From July 2009 to December 2009, she was …feeling normal. She started getting sick on around December 31rst and wasn’t feeling good in general. Laryngitis, sore throats, headaches, exhaustion, body aches. It sucks to be reading these posts because she had no idea that she only had 10 months to live.

The day she died, I looked at her posts on Facebook. I couldn’t stand the thought of her face book page disappearing one day and more than 33,000 words being gone forever. That’s why I am compiling them. They are precious to me… WORDS are precious to me.

It’s just hard to read these newer posts because I know it’s all down hill from here. From January 2010 to May 2010, she felt sick every day, but didn’t know why. That’s the period I’m reading right now. When I’m finished, I’ll be glad I did it, but for now, I feel like I’m reliving it all over again.

While he was gone last week, I got the house ready for a warm welcome home.

He came home on Thursday night. We had company on Thursday night and Christmas Eve morning. Today, we are taking it easy. It feels good not to have anywhere to go!

I am working on my sister-in-law’s Facebook Memoir. I am taking all of her Facebook posts and compiling them into a journal. She wrote her last post just hours before she died of terminal cancer. She wrote over 33,000 words during her time on Facebook. I am currently taking each word she wrote and rearranging them into chronological order, starting from July 2009 to September 2010.

This is what the title page looks like in Microsoft Word:

I have two Cornish hens in the oven and will serve them with asparagus, corn, mashed potatoes and homemade cranberry sauce for our Christmas dinner. I hope you are having a great weekend, too!

Please leave a comment so that I know that I am not writing to myself! Readers… make my day by letting me know you’re out there!

Note: It is OK to begin reading a book and then decide not to finish it.

A while back, I went to Books-A-Million. Outside the front door are some discount book shelves. I found a book for $2.00 and it was quite a find! Claire Tomalin is one of my favorite biographers of late nineteenth and early twentieth century British authors. I have a book she read about Jane Austen. That day, (for $2.00!) I found a biography of Thomas Hardy, written by Tomalin. I began reading it two days ago.

The Winter Reading Challenge list is a recommended list of books to read during the winter months. I will get through most of them, but when I find additional books to read along the way, I can’t resist. I encourage you to find a book that makes you want to pick it up again and again. It’s like visiting with a friend!

This blog was originally designed to be focused on literary topics. So… to get back on task:

A friend brought this reading list to my attention. It is a list of books that every teen should read and I discovered that there are many books on the list that I haven’t read.

Here is a list of the books I will be reading (though not in this order.)

As I read them, I will write an entry about each one.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque

Animal Farm: a Fairy Story by George Orwell

Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thorton Wilder

The Call of the Wild by Jack London (I will read this book first.)

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

Daisy Miller by Henry James

David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

Emma by Jane Austen (I have already read this, but I can’t resist re-reading Jane Austen!!)

Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien (read in high school, over 25 years ago. Time to give it another read)

Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes (I read this in high school, too. I loved it and will read it again.)

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

My Antonia by Willa Cather

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (How many times have I read this? SO many!)

The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane

White Fang by Jack London

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

I will begin with Call of the Wild and move immediately on to White Fang. I have a book with both stories in it, so I will tackle them back-to-back.

When I have finished Call of the Wild, I will posts my thoughts.

If you have a list of books you are planning to read over the cold winter months, share it in the Comments section.

I am working on compiling all of her Facebook posts into a book. Thankfully, she was a prolific writer! In a sense, it will be HER gift to her family. I’m just the one compiling the words.

Thank you for reading my posts. I enjoy your comments and hope to gain more readers. If you enjoy reading the content, spread the word. My readers mean a lot to me. The more the merrier!

Sunshine,

It’s been a month since you died. It feels real now, though I wish you had lived long enough to see my prayers answered. You prayed for so long that G would get his job transferred closer to home. It happened a week after you died. Although he isn’t working close enough to home to stay here during the week, we found a cute little house to rent (for him to stay in during the week)… only 2 minutes from his workplace. What a gift! No more long commutes to work.

