My, How Life Can Change in Six Months
Six months and two weeks ago, I was resigned to being a cat lady sliding through life with a little Rumchata and a whole lotta Jesus. All I needed was a recliner, a few afghans, and some fuzzy slippers, and I was all set. Except we discovered Jacy was allergic to cats... sigh.
Six months and two days ago, I decided I'd give dating one more shot- one week online, and then I could say with one-hundred percent certainty that life as a single woman was my fate AND I was okay with that.
Six months ago today, I met and fell for Jake.
But wait, there's more... (giggle)
The more time Jake and I spent together the less time I wanted to be away from him. The kiddos weren't happy in our hometown anymore, and I was ready for a change. We decided to move to Troy to be near Jake and his kids and give my children the fresh start they desperately longed for.
We researched houses for a month or so, figured out what we liked/didn't like and narrowed down the search for our new home. I met a fantastic realtor, and she set up several showings. We all fell in love with one house, and since I already had my pre-approval in place, I threw down an offer before it could get gobbled up in the hot market. Five hours later, the sellers accepted our offer, and the race was on to get our house on the market well before it was ready. Our house was shown eleven times in twelve days, and a contract was in place with (wait for it...) thirty days to closing. That significantly escalated my timeline, so I notified the lender on my new house and set things in motion. We started packing, planning, and dreaming of our new life and fresh start in a new town with future plans of Jake and his children moving in with us eventually. I was surfing on life's high tide and owning that shit. Then came the first crash.
The Friday before Memorial Day, Mama called me saying she was taking Daddy to the ER, that she thought maybe he was having a stroke or heart issues. I flew to the hospital and saw my father confused, slurring his words, and completely out of it while in a lot of abdominal pain. Multiple tests and labs later, we were relieved to hear his head CT was clear, he wasn't having a heart attack at all, but they thought he was having a gall bladder attack. Mama and I dismissed all of it as a "no-biggie" since we've both had our gall bladders out. One quick out-patient surgery, and he'd be fit as a fiddle.
Until the doctor came to reveal the ultrasound results. I kind of fogged out after he said the words, "pancreatic mass" and watched as the world I've known my whole life fractured. There's no unhearing words like "mass" or "tumor." They bounce around in your head from the moment you wake up til the moment you go to sleep - if you're lucky to sleep that night. Dad spent most of the weekend in the hospital due to dehydration and a few other issues then was discharged on Sunday with instructions to wait for a phone call to come in for an endoscopy to see what was going on with the mass. A few days later, we stood in the recovery room looking at the gloomy face of the doctor who said not only did he see an 8cm mass on Dad's pancreas, he also saw masses on the liver and lymph nodes and that surgery wouldn't be an option. But, we had to wait for the biopsy results to confirm what the doctor wouldn't say, even though his face and demeanor said it all.
Two things happened that day. #1- I wondered if I should relocate with all this going on and #2- I realized I didn't want to spend one more day away from Jake. When someone you love is facing potentially the scariest thing in their life, it changes your perspective on everything. As if Mama knew what I was thinking, she made me promise no matter what, I'd follow through with the move. We were twenty-two days away from closing, and the packing/prepping was in full motion. We were waiting on the results of Dad's biopsies and a few other tests, and he seemed to be doing better, so I readjusted my attention to the relocation.
Six days later, completely unrelated to anything going on in his abdomen, Daddy had a small stroke. But, praise God, he had no residual side effects and went home a day or two later. Again, the wait was on for the biopsy and test results, but two doctors during that hospital stay said the "c" word, and Mama and I looked at each other with dread. Cancer. Everyone had made up their mind about my father's condition and prognosis, and I couldn't accept that. I won't. I still don't. Watching my parents look at each other with silent questions of "how much time do we have left together" and answers like "a lifetime still wasn't long enough" through no spoken words, I decided I didn't want to spend one more minute away from Jake. It didn't matter to me that we weren't adhering to appropriate timelines determined by social standards. One thing about being over forty and having your shit together- you don't have to answer to anyone. So, we took another huge step and planned to merge our families and do this life thing together.
Flash forward to Wednesday, June 21st - two days before closing. Mama took Daddy to the ER because he wasn't acting right. He was admitted for sepsis (blood infection) which to my knowledge, they never did figure out where that started, but he was one sick man. I called my friend and co-worker to tell him what was going on, as he was supposed to drive the U-Haul I was headed to pay for to my house. Bless his heart, he grabbed up a friend, and while I was at the hospital with my family, he took care of getting the U-Haul to my house anyway. I had so many friends come help us load the U-Haul (whether I was there or not), then Jake and his family came to pick it up and take it to Troy so I could focus on my dad.
