Ellen was my one and only true love. For 29 years she was the light of my life. She brought joy, color and life into my world. She fought her cancer with every bit of her mind and body, enduring grueling treatments and suffering from months of pain trying to stay alive for me and…
Author: Steve Ainslie
Dying Without Dignity
I live in Florida, a state that has no “death with dignity” law, so for eight days I sat by my wife’s bedside in the hospital waiting for her to die. If we had such a law, it would have saved us months of anguish. It would have given my wife a peaceful death in…
Fashion Show – Remembering My Wife
I was talking to Zack the other day about what to do with my wife’s clothing after she dies. Normally, I am a purger. Whenever we moved or downsized in the past, I got rid of stuff quickly. If I hadn’t seen or used it for a year I got rid of it. But this…
Car Insurance Stupidity
My wife no longer drives her car. She hasn’t driven for months due to the debilitating pain and side effects from her cancer and treatments. Now she’s in her final days at a hospice facility and will never be driving again. So I called my car insurance broker yesterday to have her removed from my…
Are You Afraid Of Dark Skinned People?
If you follow politics and the news, you’ll hear about hordes of immigrants trying to cross the border to steal our jobs. You’ll see videos of young black men being arrested. You’ll read stories about crime in Chicago’s West Side and Miami’s Overton neighborhoods which are full of African Americans, hispanics and immigrants. If you’ve…
Crybaby
I stopped crying when I was 7 years old. My parents divorced for the 2nd time. Then my mother said we were moving far away to Pittsburgh. I bawled my eyes out but nothing changed. After that I decided I would never cry again. Getting tough After my parents divorced I was told, “You’re the man…
Who Will Take Care Of You?
Yesterday the hospice chaplain came to see my wife. I intercepted her at the door because Ellen had made it crystal clear in advance that she wanted nothing to do with a chaplain, priest or rabbi. The chaplain was so kind. She spent 15 minutes listening to my tale of woe about Ellen’s cancer, the…
Just Show Up
When people learned of my wife’s cancer, they all said, “Is there anything I can do?” or “Let me know if there’s some way I can help.” Then most of them disappeared. But not all of them.
Happy F***ing Birthday (Getting hospice for my dying wife)
On my wife’s birthday this year she got a dozen roses, a bunch of cards and a gift certificate for an expensive dinner out. Then she got hospice. Happy F***ing Birthday. But what seemed like a tragic coincidence turned out to be a godsend. The week before her birthday, my wife had suffered day after…
The Right Answer Isn’t Always The Perfect Answer
Last night I failed my wife, once again. When we finally decided to stop all treatment for my wife’s lung cancer and called hospice, I promised that I would take care of her at home so she would spend her remaining days surrounded by her family and pets in the home she loved. I said, “There’s…