I married an older man. I mean classic cradle robbing older man younger woman kind of older man. I have loved him for nearly 30 years now and hope to love him for 30 more.
This week our lives changed, not in a major, sudden or dramatic way from an accident or an unexpected area of our lives, but from something we have been facing for nearly a year. I knew it was coming, really knew it would happen some day. Still, when “some day” actually arrived, no matter how much I thought I had prepared and planned for it, run it through my mind, it still made me catch my breath, stopped my heart a bit and unsettled me.
I have been on the verge of crying most of the week. Crying for my husband who is handsome, smart and very special who now will have to carry an oxygen tank with him everywhere he goes, who on hearing the news asked to cancel our impending road trip, doesn’t know how to deal with the questions that will come at work and I think is just plain scared about the path ahead in these “f’ ing golden years” as he likes to say. But also on the verge of crying a little bit for myself and feeling guilty for it, because it’s not me with the lifestyle alteration, it’s him with the tank, not me. But it feels like it is me, with the limits being put on my life too. Now I’m tethered to my home, my world shrinking, options and doors being closed.
Like I said, I knew this day would come, it was inevitable. I planned for it, was warned of it, recognized it and still I am in a daze.