Roller Coaster

The blues finally caught up with me last week.   I started feeling achy and flu-ish Thursday,  and figured I’d picked up a bug somewhere in my travels.  I bombarded my body with Vitamin C and slept as much as I could.  On Friday night, I went out to see JoCo and the kids.

When Joey let me in, Zeus was right behind him, excited to see me.  He’s always excited to see people, but he really loves his Nana.   Zeus is their quirky pit bull—a huge horse of a dog.  He’s only a little older than Sarita, and he adopted her as his baby from the moment we brought her home from the hospital.    Sarita saw me and smiled a big smile and said “Hhhiiiiii!” and waved.   It was nice to feel so warmly welcomed.

After we visited awhile, we decided to go out for dinner.   After throwing around a few options, Joey suggested Sonny’s.   Sonny’s is probably my favorite restaurant on Earth.  I’ve been to some very fancy, highly-rated places, but I’ll take Sonny’s over them any day.  Whenever it was my turn to pick, I chose Sonny’s 90% of the time.  It drove Bunny crazy, but he was a fine one to talk—his favorites were Bob Evans and Steak-n-Shake.

 If you’re never been to Sonny’s, it’s a Bar-B-Que restaurant chain.  The service and food are usually good, though you might have to tolerate screaming children, because it’s a family place.  I love their ribs, and they’re the ribs by which I judge all others.  If I say someone’s ribs (like my cousin Vicki’s husband, Chris’s) are better than Sonny’s, that’s high praise, indeed.   In addition to good food, Sonny’s has a variety of four sauces on every table, ranging from mild to tangy. 

As part of our ritual when we’d go there, Bunny and I would sit down, order, the have the Parade of the Sauces.  Whoever was sitting closest to the sauce bottles would line them up, down the middle of the table, with the ketchup bottle and salt and pepper bringing up the rear.  It was silly, but a prime example of the silly little games we played--the kind of silly little games that I miss now.

So after we’d placed our orders Friday night, I turned to Corey, who was closest to the sauces, and said, “Parade of the Sauces!”  She gave me a blank look and said, “Huh?”  I briefly explained what I was talking about, tears slipping down my cheeks.  If anyone noticed, no one said anything, but since the mood went to the subdued side, I think at least JoCo did.  I hadn’t thought of it before, but this was the first time since Bunny’s passing that I’d been to Sonny’s.   Now I couldn’t remember the last time I’d said “Parade of the Sauces” and someone else knew what I was talking about.

Bunny’s mother died about five years ago.  I remember how well he held up, until about four months after she died.  He went into a tailspin of depression that alarmed me enough to actually take him to the doctor.  Shortly afterward, I read that the four month mark is when grief intensifies.  I don’t remember why, exactly, but I do remember that four months was the timeframe.   It seems I’m right on track for the roller coaster that my emotions have become.

It seems that the more back to “normal” my life becomes, the more I’m exposed to these unexpected emotional triggers.  In the last few months of his life, Bunny was pretty much housebound, so we rarely went out on dinner dates.  Even as briefly as a year ago, our lives were fairly normal.  I know that, because the photos on his Facebook timeline show us going to dinner, or spending Spring Break with Trinity and Stephen.   But as time wore on and the cancer progressed, our lives became less and less normal. 

Honestly, we were blessed to have a very happy marriage.  We only had one truly rough spot, when he was so wrapped up in self-pity that he lashed out passive-aggressively at me.  It didn’t last for long, because I made it clear that I wouldn’t stand for it.  When I step onto these emotional landmines now, it’s memories of the good times that we had, even as he was growing more ill. 

Caring for a terminally ill spouse is kind of like having a baby.  You know what’s coming, but you don’t know when.  You prepare as best you can, but until you go through it, you can’t really appreciate what it feels like.  Then the most painful part comes and goes, and you eventually forget the bad times and misery and pain that came before.   That’s how it is for me now.  The bad days have faded like cheap newspaper, but all the good memories—and there are many, many good memories—bob to the surface of my mind unexpectedly.

The roller coaster of emotions is supposed to smooth out over time, and I’m sure it will.  But I've never been a patient person, and even though I’ve always loved roller coasters, I’ll be happy when this ride is over.