G is there now, getting the house ready. I am staying home because I have a large project due on November 1rst. I’m glad that you lived long enough to see me begin Graduate School with a Graduate Assistantship. Maybe it’s selfish, but it meant a lot to me to hear you tell me how proud you were of me.

It amazes me that, as sick as you were, you took the time to write me letters and to pray with (and for)  me up until 2 days before you died. You were always thinking of others, even when you were in terrible pain. When I went down to Florida to spend time with you and care for you, I was amazed by the number of friends that you kept in touch with on Facebook. You must have gotten 100 Inbox messages every day, and you answered each message, on your Blackberry, while bedridden.

It was one thing to visit your Facebook page and read your uplifting posts. It was an entirely different thing to be beside you as you received private Inbox messages (each message would make the Blackberry do a single “ring”). I think that answering each message gave you something to think about, so that you weren’t focused on the pain. Plus, planning your own memorial service and making a DVD which chronicled your life in photos (to be shown at the service) was a huge project that also kept you busy. I am very honored that you asked me to help you put it together.

Throughout your illness, you remained pro-active. You didn’t lie down and die. Instead, you kept yourself busy, even though you were stuck in bed for months. You praised God for each day and thanked Him for each encounter, whether on Facebook, in your bedroom or at church. Each encounter gave you the opportunity to uplift others. You were thanking God, not for your needs, but for how He could use you to help other’s with their needs. Your genuine self-less thinking amazed me. You were the real deal!

Twenty five years ago, my brother was diagnosed with leukemia. He died 6 weeks later. You stayed by his side while he was bedridden and wouldn’t even leave his side to go to the store. He died in your arms. I feel blessed that I was by your bedside while you were dying, even though I could only be there for a week. I feel like it was my way of thanking you for all you did for my brother while he was dying. Maybe that’s what people mean when they say something has gone “full circle.”

I will miss you, Sunshine.

Love,

Karenne

(Note: I will get all the clinical information out of the way and then concentrate on my emotions.)

I visited my sister-in-law for a week, from August 16 – August 23, 2010.

She was not nearly as acutely ill as I had expected. She was breathing comfortably on O2 @ 2 liters, but it had to be on continuously. If she was off of the O2 for even 2 minutes, she would feel short of breath and start to panic. When I first saw her, I assessed her through nurse’s eyes. I noticed her distended abdomen, due to her grossly enlarged liver. The source of the original cancer was never determined, but the oncologists were certain that it did not originate in the liver. She had small cell carcinoma and I tend to think it began as undiagnosed skin cancer. No one has told me that. It’s just what I think.

She had no trouble eating and even had a good appetite. She was able to carry on a long conversation and kept posting on Facebook throughout the day. I noticed that she required VERY little sleep. She would take 10 minute cat naps every few hours or so, but never slept for more than an hour at a time during the whole week I was there. I don’t know how she stayed awake. She said that she wasn’t in pain. Instead, she said that her enlarged liver made her feel like was 6 months pregnant. Her colon had developed some tumors, so defecating was a daily problem. It was the thing that stressed her out the most. When I was there for a day or two, I recommended an idea to her hospice nurse and she ordered the medication. It worked! The problem was fixed for the rest of the time that I was there.

Now, for the emotional side of things. It’s hard to even know where to begin. Carole (Sunshine) married my brother when I was eleven years old. I am forty-four now, so we had been sisters-in-law for thirty-three years!

My brother died twenty four years ago, of acute myelogenous leukemia. The key word being acute. From the time he was diagnosed, to the time he died… six weeks went by. Every day of those six weeks, she never left his side. So, during the week I was in Florida, I never left her side, except to make lunch for her every day, to sleep at night and to wash up every morning. I had her all to myself. What a gift! I can’t begin to explain how precious every minute with her was for me.

