Who would have thought that the sight of flowers poking their heads out of the ground would be so depressing? Kim loved planting. She loved her flowers, and she loved planting vegetables. The porch was always full of hanging baskets and potted plants, usually flowers. Each side of the house usually carried her vegetable garden – last year, in pots as well. She was always so proud of the colors, and of the produce she would get out of her vegetable patch, and doubly proud of what she would make with the vegetables. I still have several jars of her last batch of canned tomatoes – she was particularly proud of those.

The first flowers to poke their heads out of the dirt this year were three snapdragon-looking flowers – don’t ask me what they are: I’m clueless. I just know that they are some of Kim’s favorite – particularly the purple ones.

When I first saw these about a week ago, they made me happy. Now, as things are warming up, and I see all the dead plants in the hanging baskets and her pots, I’m finding them depressing. The weather is nice today, but all I could focus on were the pots full of dead plants, the empty starter pots, the rotting wood from one of Kim’s favorite planters which we were planning to replicate…

I honestly don’t know what is at the root of this mood swing. I was feeling so “up” for so long! And one would think that, with the advent of warmer weather, I’d be hyped to get outside.

Part of it, I think, is that the warmer weather brings memories of the walks Kim and I would take last summer – she was still very playful despite her condition, and at one turn in the park, would do a “crack the whip” turn and zoom in to get a kiss. I miss that goofiness. Odd that as the warmth of summer started to fade toward winter, Kim faded right along with it, passing on the same morning as the first snow.

And some of it is probably pressure I feel toward my Mom’s and Kim’s Dad’s care.

My Mom has my sister Cindy locally to see to her needs – which, too, makes me feel like I should be doing more – but since Mom had her two health breakdowns, I can’t pop in there before work, because she no longer gets up that early – that, and I now work from home. And Cindy is feeling the stress of Mom’s failing memory, and mom’s focus on her caregivers instead of on visiting family members.

Kim’s Dad has no-one within 400 miles aside from me and our kids. Rhonda comes to Michigan when she can, but I struggle with the “what do I do” if something goes sideways – especially with him complaining lately of his knee locking up or giving out, and dizziness when he stands up.

The clouds I can see out of the corner of the window near my desk are beautiful. I think I’ll go outside and look at them.

Kim was a Diet Pepsi addict. From the day I met her, she was always drinking the stuff. We would literally go through cases of it in a couple of weeks – I would buy three 36-packs every time I went to Sam’s Club. The last time I bought any for her was 5 October of 2020 – I bought three 36-packs. Two remain.

When we first moved to this house, I remember having to run up to the Canton Meijer to buy the stuff for her when I would take the cars to gas them up – I would go get gas in mine, come home, grab hers, and put gas in it, too. I think that ended when I went out for my first launch with Ford. After that, Kim had to gas her own car.

Sometimes, she’d run out of pop, and either she or I would make a run up to the nearest store to get some. She preferred the cans or the single-serve bottles, but she would tell me to just pick her up a couple of two-liter bottles “to save money”. “DP” she called it. A couple of two-liters would last her a week or so back then. It wasn’t really until somewhere around 2000 that she would have a “Bubba Keg” mug full of ice and Pepsi all of the time. I would constantly spill the thing out because she would just add more Pepsi to it and top up the ice. It had to be a watered-down horror.

I hated the stuff, and I worried that it would kill her. Maybe it did. Who knows. I’m pretty sure the beer had a hand in it, though.

Prior to and just after we were married, we would grab a case of “La Beer,” as she called it, when going to parties or family gatherings. It worked nicely for such because, back then, I liked it (I hadn’t yet become the “beer snob” I am today) and the beer drinkers in our combined family liked it, too. And, back then: it wasn’t a problem. She’d get “full” after a couple and wouldn’t want anymore. Frankly, prior to about 2002, I can’t say I really ever saw her drunk more than once, and that time was after a big vendor Christmas party in ’94, and EVERYONE had too much to drink. But, at some point, something snapped, and “La Beer” became a force unto itself for her.

I remember calling home when on a launch and hearing it in her voice. And I remember not wanting to talk anymore once I recognized it. Honestly, launching is a hard, hard life for a married couple; especially a married couple with young children, and it’s the young engineers that tend to get sent out. I still think that it was my job that caused her to slip into alcoholism, and I truly wish I had noticed it in time to change careers – “golden handcuffs” or not.

But the Diet Pepsi is still here, right next to the mini-fridge I bought to house our sauces, where she would use the built-in can caddy to keep a few cans cold for herself and whoever else would come over and want one. I remember the neuropathy from the Folfirinox causing the cold to be painful, and having to get the Pepsi for her and pour it for her into, at that time, the big plastic cup she got from Harry Potter Land at Universal Studios. And then the day came that she couldn’t suck through a straw anymore, and “DP” became a thing of the past…

Jillian and I went to Sam’s club this afternoon to stock up on a few things that we only purchase there. It really felt strange not to be putting a few boxes of DP into the cart.