Thursday morning, while sitting at the hospital waiting for my dad to get out of a surgical procedure, (the day before closing on the house I'm selling and the house I'm buying), my lender calls me saying the appraisal still isn't back on my house I'm buying, and that if they don't get it before noon Friday, we can't close. We were scheduled to close on the house we'd called home at 9:00 the next morning, and the house we were supposed to buy and move into was just out of reach. Everything we owned was in the back of a U-Haul safely tucked away at Jake's house ready for us to unload after the closing that had basically just been canceled. On a Friday. No way this is happening.
I was on the way home trying to figure out how to tell the kiddos that we were basically homeless until this mess got straightened out when my realtor called and said the seller had mercy on us and said we could go ahead and move in until we got this paperwork mess straightened out. I burst into tears and thanked her repeatedly for whatever she did to make that happen. My sister flew in from Florida to be with our parents, so I shifted into go-mode and tried to figure out what all this meant. If we move in and this deal falls through, then we have to repack the Uhaul and start this all over again. If we don't move in, we have nowhere to go until this is resolved. So, we took a leap of faith and decided to move in.
Friday mid-morning, we got a text saying we could move in but don't get too comfy just in case. The closing on my old house went off without a hitch, but now we had no idea if the new house would be ours or not. The closing got canceled and rescheduled for Tuesday. (I'll spare you the details of that fiasco.) Once that was set in stone, we felt more stable and began unpacking and cleaning our new home.
Tuesday rolled around, and the closing fell through again due to a survey issue. I'd just finished signing all the paperwork when the title company discovered an issue with the backyard - basically the survey revealed the backyard wasn't included with the house, as it was deeded to someone else and the sellers didn't even own it. (I'm not going to get into this here other than to say it's still not worked out.) I left with instructions for the mortgage company not to process those papers until they heard from me. All I could think of was Jake and our kids. I didn't know what to do, I couldn't think... I needed to hear his voice. I needed to collect my thoughts and go have a good cry while feeling sorry for myself. Why the hell does this stuff HAPPEN to me??
The next day, the sellers gave me two hours to either authorize the sale as-is with the mortgage broker or leave the property immediately so they could relist it. Jake and I did what any parents with four kids with stars in their eyes over their new home would do- we bought the house and prayed the yard thing would work out.
So, for the last eight weeks, we've made this house a home filled with lots of love, laughs, and tons of memories already. I've got a few blog updates to share later, but for now, just know that God is good, life is good, and I am finally, finally happy.
Six months and two days ago, I decided I'd give dating one more shot- one week online, and then I could say with one-hundred percent certainty that life as a single woman was my fate AND I was okay with that.
Six months ago today, I met and fell for Jake.
But wait, there's more... (giggle)
The more time Jake and I spent together the less time I wanted to be away from him. The kiddos weren't happy in our hometown anymore, and I was ready for a change. We decided to move to Troy to be near Jake and his kids and give my children the fresh start they desperately longed for.
We researched houses for a month or so, figured out what we liked/didn't like and narrowed down the search for our new home. I met a fantastic realtor, and she set up several showings. We all fell in love with one house, and since I already had my pre-approval in place, I threw down an offer before it could get gobbled up in the hot market. Five hours later, the sellers accepted our offer, and the race was on to get our house on the market well before it was ready. Our house was shown eleven times in twelve days, and a contract was in place with (wait for it...) thirty days to closing. That significantly escalated my timeline, so I notified the lender on my new house and set things in motion. We started packing, planning, and dreaming of our new life and fresh start in a new town with future plans of Jake and his children moving in with us eventually. I was surfing on life's high tide and owning that shit. Then came the first crash.
The Friday before Memorial Day, Mama called me saying she was taking Daddy to the ER, that she thought maybe he was having a stroke or heart issues. I flew to the hospital and saw my father confused, slurring his words, and completely out of it while in a lot of abdominal pain. Multiple tests and labs later, we were relieved to hear his head CT was clear, he wasn't having a heart attack at all, but they thought he was having a gall bladder attack. Mama and I dismissed all of it as a "no-biggie" since we've both had our gall bladders out. One quick out-patient surgery, and he'd be fit as a fiddle.
Until the doctor came to reveal the ultrasound results. I kind of fogged out after he said the words, "pancreatic mass" and watched as the world I've known my whole life fractured. There's no unhearing words like "mass" or "tumor." They bounce around in your head from the moment you wake up til the moment you go to sleep - if you're lucky to sleep that night. Dad spent most of the weekend in the hospital due to dehydration and a few other issues then was discharged on Sunday with instructions to wait for a phone call to come in for an endoscopy to see what was going on with the mass. A few days later, we stood in the recovery room looking at the gloomy face of the doctor who said not only did he see an 8cm mass on Dad's pancreas, he also saw masses on the liver and lymph nodes and that surgery wouldn't be an option. But, we had to wait for the biopsy results to confirm what the doctor wouldn't say, even though his face and demeanor said it all.