Once, when I was sitting next to her bed, she sent me a message on Facebook to tell me how precious I was to her. She could esaily have just told me, but she chose to write it, so that I would still have the message long after she was gone. She died twenty nine days later. Here is an excerpt:

21 August at 23:18 ”I love you so much. My time with you is precious. I hope you know that I could not have done what I did this weekend without you. It isn’t that you are a nurse (and I love to tease you about these things you find….you get that cute serious look on your face…) You have helped me in so many ways….but this time together has been precious to me. Where I go, one day you will follow. I’ll be waiting. Love life and see it for me. Take me in your heart to VT and show me something I’ve never seen. Smile beause that is what I would do. I love to laugh. I love you…always have and always will. Thank you for coming down to help me.”

She wrote about Vermont because she knew that I will be going there on the weekend of my birthday.. this coming weekend. When I am in Vermont, I will remember what she wrote. She will be with me.

This picture was taken a few months after my brother died, in 1986. She was a 34 year old widow, with 2 small kids.

Yeah... pink hair. When she found out she had cancer, she thought she would need chemo, so she dyed her hair thinking it was going to fall out anyways. She didn't know that she was too far gone for chemo, so she was stuck with pink hair! This was taken on August 20th. She died on September 20th.

…end of Part I.

This sounds like a summer vacation, but it is the furthest thing from it. My brother’s widow (my brother died in 1986) is now terminally ill with her own cancer. His was Acute Myelogenous Leukemia. Hers is Basal Cell Carcinoma. I am going down to Florida to help her sort out her belongings and cherish what I know will be our last days together.

This may sound morbid, but actually, my sister-in-law is quite amazing. She is one of the most cheerful and optimistic people I’ve ever known. She is a nurse, as I am, so she knows what is ahead for her. She is receiving Hospice care in her home, the same way my brother did. She has said to me that my visit will be a form of déjà vu. I don’t think the reality of her situation has hit me yet. My brother was never on oxygen, but she is on oxygen 24/7. He was not able to walk and neither is she. Some similarities, some difference.

The main difference is that when my brother was dying, I was not a nurse.

I became a nurse as a direct result of what I saw the Hospice nurses do for my brother. They made him comfortable and managed his pain. I decided that I wanted to serve others the way they served him. So, I became a nurse… and have done some hospice nursing over the past 2 years. My sister-in-law also became a nurse after his death. So, I will spend time with her, not just as a SIL, but as a skilled professional who will know how to help her (in non-nursing ways, since I am not licensed in Florida.)

Even though my brother died in Feb 1986, we have stayed in touch. That’s a long time to keep in touch… 24 years and 5 months and still going strong! She is remarried (to a guy as wonderful as my brother) but we still say we are sisters-in-law.

So, although I am excited to see her, I have that same fear of the unknown I had when I flew to Florida to see my brother all those years ago.Reality won’t hit until I enter the house. The sights so similar in houses of the terminally ill…( people milling around, silent glances at one another), the sounds (oxygen compressors amid silence…) and the ambience in the air (waiting… waiting… everyone too scared to go to the store, all thinking the same thing, ‘what if she dies while I’m out?’)

All those feelings… it sucks to go through it more than once. Am I selfish to feel that way?

The nurse in me will serve her in a way I didn’t know how to serve my brother. All those years ago, when I became a nurse, it was so that I could serve others the same way that the Hospice nurses served him. How ironic that I will end up serving his wife 24 years later…

The exciting news:

I was accepted to this university and was offered a Graduate Assistantship. The assistantship entails working for 20 hours a week (during the Fall and Spring semesters) for two years. In addition te receiving a monthly stipend, I will have my tuition waived! My entire Master’s degree will be paid for by the university! That 3.76 GPA certainly was worth the struggle.

During the assistantship, I will work in Higher Education administration. This will give me two years of experience that will help me when I seek employment at a university in two years.  In the meantime, I still have my nursing license to fall back on.

I am excited about what lies ahead.