Losing Loved Ones

Today I post from my stepmoms computer.  Its 10:30 in the morning and she is sleeping.  I have spent the last two nights here as she can no longer be left alone. We are all just kind of waiting for the inevitable. 

My stepmom, Nancy (Mom), and my dad were childhood friends/sweethearts. Mom contracted polio when she was 15 years old and never walked again, paralyzed essentially from the waist down.  She and my father maintained a friendship throughout the years.  I remember going to her family's house when I was a small child and her coming to see my dad and my bio mom when she was in law school.  Yep, she was an attorney.  She has been in my life a very long time. 

After my parents divorced, through a series of twists and turns, we all wound up living with my dad.  My sister, just younger than I, got pregnant shortly after.  Nancy Mom had just purchased a house that was much too big for just her and had signed up with the county to take in unwed mothers.  My dad, of course, knew about this, and being a single male parent who's job kept him on the road alot, he asked Nancy to take her in.  In the course of my sisters pregnancy, my father would go to see her and take Nancy money and over the months, Dad and Nancy rekindled their relationship. 

My sister's child was born in December and was placed for adoption.  Within a few months, my father asked Nancy to marry him and she said yes.  In October of 1973, this wonderful, exceptionally intelligent woman, married this really messed up man with 5 wild kids.  We have all been madly in love ever since. 

My father passed away in April, 2 days before my birthday, and we have been losing Mom by the inch since.  Her strength and desire to go on fade daily.  It takes alot of effort to lift oneself bodily out of a wheelchair and into a bed using only your arms.  When you have lost what little strength you have and every breath is a chore, it becomes harder and harder to wake and face another day.  Another day without the one you loved all your life and your own health fading by the minute.

I have been here since Friday afternoon.  One of my sisters will be here shortly to let me get away for awhile.  I can't stop crying.  This year has been so God-awful!!