One of Marilyn’s bathroom rules was that I had to “wring” out the washcloth after I used it to wash my face. It took a while for me to learn this rule because we really didn’t get up at the same time. So, she would often just ask.
There was a practical reason for her rule, a drier rag soured more slowly.
My contention was that my squeeze got out more than enough water so I didn’t need to “wring.”
One time I made it into the bathroom after she had “wrung” out the washcloth. I proceeded to squeeze it and show her how much more water my squeeze got out than her “wring.” She was not impressed. Her contention was that my “wring” would certainly take out even more water.
I shut up and am “wringing” to this very day. After all, if I hadn’t stopped when I did, I would’ve gotten the chore of “wringing” out her washcloths.
---------
Marilyn lost her life to cancer but was able to truly "live" until the very end due to a lymphedema garment from Don Kellogg, inventor and founder of Telesto-Medtech. It is due to the "living" he provided Marilyn and through his suggestion and connection with Saskia Thiadens of the National Lymphedema Network that the Marilyn Westbrook Garment Fund exists. It needs other people's help to remain a living memorial of Marilyn. Please help other people receive the gift of living by donating to the Marilyn Westbrook Garment Fund. Thank you.
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Invitation to a "Formal Affair"
After the “kiss” and a couple real dates, I got a card in the mail that sent my spirits soaring. There was one word that jumped off the card as soon as I opened it: “affair.”
Actually my spirits were soaring for other reasons. She liked being with me and had sent me a card to tell me so. It was an invitation to go for a walk in a local Columbus park, Blendon Woods, and do some leaf crunching. The “affair” was just her humor characterizing the walk and leaf crunching in a parenthetical expression as a “real formal affair.”
As you will read in future entries, we did a lot of walking in our time together and made our children join in by not giving them an option. Walking in woods and crunching leaves was always special, probably, no most definitely, because of this very first time and the special invitation. I kept it for years and hope it is still around in some box or folder.
---------
Marilyn lost her life to cancer but was able to truly "live" until the very end due to a lymphedema garment from Don Kellogg, inventor and founder of Telesto-Medtech. It is due to the "living" he provided Marilyn and through his suggestion and connection with Saskia Thiadens of the National Lymphedema Network that the Marilyn Westbrook Garment Fund exists. It needs other people's help to remain a living memorial of Marilyn. Please help other people receive the gift of living by donating to the Marilyn Westbrook Garment Fund. Thank you.
Actually my spirits were soaring for other reasons. She liked being with me and had sent me a card to tell me so. It was an invitation to go for a walk in a local Columbus park, Blendon Woods, and do some leaf crunching. The “affair” was just her humor characterizing the walk and leaf crunching in a parenthetical expression as a “real formal affair.”
As you will read in future entries, we did a lot of walking in our time together and made our children join in by not giving them an option. Walking in woods and crunching leaves was always special, probably, no most definitely, because of this very first time and the special invitation. I kept it for years and hope it is still around in some box or folder.
---------
Marilyn lost her life to cancer but was able to truly "live" until the very end due to a lymphedema garment from Don Kellogg, inventor and founder of Telesto-Medtech. It is due to the "living" he provided Marilyn and through his suggestion and connection with Saskia Thiadens of the National Lymphedema Network that the Marilyn Westbrook Garment Fund exists. It needs other people's help to remain a living memorial of Marilyn. Please help other people receive the gift of living by donating to the Marilyn Westbrook Garment Fund. Thank you.
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Dating: Our first "real" date
With Marilyn’s return to a month long temping assignment at Xerox I was able to use our connection from T. G. I. Friday’s to ask her out. We went to lunch a couple of times and then the big date: dinner and a movie.
The dinner was late because the only showing of the movie we agreed to see started at midnight. It was somewhat a cult showing, much like the Rocky Horror Picture Show" and an event like the "Sound of Music" would achieve later, except no one dressed up the parts. It was "Fantasia," the perfect combination culture, and, well, lack of culture. I hadn’t really thought it out but it was the perfect attempt to appeal to something of her interest, whatever that may have been. The classical music should have appealed to her sophistication and the cartoon should have appealed to her inner child.
