I might have had to replace some mulch.
Flooded drainage ditch, second pass
Had the forecast been worse, what would I have done? Well, the good thing about hurricanes – if hurricanes can be said to have any good qualities – is that they move slowly. More slowly than an RV. So I would have hitched up and tried to outrun it. Millions of other people with the same idea would have made the travel very slow, but still faster than the hurricane. And if I couldn’t find a campground with a site available… well, my RV has a bed.
The greatest issue in this case was the condition of the truck. While it had traveled nearly 6,000 miles with nary a problem in the past month, it was due for an oil change and was in fairly desperate need of some new tires. But it could have hauled the RV a few hundred miles to avoid a hurricane.
One of the reasons that I had to hurry home from the funeral is that I had committed to being a poll worker at the local precinct for the Nov 3 General Election. I was given the job of “deputy” which is actually pretty responsible, despite the fact that I was a complete newbie. One of the duties of the deputy is to swear in all of the other workers. So I had to arrive by 5:30am and, as my first official duty, swear in the other 10 poll workers.
Deputy Sparky
Then I participated in setting up the polling place – assembling the voting stations, running extension cords to the registration verification tables, putting down the 6-foot separation markers (to minimize the chance that voting in the pandemic would kill anyone). Then I had to go outside, measure a 150-foot perimeter, put up signs banning political activity within that perimeter, put up the “Vote Here” signs, put on my vest (see photo) and make sure no one entered the polling place before 7am.
After the polls opened I had to monitor the flow and keep the crowd from building up inside the polling place. In truth that was only an issue for the first 2 hours. The line of people waiting to vote may have reached about 30 people at the peak, but things flowed pretty well. The last 10 hours had only minor lines.
For 12 hours I was not allowed to leave the building. I brought food and drinks in a cooler that the Lee County Elections Commission thoughtfully provided. While the work was tiring, it was not overwhelming. But I was very happy when we could close and lock the doors at 7pm. I think the final tally of voters was somewhere between 500 and 600.
I then had to participate in the teardown of the polling place while the paperwork for the final tally was being prepared and the results uploaded. I had to sign off on the final numbers, along with 3 other workers, and had to verify that the ballot boxes – needed for a recount that won’t happen – were locked and secure.
All-in-all it was a positive experience. The team – a pretty balanced mix of Republicans and Democrats – worked together efficiently and congenially. I felt I made some friends. It was a great example in how people with different political views could work together toward a common goal. Congress: take note.
Thanks to my neighbor, Mark, for walking Rusty at noon. He (Rusty, not Mark) wasn’t happy to be left alone most of the day, but at least he didn’t have to hold his water.
I stayed with my sister-in-law Christine the night of the funeral. We played some Hand, Knee & Foot in Jett’s honor. The next day I loaded up the truck with everything left in our storage unit and terminated that contract, then had some pizza with my lovely granddaughter Liliani. Sister-in-law Kim took off her minister hat and put on her chef hat, serving me yet another wonderful dinner. The next morning I departed, starting the long (and pretty lonely) trip home.
I took the “southern route” (I-95 rather than I-84) through New York City and regretted doing so. I encountered no fewer than 4 delays due to accidents. I didn’t get to Alexandria until nearly 8pm. But I was served another wonderful dinner (spaghetti and sausage) when I got there. Rusty was happy to see me, more or less.
The next day, Monday, Rusty and I drove to Knoxville TN where I stayed 2 nights with an old college friend. Another home-cooked meal (see a pattern?). Wednesday I drove to Chattanooga, mostly in a driving rain (tropical storm Zeta). I had wanted to get to Atlanta, but it just wasn’t worth it. I got a room in Chattanooga at LqQuinta (*very* nice – I will have to look for LaQuinta the next time I need a hotel). The storm had passed by morning so I decided to push through to Fort Myers. 10 hours with one refueling stop (and to walk Rusty). Got home at dusk Thursday night.
I met Jett on the evening of June 21, 1997 – the summer solstice. From that night until her death at 2:53pm October 15 we were pretty much constantly together. Our first date was a trip to Rockport and Gloucester. She loved Cape Ann, as did her mother. When her mother died in 1979, Jett buried her in Rockport and obtained the plot next to hers for herself. When her mother’s headstone was engraved she engraved hers too, but of course it was incomplete. We visited Jett’s grave on that first date – the same grave we will visit today for a rather less romantic reason. The headstone is still incomplete but will be finished soon as the missing data – the date of death and her last name at time of death – are now known.
Barb Rifkin, our common friend who didn’t fix us up because she didn’t think we would be a good match, has admitted that she was wrong. We were a very good match because we had shared interests and goals. And we were fearless. Dive into housing rehab and rental? Fly to Paris for a weekend? Go to Mexico on vacation when my mother was warning us about banditos? Go on a cruise when there were frequent reports of sickness and disaster? Sell our 2000-square-foot home, move into a 400-square-foot RV and travel the country full-time? We did all of those things and did them eagerly. We loved adventure.
If there was any doubt that we were compatible, the fact that we survived in a 400-square-foot RV for 8 years without killing each other is proof that we were. We may have disagreed but we never argued. The decision to go “on the road” was the best decision we ever made. No regrets. We traveled over 40,000 miles to all “lower 48” states. The well-worn truck in which she traveled those 40,000 miles will lead the procession today. We met great people, saw great places. We wanted to be “on the road” for 20 years or more . We loved our life together.
