Rebuilding after Financial Crisis and Bankruptcy in a Recession (Part 4)

This is an ongoing post in the series Surviving the Lien Years – Rebuilding after Financial Crisis and Bankruptcy in a Recession.  Life Paused is part four in the series.

For those who read Jen’s Genuine Life in their feed reader or email, I added photos to my previous 2 posts that you might want to check out. I have a goal to add more photos to all my posts in the future.

Lee and I are very goal oriented.  Now that we had truly established ourselves in our jobs (he was a Division Manager and I was a team lead) and were making a home for ourselves in our community, we were ready to move into a larger house.  Our thinking was that we would move into the house and then immediately get pregnant filling the house up with children.  I could quit my job to be a Stay-At-Home-Mom and life would be wonderful.

We did move into the larger house but we revised the goals somewhat.  Lee decided he wanted to start his own temporary staffing company.  We were willing to risk everything financially but we thought it would be better to risk this without having children.  So, we put off the children for a year or two.

In the early summer of 1998 and at 28 years of age, Lee and I moved into a roughly 6,000 square foot house.  I was embarrassed by how large it was since it was just the two of us living in it but I loved it all the same time.  We had 5 bedrooms, 3 ½ baths, nice neighborhood, the works.  Well, the works except for furniture but we knew that would come.

Within a month of moving in, Lee began working on a business plan with 2 other men.  Then my grandmother’s breast cancer returned.  While Lee continued to work on the business plans, they were slowed somewhat by my grandmother’s illness.  The only time to work on it was on weekends but we were spending almost every weekend at the hospital and then later at my parents’ house while my grandmother was in Hospice care.

My grandmother was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 1986.  She was in remission until 1996, when it came back.  It returned by metastasizing from her breast to her bones.  It was everywhere in her body: her back, her legs, her skull.   But she fought and fought it valiantly.  She had chemo.  She would have bad days when she felt sorry for herself and was angry at the hand dealt her but for the most part, she stayed positive.  In late 1997 she was doing better but in June of 1998, it was back.

She went through another dose of chemo which was brutal to her system. After a very difficult 24 hours, she decided she did not want to fight it anymore.  I was with my mother the day Nanny decided to quit the chemo.  I drove my mom to a Ryan’s Steakhouse for dinner that night to get my mom out of the hospital.  My mom was an only child and her father had died several years before.  She was so sad that night. I do not even think I knew what Hospice was before that night.  I was trying to understand what was happening next, be there for my mom, and absorb the pain of knowing my grandmother would die soon.  I have never been back to that Ryan’s Steakhouse since that night. The thought of it still makes me ill to my stomach.

My grandmother moved into my parents’ house for Hospice Care.  They lived a good hour away from Lee and me without traffic.  It took about 2 – 2 ½ hours from our house during Friday afternoon rush hour.  My sister was in college and my youngest brother was still in high school.  My mom was up all day and all night during the week taking care of my grandmother.  Lee and I stayed at my parents’ house every weekend for 8 weeks.  I thought the least I could do was to have the room monitor and take the night shift on the weekends so my mom could rest.  I also wanted to give my brother a break from my grandmother’s disease since he was in high school.

So, on Friday nights, Lee and I drove to my folks’ house.  Each time my grandmother woke in the middle of the night, I was there to help her as my mom and dad did during the week.  These were long, sleepless weekends.  I would go into work on Monday mornings at THD so tired I could hardly stand it yet somehow I made it through the day. I would leave as soon as was permissible to go home and crash. My boss and my boss’s boss were very understanding and sympathetic during this time.  It made me even more grateful to be an employee at THD and not traveling all the time.

Lee had his 10^th high school reunion on a Saturday in late October, 1998.  My mom insisted that we go to this and not stay at her house.  My grandmother died early that Sunday morning.  Lee and I went with my parents to the funeral home to make arrangements.  That was the first time I had been to a funeral home to actually make arrangements for a deceased relative.  While I was sad that my grandmother died, I was so relieved that she was out of the excruciating pain that her cancer caused.  It was a difficult funeral because my emotions were so torn between grief at my loss, concern for my mom, and gratitude that my grandmother was in a better place.

As I was still mourning my grandmother’s death, Speaker Newt Gingrich was re-elected and then a week later he resigned in November, 1998.  Pretty much this was a horrid 4 weeks for us.  Lee helped calm me.  He was a rock when I needed him and yet he showed emotion over the loss of my grandmother as well.  I knew our relationship was forever changed after that ordeal. After nursing a grandparent to her death, we were stronger as a couple than we had ever been.

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