As it was, late on a workday, a long day, actually into the next day, she fell asleep on me. I literally mean this in all ways. My arm was supporting her head. Even then she had a definite sleeping pattern to her breathing, not quite a snore, that I would forever name from that night on as sleep breathing. It retained this name long after the breathing sounds became louder and always faster than I could fall asleep.
Well, there I was caught between chagrin that I had asked her out to something that put her asleep and something approach happiness that she felt comfortable enough to go to sleep on me. Worse, my arm was going to sleep from trying to maintain its position and not disturb her. She woke up on her own a little bit later after a crescendo.
I think I started falling in love with her on this date. Even if she wasn’t comfortable enough with me to have fallen asleep and it was simply because I put her in a situation that due to the lateness, the long day, and the soothing classical music anyone in their right mind would have dropped off, or worse she was bored, she accepted this date, however ridiculous, to be with me.
What sealed the deal was what happened when I dropped her off at her parents’ place, I kissed her, twice. It just felt like the right thing to do. It was a combination of her lips being so soft and the first kiss just seemed too short. After we were married, she commented on those first kisses, so it must have seemed right to her as well.
---------
Marilyn lost her life to cancer but was able to truly "live" until the very end due to a lymphedema garment from Don Kellogg, inventor and founder of Telesto-Medtech. It is due to the "living" he provided Marilyn and through his suggestion and connection with Saskia Thiadens of the National Lymphedema Network that the Marilyn Westbrook Garment Fund exists. It needs other people's help to remain a living memorial of Marilyn. Please help other people receive the gift of living by donating to the Marilyn Westbrook Garment Fund. Thank you.
The dinner was late because the only showing of the movie we agreed to see started at midnight. It was somewhat a cult showing, much like the Rocky Horror Picture Show" and an event like the "Sound of Music" would achieve later, except no one dressed up the parts. It was "Fantasia," the perfect combination culture, and, well, lack of culture. I hadn’t really thought it out but it was the perfect attempt to appeal to something of her interest, whatever that may have been. The classical music should have appealed to her sophistication and the cartoon should have appealed to her inner child.
As it was, late on a workday, a long day, actually into the next day, she fell asleep on me. I literally mean this in all ways. My arm was supporting her head. Even then she had a definite sleeping pattern to her breathing, not quite a snore, that I would forever name from that night on as sleep breathing. It retained this name long after the breathing sounds became louder and always faster than I could fall asleep.
Well, there I was caught between chagrin that I had asked her out to something that put her asleep and something approach happiness that she felt comfortable enough to go to sleep on me. Worse, my arm was going to sleep from trying to maintain its position and not disturb her. She woke up on her own a little bit later after a crescendo.
I think I started falling in love with her on this date. Even if she wasn’t comfortable enough with me to have fallen asleep and it was simply because I put her in a situation that due to the lateness, the long day, and the soothing classical music anyone in their right mind would have dropped off, or worse she was bored, she accepted this date, however ridiculous, to be with me.
What sealed the deal was what happened when I dropped her off at her parents’ place, I kissed her, twice. It just felt like the right thing to do. It was a combination of her lips being so soft and the first kiss just seemed too short. After we were married, she commented on those first kisses, so it must have seemed right to her as well.
---------
Marilyn lost her life to cancer but was able to truly "live" until the very end due to a lymphedema garment from Don Kellogg, inventor and founder of Telesto-Medtech. It is due to the "living" he provided Marilyn and through his suggestion and connection with Saskia Thiadens of the National Lymphedema Network that the Marilyn Westbrook Garment Fund exists. It needs other people's help to remain a living memorial of Marilyn. Please help other people receive the gift of living by donating to the Marilyn Westbrook Garment Fund. Thank you.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Michele Coxon's memories of Marilyn
Michele Coxon was Marilyn's manual lymph drainage massage therapist who brought Don Kellogg in to help. In my short speech to the International NLN Conference, where many of the attendees were therapists like Michele, I said this about Marilyn and Michele:
"The last smile I ever saw on my wife's face was when she last saw and thanked Michele Coxon, her manual lymph drainage massage therapist who had dropped in for just a visit."
