Thank You Blogosphere Friends

Mrs. Bane says: A very long Thank You to Blogosphere Friends!

I have put off the most important post of all; my thank you post and up-date. I’ve started to write it at least a dozen times and walked away, while emotions overwhelmed me to the point that I couldn’t handle them…

After he died I was shaken and numb, but not numb enough… There was a mountain of paperwork to deal with; all of it was time sensitive. Then there were six birthdays, our wedding anniversary plus Thanksgiving and Christmas, all in one to two week intervals. My kids needed me to be as stable… I wouldn’t have made it if the gentle hands of God were not supporting all of us.

He sent a good bit of that support through Bane’s readers and friends on line:

There are no adequate words to thank you for all that you have done for us. During the interim period while our finances shifted and finally settled, we have had every need taken care of, and many wants as well,! And at a time when our economy has gone crazy, we have landed on our feetJ

Thanks to all of you! Thank you Wendy; for being out front and for facilitating everything, flying out for the funeral and for your ear and continued friendship! You are a jewelJ Thank you to our Secret Santa! Who ever you are, God bless you! Thank you to each and every one of you who helped us pay our bills... And for the multitude of your prayers (I have sure felt them). Thank you for leaving your condolence notes in the last comment box, all 200+ of them…Thank you for helping me with the computer (You know who you are). Thank you Jesus! As cantankerous as he was, Bane sure drew a lot of high quality folks to himself.

After his death, I went to see a grief counselor. She suggested that I journal. I tried, but I just couldn’t do it. When I did force myself I was such a basket case that I couldn’t function.

The big kids accidentally crashed Banes computer mining it for writing and I didn’t get it up and running until about a month ago. I’ve had net access for less than that. The first time I bravely turned on the computer and opened outlook, I nearly fainted. It felt like I was having an out of body experience. There, in front of me were his personal reminders: Take your big white pill, hair cut in two days. Ann Coulter post is late, etc… In the following weeks I opened his blog for the first time since… -That is when I started to write. Stories flow onto pages like water from an artesian spring. This is funny, cause I haven’t written a story since college (think 1990), and that was with a great deal of pain. I’m still deciding whether to post them for those of you who would like to read them. I’m having fun and they are cathartic for me to write, plus they will add historical accounts for our kids one day.

The kids: You have asked about them: The little ones are doing quite nicely, considering everything.

I put them in school… I know, I know! I just couldn’t home school now. This has gone far better than I would have ever imagined, and if it doesn’t work out, I can always make another change.

Nat is doing well… She finally gets to be a little girl! While I was at work, she took care of Bane and helped him with her brother (especially near the end, when he was really too sick to do anything more than supervise). These are treasured memories, but it was extremely hard on her too. She’s a social butterfly, and is learning at lightning speedJ She is grieving well; at least she is facing her pain and releasing her anger and sadness in healthy ways.

Johnny hasn’t really grieved though. He gets really weird when the topic of Daddy comes up, regardless of the context. Then he tries to distract us and himself into a “happy place”, far from there. He is hyper vigilant about my emotions too. most of the time, I can’t even sneak in a silent tear without him picking up on it. Other than that, he is thriving. He is becoming more independent (in a good way),learning, having fun, making friends well and adjusting to the changes we have made, and his health has been stable except for “the cold from abadon” that has made our circle twice now.

As for the older kids, I really can’t answer that. I know it is rough for them…

I told Wendy that I would at least post the following story for you…

God bless each one of you,!

Mrs. Bane

Edit: A thank you also goes out to CJ for running a milblog fundraiser for my family. Thank you, CJ.

Bane Had a Lair

And what a lair it was. For all intents and purposes it was a hideous mess, or at least it had evolved into one. Add chronic illness to an already messy collector and you get a personalized cluster fuck. You could barely get around in there, but that was the way he liked it. He set booby traps that you had to maneuver around to get to him so he wouldn’t be snuck up on. He was terrified that he would react before he knew who it was. The martial arts/military training were real.

The place did, however, have character, just like he did. The corner he used most held this computer, his desk was cluttered with personal stuff, to include a small turtle collection and a hula girl that graced the cake at his first bachelor party. Nat would giggle when she registered the titties that peeked out from under her grass dress. I didn’t like that so much, but alas, this is about him, rather than me. -Above, hung an original piece of art chalked by Maiden and a picture drawn in junior high by his number two son. To the left was an office type room divider. On it hung an 8x10 picture of the two of us (taken in a booth at the fair in some previous life), and…layers of Nat’s handmade art, covered in hearts, rainbows and rudimentarily drawn family members beyond number. To the right, on his closet door hung a map from a video game, World of Warcraft? and a Punisher poster. Right there were his snacks and treats for the kids, woppers and sour skittles, tigers milk bars and his “special apple juice” and 7up. How many times did they fall for that one before the kids figured out a suck off the top of daddy’s glass was always bad idea?

Beyond the divider there was a maple gun case, stocked… with a knickknack shelf mounted on one end of it (cluttered with old toys, rubber cars and the like, bank statements and chap stick). He loved toys, and the wall above his T.V. was plastered in a plethora of unopened Todd McFarland creations and others, including “Spawn” and Punisher collections. There were larger pieces in there as well, including several ceramic Punisher busts and a particularly hideous Alien figurine. Just looking at them made him happy.

There were two jigsaw puzzles mounted on the wall as well. One was assembled by his grandparents during the first year of their marriage. Grandpa had it framed and said that if they could work together on that puzzle, they would surely work together in the future. The other was a Star Wars poster, mounted by his sister. I think his number two and three sons assembled it at her house.

He had a small reading corner set up too. Next to the chair, were a few boxes of his comics and some of the books on his list, misc. junk and mail, etc.

There was of course a bed too. Oh how I miss being his Friday… Yes, he really was one amazing lover. (Sorry kids). Sadly, at the end, that bed became a symbol of his lingering illness. Number three son and my little ones and I stabbed it to death with some of his very sharp daggers. The little ones and I drug it down the stairs and out to the dumpster while # three commenced falling apart. I didn’t see him act like himself for months after that.

We used to refer to life as Mr. Toads Wild Ride. And oh what a ride it was, thus, I always liked the image of the redhead wearing garters near the top left of his blog header.