(Originally posted in Facebook on August 16, 2019)
In all the times I stood in front of the bathroom mirror, holding a shampoo bottle as if it were an Academy Award, and practiced my speech, thanking the Academy for this wonderful honor . . . because just being nominated with all these other marvelous actresses was honor enough . . .
And all the times I stood on the fireplace hearth, with a round brush in one hand and the stereo blasting as I SANG AS LOUDLY AND AS WELL AS I COULD (which is very poorly) into that brush/microphone and planned what my Grammy-Award-winning speech would sound like . . .
And all the times I’ve gone to teachers offices and principals offices and talked to and about my children and assured those in charge that my husband and I would hold our little juvenile delinquents responsible for their latest transgression . . .
None of those prepared me to sit in an HR office at my husband’s employer and talk about his health issues.
You know, when you’re thinking about getting married, all you can think is “I’m in love and I love this person and I want to marry him because I love, love LOVE him and I want to spend the rest of my life with him and all we will need is love because we just love, love LOVE each other.”
Oh, my GOD, I was so stupid.
I mean, of course I love him.
I couldn’t do all these things and have all these incredibly hard conversations if I didn’t.
But marriage – and love – is so much more than that. It’s sitting down and having tough conversations. More than once.
Even though M has stated MANY TIMES that he has had no issues with his memory at work, it was apparent from the beginning that he and the HR rep were good friends and had been meeting frequently. Not a good sign.
After I explained why I was there and what we had learned from the 18 months it took us to get M’s testing and diagnosis accomplished, the HR rep let me know that M has had problems in his job and that it was good to know that the reason for the problems wasn’t willful disobedience, but that he simply COULDN’T do the job the way it needed to be done.
The longer we talked, I could tell that M had been very close to losing his job if we hadn’t gone in to talk.
So, they’re going to find a place for him that isn’t so regimented, where he can be more successful. And if there isn’t a place like that for him, then it may be time to let it go.
After the meeting, M showed me around and introduced me to some people who were very glad to meet me and told me how much they enjoy working with him and how worried they’ve been about him. When I asked him about it, he told me about an incident last week when he got confused and – although he couldn’t really describe exactly what happened – it sounded as though he just lost the plot completely. As though maybe he didn’t know where he was or what he was doing.
He’s at work today. That’s all I know for sure right now.
I guess that’s good enough for today.