Dear Readers,

Brace yourselves. This chapter is somewhat of a departure from my usual frothy musings. I think it's about loving and losing — but also about never losing sight of the fact that life goes on. Now that I've got you thoroughly confused, let me try to make sense of it!

I was caregiver to my wife, Carol Ann Hearons, from late 2013 till late the next year. I lost her to small-cell lung cancer in November of 2014, in Pontiac, Michigan, just shy of our 49th wedding anniversary. A few weeks later, I was asked to drive to Appleton, Wisconsin, to help Robin (a.k.a. "Rawbaw"), my younger sister, who was just getting out of a hospital there. Per Brooke, our older sister in Lexington, Kentucky, Rawbaw would need "a couple of weeks" of assistance in getting settled back into her home.

Rawbaw had just lost her right big toe to osteomyelitis, but looked pretty healthy to me on December 29, 2014, when I made the drive from Pontiac to Appleton to be of help to her. Well, some three and a half years later, I am still in Appleton, helping a stubborn, somewhat demented, 78-year-old woman with a record of "uncontrolled diabetes" (meaning that, until I arrived here, Rawbaw was doing an awful job of taking care of herself).

I have since learned quite a bit about diabetes. But, as I often say, cancer is still public enemy number one. Everyone seems to either have it or dearly love someone who does. That's a whole lot of cancer. I just hope it can be stamped out in all its forms before I die. All indications are that it won't disappear without a huge fight, but I plan to live to be at least 100, just to see it bite the dust.

But I digress somewhat. Today I wanted to talk to you about the prospect of losing a patient — any patient — taken from you by whatever disease — and then somehow reacting philosophically to your loss, and finding yourself coping with that loss far better than you ever thought you would.

This topic hits awfully close to home. My wife was taken from me by lung cancer nearly four years ago — and now I think I'm losing Rawbaw. She's so weak, she may not be able or willing to handle the resumption of "gait training" at Peabody Manor to orient her to her prosthesis.

Rawbaw lost her entire right foot in September of 2015, when the threat of infection from sepsis prompted her surgeon to recommend a below-knee amputation. Diabetes is nasty stuff, too, and it makes a lot of other bad things worse. Maybe the medical community can also stamp out diabetes mellitus (both Type 1 and Type 2) in my lifetime. That'd be worth hanging around for!

Here, I think, this ICAN blog chapter starts to get just a little weird. I am about to suggest that, should you be in a caregiver situation similar to mine, you may someday surprise yourself by how accepting you can be when someone close to you leaves this realm. Yeah, I know. It sounds bizarre. But the human mind is an amazing thing — and mine has let me adjust to an amazing degree.

My mind tells me, for instance, that the woman who filled me up with love for almost half a century may be patiently waiting for me on the other side! With that most welcome thought firmly planted in my cerebrum, now I just have to be patient, not grief-stricken to the point of not functioning. I can actually still make myself useful. (Great therapy, in and of itself!)

Rationalization is wonderful. It allows you to convert emotionally impossible events into eminently manageable situations, if you choose to look at them optimistically.

Let in some light. Dare to go on loving people who aren't with us anymore. They still deserve your love, and that love, I have found, never dies.

If you see things in this light, someday you may find yourself talking with perfect strangers about a future gathering in the sky. You may even tell them that family and friends who predeceased you are cooking up a fantastic reunion. Sure, some of your fellow mortals may look at you like you've gone around the bend — but it's a good bend. You will have made a healthy adjustment to losing someone (temporarily), and you will have moved a little closer to God.

Perhaps most important, don't let yourself get the guilts about loving someone who's gone — and remember that someday you'll be gone, too. We all go somewhere else, don't we? And what a grand thought that it's off to reunite with everyone who died but still has a huge place in your heart.

Lastly, do not allow yourself to experience guilt for feeling unburdened when someone you love and look after has a long, hard death. As I have often said, "With grief comes relief." Welcome that relief. It will help you through a rough patch of road on your own journey.

That's my stream of consciousness for today, folks. But I'll be back!

—Michael E. Hearons