But we didn’t get 20 years of travel; we got only 8. And, in truth, we had fewer than 6 good years on the road. Starting with our transatlantic cruise in 2018 which we had to abort due to Jett’s low hemoglobin, she never felt really well again. Our travel became a matter of getting to a destination so that she could rest. I got out on my own to see places but she rarely felt well enough to accompany me. Yet nothing seemed to be seriously wrong. The hemoglobin problem was resolved by large doses of B12 and she got a clean bill of health from her doctor in the summer of 2018.
But 10 months later in May 2019, as we started our trip north for the summer, she went into the ER in Palm Coast FL with severe back pain. She was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer, metastasized to the brain and the spine. The tumor on the spine, of course, was the source of the back pain. The diagnosis was a shock – there had been no sign of cancer less than a year earlier – but it wasn’t a surprise as she had smoked heavily for over 50 years. Our planned 3-day stay became a 5-week battle of survival.
She nearly died there. She was presented with the option of entering hospice and was told if she did that she would be dead within 2 weeks. Her family – who rushed to her bedside – convinced her to try one round of chemotherapy. Just one. Then she could decide if hospice was best.
She did one round of chemo and it didn’t go well. But she decided to try immunotherapy and the results, for a year, were fantastic. Her doctor actually called her response “miraculous”. All of her tumors shrank. Her last MRI, just a month before her death, showed that the tumors were continuing to shrink. But she continued to lose weight and became very frail and unstable. I told her daily that she needed to eat more. That malnutrition was becoming more critical than cancer. Nothing worked. She would nibble, then push it away. I believe that in the 2 weeks prior to her death there was not a day when she took in more than 500 calories.
The end, when it came, was sudden, unexpected and very gentle. We arrived in Fort Myers on Wednesday, October 7. She arranged to see her oncologist the following Monday, but when Monday arrived she was too sick and asked me to cancel. I refused and instead went to see the oncologist myself. I described Jett’s fragile condition, my concern about her weight and her increasing hallucinations and mental confusion. She was sensing that her mother was near. And her grandchildren. The doctor said that people nearing death often saw or sensed the presence of departed or distant loved ones. She suggested that we talk to hospice as they would be better positioned to intensively treat her malnutrition.
The hospice nurse arrived at 4pm on Wednesday and spoke to us for 2 hours. Jett was cheerful, responsive and helpful. We agreed that she would enter hospice, with the understanding that if she could regain some weight then cancer treatments would resume. The papers were signed at 6pm.
At 8pm a truck arrived, delivering oxygen. I thought this urgency was unnecessary as Jett, despite her lung cancer and COPD, had never needed oxygen.
At around 9pm she called me into the bedroom, as she often did. But rather than requesting coffee or assistance into the bathroom, she pointed at a pile of bedding and said “Why did you kill that other cat?” Of course my response was “When did I ever kill a cat?” She looked at me, accusingly, and said “I read it in a book.” She fell asleep soon thereafter. She may have mumbled a bit as she drifted off, but nothing intelligible. Her last words were to accuse me of killing a cat. That is either silly or too deep for me to comprehend. But, like so much else about Jett, it was truly memorable.
Around 11pm that night I went into the bathroom to brush my teeth. Her light was still on and her eyes were slightly open. I asked if she was awake but she didn’t reply. I believe now that she was already in a coma.
But I wasn’t particularly alarmed until I tried to wake her at 8am Thursday. Usually a light touch woke her but that morning nothing worked. Touching, shaking, shouting. No response. And her eyes were half open. I called hospice. A nurse arrived and confirmed that she was in a coma. I started sending out the alarm.
That nurse left around noon and another arrived at 2. Between nurses I was alone with her and sat with her, The morning nurse had put her on oxygen – the oxygen that I didn’t think she would need just 12 hours before – but she was breathing partially through her open mouth. I thought her mouth was dry so I wet a washcloth and rubbed it gently on her lips. Though she was completely unresponsive in all other ways – no movement of her limbs, her eyes open and staring into space unblinking – at that moment a single tear escaped her dry eye and ran down her cheek.
That tear.That tear will haunt me forever. Was it an involuntary response of a comatose woman? A recognition of impending death? Or, perhaps, a final, farewell kiss? Her way of telling me “I love you and I loved our life together.”
Today, if you see a tear escape my eye and run down my cheek it will be my way of telling her “I love you and I loved our life together.”
Being tidy or being disloyal?
Maybe both?
The question arises because I have been going through the stuff that I brought south from our storage unit in Massachusetts. It turns out that much of what has been stored up there for years is memorabilia – items saved from our many trips in the RV and our cruises. Jett was much more sentimental than I am. Jars of sand from beaches we have visited were very dear to her. To me they trigger some fond memories but they are, ultimately, just jars of sand. They will have absolutely no meaning to whoever is unlucky enough to be saddled with cleaning out the shed when I die. So I figure I am doing someone in the future a great favor by getting rid of this memorabilia now. Goodbye, sand. Farewell daily cruise calendars. So long, campground maps.
All gone, sent to the trash bin. It felt good to be tidy.
But it felt like I was being disloyal to Jett. Sorry, darling.