A fresh outlook: Why I'm writing here instead of there
<p style="margin-left:0px;margin-right:0px">The last post I wrote at the original <a href="http://www.fiercebeagle.com">Fierce Beagle blog</a> was an accidental conclusion.</p><p style="margin-left:0px;margin-right:0px">Since having Oliver, my second son,
The last post I wrote at the original Fierce Beagle blog was an accidental conclusion.
Since having Oliver, my second son, and even since quitting my job long before that, I didn't have the same time and motivation anymore. But I didn't want to close the book, so to speak. Blogging was important because it was writing. The original Fierce Beagle has served as an excellent scrapbook. An invaluable timeline full of snapshots of our daily life for several years.
In that [final post](http://fiercebeagle.blogspot.com/2014/04/male-funk-etching-update-on-my-life.html), I wrote about how happy I was being at home, living life, enjoying my sons. I didn't mean for that to be the end, but apparently it was. Partially because right around that time my mother in law began to die in earnest.
Debbie had been on the path to death for almost four years. We just didn't believe it. She had beaten stage three cancer once before and lived cancer free for 19 years. She'd had a double mastectomy and two reconstructions. What could possibly be left to cancerize?
Turns out, there was something left. We didn't really think she was going to die this time either.
Things started looking grim two years ago when she had a stroke. Her brain damage greatly depleted the quality of her life. She began to talk more slowly, her voice sounding inappropriately inflected or monotone. Her vision was impaired. She often seemed to look through you rather than at you. She began to drift away.
As the cancer spread to her spine and lord knows where else in the end, her mobility plummeted even further. She fell frequently. She fractured her back. She fractured her pelvis. She developed a severe E. coli infection last summer that landed her in the hospital looking worse than ever before. At that time her heartbeat was inconsistent and her pulse oxidation low. She was eating little; she would soon eat less and less.
For the first time, Richard asked her oncologist how much time. He replied, "A month, maybe two. But I don't think two." She lived seven more weeks.
There's a lot more to the story. I'll be revisiting these past few months a lot, because her death is part of my story now, too, in some very tangible ways.
I'm still enjoying being home with my sons. Ethan is almost seven, thriving in first grade. Oliver is a precocious two. And by "precocious" I mean "human cannonball of fearlessness, with attitude." I keep my three-year-old nephew Grayson and two-year-old niece Kate most weekday afternoons. Now, though, I'm ready to start again. To start fresh.
I'm ready to write.