What a year it has been!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

In a couple of days, March 3rd to be exact is a day I will remember.
A year ago , we had snow and ice and good stuff like that.
We had cleared the steps and made a walk way for the "children" (read :dogs)
I got up early as Bijou was begging, I did not sleep well.
I just could not sleep well anymore as I was constantly watching what
Bob was doing sleeping next to me.
Was he going to get up and wander? Was he going to miss the toilet and have a soaking floor? Was he in need of a quick change diaper?
I never slept a full night anymore, I did not in a very long time.

So...with sleep in my eyes and very little alertness I stepped out with Bijou
first step had an icy spot, I picked that one to put down a foot and I did not need to try to move the other foot as I slid down 4 steps, leg under me. I tried to hold on to the railing but I was too slow and the fall too fast.

Fast forward: Ankle broken in 3 places.
Surgery that evening with hardware put around the fresh cut bones.
I was asking the first nurse if I could stay the night in the hospital,
I had visions of me going home with a cast and crutches but most of all
I wanted to sleep in a bed alone for a change and really sleep.
They told me that I would be in a bed for some time to come and not my own.
I gladly took the morphine and did not even think of what was happening at
home, I slept.

After the rude awakening to what I had done and knowing that I could not
take care of my husband anymore I was totally in shock. I had been his caregiver for years , how could I give him up? What did "they" know that he liked to eat, would they help him get into his pants one leg at a time instead of both legs in one hole? Would they watch him not to run away? Would he miss me? Would he know what was happening? Would he be angry at me?

He did not know us anymore so what was my concern.
People in charge would know more than I on how to take care of him.
All that did not come to me.

It took me 6 months to walk fairly well, sometimes with my cane.
It took him 6 months to the day that he was in a nursing home to pass on.

The last 6 months have been a fog for me.
The head only started to clear recently.
I can now walk and skip and no longer have pain in the ankle.
I am lucky the surgery took very well.

I can sleep till Bijou comes to lick my nose and tell me it is his time but by then I had a very good night.
I am finding my own way, have been a wife for so long I am learning to be me.
It was a year of many changes but it is now 2011 and spring is coming and I see
blooms popping up everywhere , little red buds on my maple get bigger every day.
New life! New hope.!