I'm trying to get my heart med deductible met for September. Also, I have my second chemical stress test on September 22nd this month and it's only covered at 80 percent leaving me with 354 co pay without my social security having been approved yet so I can get Medicare.
If you don't know me either pull up a chair for a sad, haunting tale or brace yourself for this is truly heart wrenching.
Content Warning, abuse, suicide, sudden death.
After being married for 27 years to an abusive husband he hung himself in our shed where I'd find him on April 9th 2021. He left behind two videos blaming me but only after he drained our bank account, hid our vehicles keys and failed to kill me first as he'd planned. In one angry act he took away 29 years of nieces and nephews, aunts and uncles, and everything else including the health insurance that had kept me alive since open heart surgery in 2014. With only one distant sister left in my family, I found myself in a new struggle. Financially, health poor, and traumatized by the scene of that day.
Did you know that survivors of suicides face some terrible statistics just in the first year?
Cancer, I had the breast kind. More suicide. I had a plan that I'd made peace with and would be jumping to a beautiful, pain-free end off the Roanoke River Bridge nearby me.
And then in walks something I never expected, nor even really wanted. Real, affectionate, loving, caring, empathetic, and gorgeous neighbor guy, Jerimy.
Jerimy and Christian
And one day really soon after this guy validated and erased almost 30 years of hell in three sentences.
"I thought I was the strongest person I ever knew until I met you and heard your story. It is unimaginable how you have been treated and I'd like the chance to be a part of your life. I was planning on checking out myself in the immediate future but I think I have one more important goal to reach.". And off we went, slowly, surely and neither of us had ever experienced what we were given now. A happiness to be alive, and an affectionate, loving relationship where I slept on his chest every night, and he the one who urged me there, us often going to bed early just to cuddle. We missed each other when we went to the bathroom or kitchen. We made fun of ourselves for acting like teenagers in love, and for the entire next year, he never stopped opening every door I went through, and he never stopped leaving me little love notes all over the house.
We were careful not to make the mistakes of past relationships, and we took every opportunity to be understanding, appreciative of one another, and he remained convinced that he didn't deserve me. I'm still convinced that I was the one who was given a priceless gift. He was perfect in every single way to and for me.
If I had known how this blissful year was going to end, I would have done very little different. We grew closer and closer. We loved even harder after any little time apart. He introduced me to sushi and eating in bed, and I introduced, no, coaxed him into letting me take care of him, but that wasn't easy. He didn't even let me cook a meal. He moved a big cushy chair into the kitchen where I was placed to watch him cook our meals while being served bites here and a glass of wine there.
We were planning and excited about a future that was filled with all of the things we'd both never had. Mostly just love and sometimes with genuine sadness that we had to pry our limbs apart and peel me and my newly discovered pat of drool off his chest. We were content and what joy we were snatching for ourselves I refused to feel bad for.
But this universe hates me and you see, I've a degree in evolutionary psychology and brain science and I'd never used it other than to write one single book on the topic of Grieving.
And it didn't help me this year one damned bit. But I'll never regret loving him. I'll never regret risking being destroyed again by the greatest love I've ever known.
On August 9th, 2022, just a couple of months after Jerimy Lynn Garland asked me to marry him, I woke up half under him, being his little spoon as usual, but he had just about already left the earth without me. I spent almost an hour trying to revive him. Knowing that the screams coming from my lips were going to be the screams that anyone hearing them would never forget. I'd always told him how brave he was to love me, a 48 year old heart patient already living on borrowed time. He was 35 and full of life. But it was he who left me first due to a genetic heart defect. And I'll never be the same. I'm not even sure why I'm still here.
He was the brightest light in the darkest year of my life and now I have to go on without him. I'm not doing so well with this loss. I realized within the first few days he was gone that the difference in the losses was very simple. My abusive husband left me very little to miss.
Jerimy left me with a perfect love and soaring heart that crashed back down to an earth that doesn't feel right without him. But on I'll go as I have after the many close losses I've had because I feel honor bound to appreciate all the years that Jerimy didn't get.
I didn't expect to be going this month or life alone but here I am and I may be a heartbeat away from the same fate but until I am, I have to keep taking care of myself and I'm nowhere near as good at it as he was.
Thank you for reading, helping, sharing, understanding or simply just learning how important our time with each other really is.
