Say Her Name, Say Her Name

I am not well today.
It was one of those days where I saw Cory in every direction I looked.  I sat at my husband's bedside at the hospital as he waited to be taken back for seemingly his  fifteenth back pain procedure.  I had gotten up early, resigned to the not so pleasant day:  dropping Jake off at my parents for a weekend long out of town church event, driving Tim to and from his procedure- also out of town- and then getting him settled so I could go enjoy a cup of coffee with a friend.
As I sat there looking at him in his striped hospital nightgown, and tried to work up a joke about the breeze in the back tie opening, I became overwhelmed with impatience, frustration, and a shortage of sympathy.  Suddenly, I wanted to be anywhere but that hospital room, and couldn't figure out why.  What I did know is that we wouldn't be there, an hour's drive from home, on his day off, if he weren't having yet another procedure for yet another ailment.
When I met Tim, he seemed pretty normal...a catch in many ways for that period in my life:  he was employed, he owned a vehicle, he had some college classes beyond high school, and he wasn't addicted to drugs or alcohol.  Best of all, he was ready and willing to settle down and raise a family, even if the child at my side was not his own.
Over the years, I began to think I may have married a hypochondriac as he went to the doctor more than anyone I had ever known.  He was in his late twenties, people...hardly a geriatric.  He also took prescription meds for anxiety, although I never saw any outward signs of him being anxious.  And believe you me, after being raised in my mom's household, anxiety and I were more than nodding acquaintances.  Not one of the four girls in my family had escaped suffering from it to some degree or another.
So, the short story is this:  Tim's then undiagnosed symptoms of bipolar (also prominent in his family) were not controlled by the meds he was taking.   He struggled with work and home responsibilities, and battled some addictive behavior, as well.  One of his addictions was going to the doctor, or rather doctors (plural).  Jokingly I would say that he would go in for a hangnail or a shed eyelash, but really that wasn't so far from the truth.  He went for checkups with every type of physician, constantly, whether he felt ill or not, but often with a vague complaint of just "feeling like shit".
  Once while getting ready to leave the house for work, he tripped on the stairs by the back door, and took a tumble.  Once I had made sure he had no broken bones, and wasn't bleeding anywhere, I gave him a peck on the cheek, and waved him out the door, assuming he would go onto work.  He looked at me like I had lost my mind.  He had fell.  He was not able to go to work; he needed to make an appointment and get checked out.  I remember standing there, with my hair in a ponytail, sweeping the floor, as Jake the baby toddled in the living room, and Cory the pre-adolescent watched some Lizzy McQuire on the Disney channel.  Before he fell down the stairs, I had been thinking about what to make for dinner, how I still had to do my lesson plan and newsletter for work on Monday, and that after the kids went to bed, I would do my college homework while I did laundry.  Was he serious?  I could do twelve things and plan three more while he couldn't make it out the door to his job because he took a spill?  You are a man!  Hike up your balls and get on with it!
Unfamiliar then with the symptoms of clinical depression, or bipolar, for that matter, I simply knew I had not gotten married to watch a man sleep his life away, getting fired from jobs along the way.  If I was going to do this gig alone, hand me my walking papers, and let me go search for my heart's desire.  I was young, still halfway attractive, and I deserved to be happy.  I gave him the ultimatum:  go find out how to stop sleeping 22 hours a day on your day off or we are going to go our separate ways. 
So here I sat today, after a four year separation and difficult reconciliation, watching him go back to his comforting coping mechanisms.  The difference was that I now know this has always been part of his illness.  When your brain isn't working right, you feel horrible, and naturally you want to feel better...sometimes looking to every part of the body, but the brain, as the culprit.  Even on meds for bipolar, he sometimes struggles, and has struggled harder since Cory's death than he has since the periods right before and after our separation.
It is frustrating, but there's not a lot I can say.  One look at my stockpiled closets and credit card statements will show you just how I coped in the blackness following the accident.  It's a little ironic that I tried to armor myself to the hilt with all those pretty clothes, because if you looked at me now you'd easily see I couldn't care less what I look like.
  I bit off any unkind words about his need to visit a doctor, any doctor, at least once, but usually twice a week.  I swallowed past my complaints as I remembered that I hoped to take a trip in just two weeks to Italy alone, or perhaps with my mother. This is not the smartest idea in the world, considering all the costs following the accident, purchasing Cory's monument, and all the debt I incurred.  But I will go, regardless. 
 Who are we to judge each other's coping styles?  We just get along any way we can.
I bowed my head, ashamed of myself for judging him, and my eyes caught the automatic lift/recline buttons on his hospital bed.  Tim, as confused as ever by my quick-change emotions, looked alarmed to see me crying like my heart would break.  "What's wrong?  What is it, honey?"
I couldn't answer.  I tried to look away.  I tried to think about something else.  It was useless.  All I could see was that stupid hospital bed and how much fun Cory and I had had figuring out how to work the controls when she'd been in the hospital last to have some ovarian cysts removed.
I could see her in the hospital bed.  I could see her.  (Am I going crazy?)
I remember how goofy she'd gotten on the meds they'd given her to relax, and how she kept telling my mom that she was beautiful, and doing a dead-on Matthew McCauneghay impersonation... "all right, all right, all right."
I remembered kissing her before they took her back, and barely breathing until they returned my treasure in one piece, looking blissfully drugged out of her mind.  I remembered holding her 7-up cup for her as she demanded slice after slice of cinnamon toast.

All I could think of is how she didn't even make it to the hospital after the accident.  They never even put her in the ambulance.  They left her on the road for everyone to gawk over, like roadkill.  And then they made me leave the scene before she was taken off the road...which is another story entirely.
This is what went through my mind as I sat with Tim, and then waiting for him to be brought back to recovery.
When we left the hospital, today, Tim suggested we grab a bite to eat.  I suggested Arby's, and we pulled in.  By the time we sat down at the table, I could only look at my food.  Arby's?  Really, Nick?  What in the hell was I thinking?  Arby's was the pit stop of choice when Cory was in the hospital in Grand Rapids, and where we took her after each visit to the ECT clinic.  Yeah, Arby's ...sure.  Tim looked at me, probably wondering what the hell could possibly be wrong with me now.  I tried to explain it to him.  "You know, it's like when your heart has been broken, and you are missing someone so bad that everything you see or hear or touch reminds you of them, but times that by a hundred."
My husband stared at me blankly.
At this point, I was a little offended.  We had been separated for over four years, during which I had become engaged to another man, and he didn't have a clue what I was talking about.  Ouch!
I tried talking to him in the car on the way home.  We were discussing how the closer to July it got, the harder things seemed to be.  This surprised me, some, because Tim almost never mentions Cory.  He said that he could hardly stand to be outdoors right now because the weather was getting to be so similar, and the smell in the air was just the same as it was that day.
Encouraged, I tried to go further, and found myself describing what I'd seen when I ran up there alone.  Before I'd gotten out more than a few words, he cut me off, with, "Honey, I don't think we should talk about this in the car."
Yeah.  Nor did he think we should talk about it at home.  In public.  In private.  Or ever.   It was obvious he needed to not talk about it every bit as much as I needed to.  We were, as in so many other areas, a total mismatch.  I had noticed this some time ago, and suggested a compromise...I would talk about her less, if he would talk about her at all.  I'm still waiting for him to come to the middle.
Doesn't he know how badly I need to hear her name?