Digging through one of our closets tonight in search of something I needed, I stumbled across what’s left of Greg’s medications.
About a month after he died, I gathered most of them up and took them to CVS to dispose of them properly. This picture is from that day when I dumped them out into a big pile. All the pills that Greg had to take just to survive another day. I remember looking at that huge pile on the floor and feeling so angry.
Greg hated his medicine. It ruled his life. Every 12 hours for 10 years he had to take pills that made him feel awful but kept him alive. They saved his heart from rejection while slowly damaging his other organs. It’s the catch-22 of heart transplants. A transplant isn’t a cure. It’s another chance at life- but a life that is much more complicated than the one you had before.
In the end, the medications couldn’t save him. The doctors couldn’t save him. And try as I did, I couldn’t save him either.
There are remnants of our old life tucked away throughout our house. Pulse oximeters, blood pressure cuffs, pill cases and a few pill bottles that I weirdly just can’t throw away yet.
These things bring up such a mix of emotions for me. Longing to have Greg back. Relief and gratitude that his suffering is finally over. Anger that he had to suffer so much to begin with. Surprise that I have adjusted to a life that is so different than the one I had before.
Grief is a long process and I’m finding that there is so much more to grieve than Greg’s death. I have to grieve his life too. His sufferings, our sufferings. The ways that sin, sorrow, disease and brokenness touched our life long before his life on this earth ended.
Greg is free from all of it now, safe in the arms of Jesus.
I am not. I am here still struggling to process it all. His life and his death.
Still feeling angry about a pile of medication that I disposed of years ago.