Michele has extended her practice and now has a web presence as Stillpoint on the Coast. Her memory is immediately below:
Marilyn and I were "meant to be." She discovered me in a year old phone book she had laying around and I was more than happy to visit her home for treatments. The additional fact of being good friends with Don Kellog and bringing him on board to help her, feels like God was working through both of us to make this gift to her happen. There is no doubt in my mind that these events of synchronization are always choreographed by Source, by that Divine Spirit to which we surrender when working with the very ill, like Marilyn.
She was a conduit. She asked millions of questions, trusted me, and we had many wonderful conversations about life, health, living and dying. One day she was feeling too ill for treatment, so I sat by her bed and we just talked for an hour. It was healing for both of us.
I called her "The Captain" because she was still in control of her house and all that went on there from the bedroom. She delighted in looking out at her freshly landscaped back yard with all the lovely flowers in bloom during late summer and early fall and she poured over recipes to be made for meals that day for the family, not just for herself. I was a guest for dinner one night with her husband and sister and felt drawn into this family a little bit more and was grateful.
She mended her own garment one day and insisted on doing so. As I watched the intense focus of her mind on the threading of the needle, decision about how to proceed and the actual moving thread and needle into the fabric, it was with grace and assuredness that she completed the task, and beautifully, I might add.
My memories of Marilyn are never far from my heart and mind. I always told her that I received from her far more than I could ever give. Our last visit shortly before she died was understood by both of us to be the last and I am forever grateful that I was able to tell her how much I had grown to love her in those short four months that we worked together.
Marilyn is easy to love.
Michele Coxon
Lymphedema Therapist
Pacifica, CA
---------
Marilyn lost her life to cancer but was able to truly "live" until the very end due to a lymphedema garment from Don Kellogg, inventor and founder of Telesto-Medtech. It is due to the "living" he provided Marilyn and through his suggestion and connection with Saskia Thiadens of the National Lymphedema Network that the Marilyn Westbrook Garment Fund exists. It needs other people's help to remain a living memorial of Marilyn. Please help other people receive the gift of living by donating to the Marilyn Westbrook Garment Fund. Thank you.
"The last smile I ever saw on my wife's face was when she last saw and thanked Michele Coxon, her manual lymph drainage massage therapist who had dropped in for just a visit."
Michele has extended her practice and now has a web presence as Stillpoint on the Coast. Her memory is immediately below:
Marilyn and I were "meant to be." She discovered me in a year old phone book she had laying around and I was more than happy to visit her home for treatments. The additional fact of being good friends with Don Kellog and bringing him on board to help her, feels like God was working through both of us to make this gift to her happen. There is no doubt in my mind that these events of synchronization are always choreographed by Source, by that Divine Spirit to which we surrender when working with the very ill, like Marilyn.
She was a conduit. She asked millions of questions, trusted me, and we had many wonderful conversations about life, health, living and dying. One day she was feeling too ill for treatment, so I sat by her bed and we just talked for an hour. It was healing for both of us.
I called her "The Captain" because she was still in control of her house and all that went on there from the bedroom. She delighted in looking out at her freshly landscaped back yard with all the lovely flowers in bloom during late summer and early fall and she poured over recipes to be made for meals that day for the family, not just for herself. I was a guest for dinner one night with her husband and sister and felt drawn into this family a little bit more and was grateful.
She mended her own garment one day and insisted on doing so. As I watched the intense focus of her mind on the threading of the needle, decision about how to proceed and the actual moving thread and needle into the fabric, it was with grace and assuredness that she completed the task, and beautifully, I might add.
My memories of Marilyn are never far from my heart and mind. I always told her that I received from her far more than I could ever give. Our last visit shortly before she died was understood by both of us to be the last and I am forever grateful that I was able to tell her how much I had grown to love her in those short four months that we worked together.
Marilyn is easy to love.
Michele Coxon
Lymphedema Therapist
Pacifica, CA
---------
Marilyn lost her life to cancer but was able to truly "live" until the very end due to a lymphedema garment from Don Kellogg, inventor and founder of Telesto-Medtech. It is due to the "living" he provided Marilyn and through his suggestion and connection with Saskia Thiadens of the National Lymphedema Network that the Marilyn Westbrook Garment Fund exists. It needs other people's help to remain a living memorial of Marilyn. Please help other people receive the gift of living by donating to the Marilyn Westbrook Garment Fund. Thank you.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
I meet Marilyn
I have yet to find a picture of Marilyn as I first met her. This one is of her in her college days, before I met her. Many of my entries will have pertinent pictures, but I didn't want to have this first "memory" not to have any.