Two things happened that day. #1- I wondered if I should relocate with all this going on and #2- I realized I didn't want to spend one more day away from Jake. When someone you love is facing potentially the scariest thing in their life, it changes your perspective on everything. As if Mama knew what I was thinking, she made me promise no matter what, I'd follow through with the move. We were twenty-two days away from closing, and the packing/prepping was in full motion. We were waiting on the results of Dad's biopsies and a few other tests, and he seemed to be doing better, so I readjusted my attention to the relocation.
Six days later, completely unrelated to anything going on in his abdomen, Daddy had a small stroke. But, praise God, he had no residual side effects and went home a day or two later. Again, the wait was on for the biopsy and test results, but two doctors during that hospital stay said the "c" word, and Mama and I looked at each other with dread. Cancer. Everyone had made up their mind about my father's condition and prognosis, and I couldn't accept that. I won't. I still don't. Watching my parents look at each other with silent questions of "how much time do we have left together" and answers like "a lifetime still wasn't long enough" through no spoken words, I decided I didn't want to spend one more minute away from Jake. It didn't matter to me that we weren't adhering to appropriate timelines determined by social standards. One thing about being over forty and having your shit together- you don't have to answer to anyone. So, we took another huge step and planned to merge our families and do this life thing together.
Flash forward to Wednesday, June 21st - two days before closing. Mama took Daddy to the ER because he wasn't acting right. He was admitted for sepsis (blood infection) which to my knowledge, they never did figure out where that started, but he was one sick man. I called my friend and co-worker to tell him what was going on, as he was supposed to drive the U-Haul I was headed to pay for to my house. Bless his heart, he grabbed up a friend, and while I was at the hospital with my family, he took care of getting the U-Haul to my house anyway. I had so many friends come help us load the U-Haul (whether I was there or not), then Jake and his family came to pick it up and take it to Troy so I could focus on my dad.
Thursday morning, while sitting at the hospital waiting for my dad to get out of a surgical procedure, (the day before closing on the house I'm selling and the house I'm buying), my lender calls me saying the appraisal still isn't back on my house I'm buying, and that if they don't get it before noon Friday, we can't close. We were scheduled to close on the house we'd called home at 9:00 the next morning, and the house we were supposed to buy and move into was just out of reach. Everything we owned was in the back of a U-Haul safely tucked away at Jake's house ready for us to unload after the closing that had basically just been canceled. On a Friday. No way this is happening.
I was on the way home trying to figure out how to tell the kiddos that we were basically homeless until this mess got straightened out when my realtor called and said the seller had mercy on us and said we could go ahead and move in until we got this paperwork mess straightened out. I burst into tears and thanked her repeatedly for whatever she did to make that happen. My sister flew in from Florida to be with our parents, so I shifted into go-mode and tried to figure out what all this meant. If we move in and this deal falls through, then we have to repack the Uhaul and start this all over again. If we don't move in, we have nowhere to go until this is resolved. So, we took a leap of faith and decided to move in.
Friday mid-morning, we got a text saying we could move in but don't get too comfy just in case. The closing on my old house went off without a hitch, but now we had no idea if the new house would be ours or not. The closing got canceled and rescheduled for Tuesday. (I'll spare you the details of that fiasco.) Once that was set in stone, we felt more stable and began unpacking and cleaning our new home.
Tuesday rolled around, and the closing fell through again due to a survey issue. I'd just finished signing all the paperwork when the title company discovered an issue with the backyard - basically the survey revealed the backyard wasn't included with the house, as it was deeded to someone else and the sellers didn't even own it. (I'm not going to get into this here other than to say it's still not worked out.) I left with instructions for the mortgage company not to process those papers until they heard from me. All I could think of was Jake and our kids. I didn't know what to do, I couldn't think... I needed to hear his voice. I needed to collect my thoughts and go have a good cry while feeling sorry for myself. Why the hell does this stuff HAPPEN to me??
The next day, the sellers gave me two hours to either authorize the sale as-is with the mortgage broker or leave the property immediately so they could relist it. Jake and I did what any parents with four kids with stars in their eyes over their new home would do- we bought the house and prayed the yard thing would work out.
So, for the last eight weeks, we've made this house a home filled with lots of love, laughs, and tons of memories already. I've got a few blog updates to share later, but for now, just know that God is good, life is good, and I am finally, finally happy.
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