Question:
Stressors and Stuff (long and boring) ?
Answer:
Last week we buried my sister... to the day. She died of her second
stroke... she had been estranged from our mother, but was finally
reconciled with her at the end. My sister's name was Carolyn. I've been
pretty much at home for more than a week, trying to figure out how to
move.
Someone very close to me said I'd be hitting a wall from time to time,
and she is right. She also shared a few stressors in her life, which got
me to thinking about mine;
I'd been quite comfortable in a private security job for almost seven
years, year eight things started to change... I was fired, I nearly ran
out of the building to celebrate... I was premature, I fought for my
unemployment for the next several months, going into debt, collected it,
spent it, and then received a notice that the decision had been
rescinded... too late.
I survived... I got a job driving a cab, 'cause I thought it would be
less stressful. National surveys compare the stress to that of being a
policeman, except cab drivers aren't allowed to carry a gun.
My first day on the job, a woman stiffed me for thirty five dollars...
would've been more, but it was snowing, my battery died, and so did my
meter... I've heard of and known many cab drivers that have been robbed
and murdered in the 4 yrs. since I started driving a cab. I like driving
a cab, it's the rush, and the feeling that nothing matters...
When my sister had her first stroke, everyone said she'd be dead as soon
as the machines were turned off... I refused to believe it. I was right.
I helped with here handwriting, and tried to work with her on a few
other things. When I told her I loved her, she cried... she was to be
paralyzed on her left side until she died a few years later... As if the
brain damage wasn't bad enough, she was dropped several times in a
nursing home. After the last time her speech was slurred, it was never
really right, again. I guess her happiest day came when she went home
with her mother...
Two years ago, my mother was given 6 weeks to live, because of her
enlarged heart. Ironically, she has outlived her daughter. I remember a
few winters, and a summer, when i was paged to go to the emergency room,
for my mother, sister, or both.
As the eldest son, and the one who hasn't hidden in an alcohol or drug
stupor, I tried to be their, even when it was difficult for me. Of
course this put a strain on my finances. I had to pay the lease on the
cab, whether I drove or not... and the bills didn't stop because of all
of this...
I survived. My girlfriend of nearly eight years broke up with me
retroactively over the phone (we'd talked about marriage, kids, and
Hawaii)... When a couple of months had passed without her actually
connecting with her, she claimed things had been pretty busy, and
besides, we'd been broken up for more than a year (LOL guess the diamond
bracelet a couple of months earlier was a suitable gift for the girl
you're no longer seeing? I let her keep it)... I still have some of the
christmas gifts I bought her, in a box, in my bedroom... her lingerie,
et al., still in the drawers... she never bothered to get anything.... i
was devastated...
Shortly after that, I had a near fatal cab accident, the cab was
totaled, and I had muscle stress. No one understood how I'd survived.
When the cab slammed into the light post on I71 southbound, I said two
things, her name, then God. The ambulance found me on I71 northbound.
I didn't drive for the next three months hardly, except to therapy, the
cab company let me use another cab. LOL, they were leasing it to me! The
van that hit me had the minimum coverage, and winter was here again,
more bills. With an eye to the future, I bought myself a black 3 piece
suit to be buried in. It was a few days before new years eve.
I pulled myself back together, but driving a cab, was never the same. A
friend of mine, a professional physical therapist took a look at me
once, when we were sparring... He told me I had several micro tears, and
that my therapy was at least as bad as the accident...
The only social life I'd had through this, had been a friends band, when
they dispersed, it was home and work. Several people observed that I was
suffering from depression... I refused to see a doctor...
Six months later they were back together, and I was starting to feel a
little better. I was still only working occasionally, though. Then I had
the first attack. i thought it was my heart, and drove myself to the
hospital. I spent a day in ICU, but they found nothing... I went home,
knowing that I would have to pay for it all, since there are no health
benefits for cabdrivers... Winter was here again.
The ambulance took me to the hospital, the second time. It was my
gallbladder. It needed to come out within the week... it was two before
I could get the money for the surgeon, the hospital bill remains unpaid,
to date (8 months later). About the same time, a girl I'd met on the
internet, a few years earlier, was begging me to come and stay with
her... we'd been communicating for more than a year, and I'd even gone
to see her. I was hopeful. She'd even talked to mom while I recovered.
It was all set. Two days before she was due down here, communication
stopped, a month later, there was a message on a news group, that she'd
died, and a vicious post directed at me, and others, seeming from her
death bed...
I struggled to get on top of my debt, and not to be sucked in by the
numbness in my heart.
A week from catching up a major bill... I'd been flirting with a girl
I'd met on the internet, for a while, not really looking for someone,
but drawn to her, none the less. I was nearly back on a regular work
schedule... when my mom goes missing.
My sister and I call everywhere, her job claims my brother picked her up
because she was sick, and took her to the hospital, emergency has never
heard of her. My sister isn't up to the task, so I make the phone calls.
After a while, we can only wait.
At 4pm (41/2 hours later) my mom calls to say she's in the hospital...
my brother was supposed to call at noon. At 8:30pm I hear my brother's
voice on the answering machine. "Hey David, mom's in the hospital (no
mention of which one), you can call her if you want... oh, I can't find
the number. It's Jewish hospital, like I said, you can call there and I
guess they'll give you the room number."
I picked her up the next day, trouble with her heart again, bleeding in
the stomach. I said i'd take her to the tests on friday.
Friday, she never called... my pager went off at 11:03 pm on 5-26-00
(it's still in my pager... I haven't been able to delete it...) I got
the call, my sister was dying.
After the funeral... May 31st... my mom confided in me that shed been
crying in the hospital a week earlier, thinking that she was dying, yet
she'd outlived my sister, who was okay up until the moment of her
stroke.