It wasn’t long after I told my middle sister that I didn’t have any idea about how I was going to meet anyone, let alone someone special, that I walked into the local executive’s secretary’s office to get change for a vending machine and saw Marilyn. She was dressed in a black pantsuit with a white blouse and a black ribbon loosely tied in a bow as a tie. She was the one who actually gave me the change as she was being trained to temporarily replace the boss’ secretary the following week.
I don’t think I said more than thanks. This was not the “meeting,” this was just the first time in my life that I saw her. She obviously made an impression. The meeting happened a week later at the end of her temporary assignment.
I did something I rarely did and to my recollection never did after this time during my whole life with Marilyn, I went to an after work-socializing event. She was there. This time we talked. We talked the whole time we were there. I can’t remember what I said or what she said but I know I really liked what I heard. I was even more impressed when a friend of hers, who also worked at Xerox with me, couldn't pull her away. She gave Marilyn an out but Marilyn stayed talking with me.
Part of the reason for my faulty memory of the details is undoubtedly because we were drinking. It was a bar, well T. G. I. Friday’s, after all. I can’t remember what I was drinking but it was probably beer or something like rum and coke. I wasn't and still am not much of a drinker. She drank peppermint schnapps with beer chasers. Since we "met" in a bar, this made a good story whenever I could work it into the conversation, which often went like this: "How did you two meet?" "Marilyn and I met in a bar."
While our drinks were spread over a long time of talking, there was an effect. So much so that even though I did not get her phone number or address, I convinced her that she should allow me to follow her home to make sure she got there safely. She took off in her VW Beetle with me following behind in my 280Z. I followed her all the way to her parent’s house, watched her pull in, and drove on to my own apartment.
If she hadn’t come back to temp for another secretary, this time for a month, I would never been able to take it to the next step: actually dating.
---------
Marilyn lost her life to cancer but was able to truly "live" until the very end due to a lymphedema garment from Don Kellogg, inventor and founder of Telesto-Medtech. It is due to the "living" he provided Marilyn and through his suggestion and connection with Saskia Thiadens of the National Lymphedema Network that the Marilyn Westbrook Garment Fund exists. It needs other people's help to remain a living memorial of Marilyn. Please help other people receive the gift of living by donating to the Marilyn Westbrook Garment Fund. Thank you.
Thursday, September 4, 2008
Coming Soon, September 23, 2008 (Prologue)
I bought a blank leather bound journal for the memorial/open house for the attendees to write their happy memories of Marilyn. While others memories may find their way transcribed into this blog, so far I have made just one entry in it. I even carried it around for a month before I decided to do it this way, writing it out in a Word document. I started carrying it after a somewhat tearful conversation with my oldest daughter who pointed out that writing something would be a good way for Marilyn’s grandchildren yet to be born to get to know their grandmother.
My problem is all my happy memories end up being bitter sweet so I had a certain writer’s block to writing them in a “happy” memory book.
Another friend suggested that I start a blog, this one, as a way to write all these memories and potentially attract readers who could then help keep the Marilyn Westbrook Garment Fund, well, funded. While I was enamored with this idea, I didn’t want it to be a maudlin daily recounting of my current day filled with missing. But it does allow me to be more complete by not binding myself to only happy memories or excluding the bittersweet portions. (Read my description of asking her to marry me in a future posting.)
However, since I truly don’t know what I want to write when, I am writing individual items according to topic without strict regard to chronology. Other than this prologue, I will start posting individual topics starting September 23, 2008, ten days after my son's wedding.
Thus my compromise, I have decided to write a collection that I can edit and select from to put in this blog. The Word document can be a better form factor for eventually giving to my grandchildren so they can know of the grandmother they will never meet.
During the Tim Russert memorial it was mentioned that he consoled a friend who lost a son that if he had been offered the choice of 17 years with such a great person he would have jumped at it. I feel the same way about the 30 years I had with Marilyn. However, if I had known it would have only been 30 years I would have made a point of enjoying them more. As it is, I have many great memories.
