On the Road to Mississippi

The car trip Thursday afternoon/evening was a real present. It gave us the space to talk, to begin to get our arms around how totally changed our world had suddenly become. I think both Tony & I had always assumed I would outlive him. He had the "comfort" of knowing he would go first. After all, my mother at 90 still lives on her own. Her mother simply died of old age in her own bed at 95. No one in my family had ever had cancer. I expected another 25 to 30 years. Based on statistics, I had assumed I would be a widow someday, although we always talked about going out like Bucky Fuller & his wife, who died within days of one another in their 80s, even though one was apparently healthy. Now all that was out the window.
We talked about how to use the time, if it was going to be limited. We talked about some of the day trips we'd like to take close to home, that we somehow never get to do. Did it make sense to shed all our outside commitments? Were they just a needless distraction now?
I cried a little, at the thought of not getting to Mara's wedding some day, not getting to see the grandchildren Hamilton & Annette will produce, not being around to see Jayson finally settle down having finally found the love of his life. Tony came as close to crying as I'd ever seen.
We didn't go far Thursday, feeling we didn't want to push it. We pulled off the road in Hagerstown, MD, for dinner and the night. We expected to drive for most of Friday and then spend the night within 4 hours of Oxford, MS, so we could be there by noon Saturday. The wedding was at 5:00.
We spent part of the afternoon writing a message for Ellie to deliver on our behalf when speeches were given at Friday's rehearsal dinner. It was our usual Mom/Dad. We each wrote something, then melded the two together. I got teary at various points as we wrote. It took Tony 30 minutes (I timed him) to type it out on his I-Phone to send to Ellie in time for Rob to print it out before he left work that night at The Wall Street Journal, since they don't have a working printer at home. He got it in time, then inadvertently they left it on their dining table when they headed to the airport, so Els ended up reading it off her Berry.
Friday's drive through Virginia was rainy. By afternoon, I asked to drive, not telling Tony that the pain was beginning to come back. I thought driving would take my mind it off, that it might go away if I was focused on something else. But after two hours, I turned the wheel back to him and confessed. I had Oxycodone, which I started to take, even though I dislike taking pills. And Tony wanted to know what our emergency care options might be. We decided it probably make sense to keep going, to get as close to Memphis as we could.
I feared that Tennessee was one big medical wasteland, full of community hospitals like Hudson, not equipped to deal with a serious emergency. I pulled out the road atlas we carry, since we are inveterate road trippers, and picked out major medical centers along our route -- in Knoxville, Nashville and Memphis. Tony remembered that Apple's Steve Jobs had had a liver transplant in Memphis, so I googled Jobs on my little Berry and found which Memphis hospital he had gone to. Then I matched it with a nearby motel, so we just kept driving, a little nervous.
Tony said that no matter what happened, he was glad we were making the trip, that no matter how it turned out, we had made the right decision. I felt the same way. It was way too important not to try our all to get to the wedding, and to see all five kids.
At one point in late afternoon, the cell phone rang and it was my primary care doc, the one who had said go the ER when we had called at 6:30 a.m. It was our first conversation with him. He had seen the Hudson hospital medical records, so he knew what was up. But he was quite reassuring, in terms of taking the pain meds and just keep going. It was comforting to have a medical person second what we were doing.
I was able to sleep fairly well Friday night and we got on the road early, arriving at the house in Oxford around 9:30 a.m. There was Jayson, barefoot, coffee in hand, on the porch to greet us. All the bad just melted away, in the warmth and love of the children. (You have to understand that the 'children' are Mara, age 27, Hamilton 30, Jay 34, Chris 41, his lady Gwen 34, Ellie 46 and her husband, Rob, 46.) They had all been pretty devastated by the news and we had been talking to them several times a day, and they to each other. They had all arrived in time for the rehearsal dinner Friday night, so they were quite settled in. All but Rob & Els had actually come in Thursday, and had also gone out to the bride's parents (Bill & Annie Hollowell) for dinner that night, too.
Happily, I wasn't in any pain anymore. Amazing how it just dissipated overnight.
We spent the morning hanging out, until it was time to get dressed and go to the Hollowell's Foxfire Ranch where the wedding was to take place. We had to get there by 3 for lots and lots of photos. First they took the groom's family, in a variety of configurations and poses. Ham had spent the night at our house, holding to the tradition of not seeing the bride until the wedding.
Then, when it was Annette's turn with her family, we all went downstairs to wait. At one point. the reverend gathered us all together and said a special prayer for me, for Sister Vicki. I was very moved.
Finally, we all climbed to a van and went to the pavilion for the ceremony and reception. Since it had rained there for the previous 17 days, a wedding on the front lawn was out of the question. But the pavilion worked just fine, and it wasn't raining. I took a pain pill as a 'just in case,' not because I needed it.
It was thrilling to walk down the aisle with Tony to our seats. Jayson and Chris looked fabulous in the groomsman's tuxes, Mara looked gorgeous in her eggplant purple bridesmaid dress (each had a different vibrant color). Ellie looked incredibly elegant (I always see her in casual clothes, never dressed up) in a simple black dress, prepared to read from Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet on marriage, as part of the ceremony Ham and Annette had put together.
The ceremony was fabulous. The music was great -- including the church choir. Annette looked glorious in her floor-length white dress, Ham looked stunning in his cream colored tux. They glowed.
Afterwards, strangers kept coming up to me, some with tears in their eyes. to say how glad they were we had made it to the wedding. They all said they were praying for me. It felt like everyone there, all 250-plus people, knew about the diagnosis and how close we had come to missing this momentous event.