Reflecting today on past years due to reading someone else's journal
Funny, I never really thought about it too much. I have, over my Life so far, been blessed with many things that I just took for granted... I was blessed with a teacher in my life that I didn't even recognize the importance of her influence until she took her leave. I am talking about Dottie my Wife of 41 years. I know I keep stating on February 21st of this year she took her own Life, realizing finally there was no hope let alone of a recovery but, just, a relief to her constant pain. It was horrifying to me sometimes, to be awakened out of a deep sleep to hear her keening endlessly with me being helpless to even really offer comfort that amounted to much. There were so many things stacked against her not the least of which was the medical community. They, as far as I was being told, were finding nothing. Let me break away from this for a moment. Over the years we had discussed such things as neither one of us wanted "Heroic Measures" used if we were so desperately in bad shape all that was left was long shots. I thought it would always be me(and almost was 7 years ago) that would cash in on this agreement. I was, if you will, the risky one. I rode motorcycles(no helmet most of the time), flew airplanes(sometimes in weather not acceptable for the type of craft I was flying), I climbed large towers(one which was my own) to work on amateur radio antennas. I had however one mantra in my Life, Fearless not Reckless... Hell, I learned to fly because I had a fear of heights or closer to the mark fear of falling. It cured me on everything except tall buildings. She was more the home body. All she wanted to do was stay home, take care of the kids and the cats. To the point in the mid 90's I was working for an aircraft company that had a plane on contract in France. THe French technicians were having a problem interfacing a particular radio that was necessary to the contract into the plane. It was to the point my Boss came to me and said I had to go to France to save this contract.... Sure, no problem, give me a day to design an interface out of the Radio Shack catalog and I will go purchasing everything at the Tandy stores in France. So, I went home and said to Dottie "Would you like to go to France, in particular the South of France"? "All I will have to do is pay your airfare and everything else will be covered"!!! She said" No, you go ahead I really don't need to go see France besides, who would watch the cats"? "I'll see you when you get back"... So, anyway, she never did anything dangerous or out of the ordinary to cause her trouble. The only problem, she was weak by nature physically and medically. That is what ultimately did her in. Now back to what I was saying. Her view of Life in general was very, very, pragmatic. When I had a problem I could not figure how to handle, I would ask her. She always had the right answer and she always had my well being most important, even sometimes to her own discomfort. Never so much so as when I came to her in 1990 with an employment problem. I was an engineer for a very large electronics company and for the most part, over the years, I had enjoyed the work. This last year I worked for them I had been assigned to train Malaysian Engineers and production personnel to implement a final test group over in Key-lang Malaysia thus putting 95 people in the Phoenix plant out of work and I don't mean re-assigned I mean out of work. These were people I knew personally. Knew their spouses their kids. It got to the point I couldn't look at myself in the mirror while shaving. I went to her and she said" This is easy, go in and give you resignation". I replied "You know I will get blackballed out of the industry". She said So, you have always found work when you wanted it"!! She said she didn't think I would resign . I told her "When you are behind me, I am 10 foot tall and Bulletproof"... We made all the transitions and Yes I did find work. With money coming out of my former employer, We paid our all the bills ahead 5 years and I took some recovery time. As time progressed her medical issues started to show up. SHe developed lung problems that were not curable and would eventually kill her. then Hearing problems associated to Meniers Disease including horrible vertigo and tinitus so loud she had no hearing in her left ear. THis is going on long. I am going to stop here and pick this up later.