Doyle Westbrook
Loving husband of Marilyn
As to the "why" of the blog:
As a result of cancer, surgery for cancer, conditions present at birth, specific lymphatic diseases, ... many people suffer from lymphedema. People who cannot afford to do anything but "live with it," and there are many, often hide away their impairment as it can be as disfiguring as it is debilitating. When Marilyn's cancer created lymphedema in her left leg so severe that she was bedridden, a living saving lymphedema garment from Don Kellogg, inventor and founder of Telesto Medtech, not only restored her mobility after wearing it for only a half day, it allowed her to attend her daughter's wedding, join her family and her daughter's new in-laws at the Thanksgiving table, and meet her son's fiancee's mother. It made the last few months of her life living months rather than just waiting for a death that would have come even sooner than it did had she not been truly living during them.
Even though there are amazing treatments available that can restore a measure of normalcy, due to about half the states not considering these treatments as medical devices and the insurance companies following suit, people are left to suffer in silence and frequently alone. In Marilyn's name and memory, this has become our cause. With Saskia Thiadens and the National Lymphedema Network, a special fund to help people who cannot otherwise afford these garments has been established, the Marilyn Westbrook Garment Fund.
If funding were to be left to my resources alone, it would be too little help and the memory of Marilyn far too short. Please use the links embedded in this posting to donate to this worthy cause. The National Lymphedema Network (NLN) is a 501 (c) 3 organization. Donations to the NLN, including those designated to the Marilyn Westbrook Fund, are fully tax deductible to the limits of your tax circumstances.
My problem is all my happy memories end up being bitter sweet so I had a certain writer’s block to writing them in a “happy” memory book.
Another friend suggested that I start a blog, this one, as a way to write all these memories and potentially attract readers who could then help keep the Marilyn Westbrook Garment Fund, well, funded. While I was enamored with this idea, I didn’t want it to be a maudlin daily recounting of my current day filled with missing. But it does allow me to be more complete by not binding myself to only happy memories or excluding the bittersweet portions. (Read my description of asking her to marry me in a future posting.)
However, since I truly don’t know what I want to write when, I am writing individual items according to topic without strict regard to chronology. Other than this prologue, I will start posting individual topics starting September 23, 2008, ten days after my son's wedding.
Thus my compromise, I have decided to write a collection that I can edit and select from to put in this blog. The Word document can be a better form factor for eventually giving to my grandchildren so they can know of the grandmother they will never meet.
During the Tim Russert memorial it was mentioned that he consoled a friend who lost a son that if he had been offered the choice of 17 years with such a great person he would have jumped at it. I feel the same way about the 30 years I had with Marilyn. However, if I had known it would have only been 30 years I would have made a point of enjoying them more. As it is, I have many great memories.
Doyle Westbrook
Loving husband of Marilyn
As to the "why" of the blog:
As a result of cancer, surgery for cancer, conditions present at birth, specific lymphatic diseases, ... many people suffer from lymphedema. People who cannot afford to do anything but "live with it," and there are many, often hide away their impairment as it can be as disfiguring as it is debilitating. When Marilyn's cancer created lymphedema in her left leg so severe that she was bedridden, a living saving lymphedema garment from Don Kellogg, inventor and founder of Telesto Medtech, not only restored her mobility after wearing it for only a half day, it allowed her to attend her daughter's wedding, join her family and her daughter's new in-laws at the Thanksgiving table, and meet her son's fiancee's mother. It made the last few months of her life living months rather than just waiting for a death that would have come even sooner than it did had she not been truly living during them.
Even though there are amazing treatments available that can restore a measure of normalcy, due to about half the states not considering these treatments as medical devices and the insurance companies following suit, people are left to suffer in silence and frequently alone. In Marilyn's name and memory, this has become our cause. With Saskia Thiadens and the National Lymphedema Network, a special fund to help people who cannot otherwise afford these garments has been established, the Marilyn Westbrook Garment Fund.
If funding were to be left to my resources alone, it would be too little help and the memory of Marilyn far too short. Please use the links embedded in this posting to donate to this worthy cause. The National Lymphedema Network (NLN) is a 501 (c) 3 organization. Donations to the NLN, including those designated to the Marilyn Westbrook Fund, are fully tax deductible to the limits of your tax circumstances.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
