Leo here. I apologize that this post won't be all that well organized. I'm reflecting on my thoughts and, well, they don't really come out organized themselves and I find trying to organize said thoughts to ruin my train of thought. So a slightly jumbled mess is what you're going to get!
The first thing I wanted to note is I had published a post back in late March discussing reflecting back on potential mistakes I made in Amy's final days. I don't know what happened to that post, but what is left of it is in an earlier draft state. (Did I have it open for editing on my desktop computer that I almost never use???) I won't be able to recreate the post exactly as it was, but I do want to cover the thoughts I had then.
Primarily, I wish I had made better decisions in those final days. An issue that I do not believe I mentioned before is I became somewhat self-absorbed. Amy really didn't seem herself those last few weeks. I am sure she didn't want to die and the thought of death seemed to scare her. I had initially made some plans to rent some movies, but I think that ended up being somewhat scratched because Amy just didn't have the attention span for a full movie. (I do believe we ended up finishing Kung Fu Panda, which we had started before she entered hospice care, if memory serves me correctly. We also watched Zootopia and may have done so twice when Amy's niece and nephew were visiting.) We perhaps could have found TV shows instead as they would have been shorter and could have been completed before Amy could no longer pay attention.
I know one show she had been watching over the summer was Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. I really fucked up and prevented her from seeing all the available episodes as I had taken an interest in the show and wanted to watch episodes together. But between me being extremely busy at work and chemo and, later on, her parents being around quite often, we didn't really have much time together. I think I had told her to go on ahead and watch episodes without me, but she didn't. We could have probably watched some episodes - or many - in those final days, but I don't think we watched a single one.
As I said, I had become a bit self-absorbed. I recognize that, in a way, it was hard not to do so. As I said, Amy wasn't herself and that may be part of what led me to get lost in my own little world. The Amy I had known and loved was essentially already dead and not knowing what to do left me frustrated. The way to avoid that frustration was to ignore Amy, letting her mother focus on her instead, and do my own thing. Still, I wish I would have dealt with the frustration instead of avoiding it.
That said, what I wanted to write about in this post is how some of my more recent reflections align with what I had said in my Puck 2016 post. As in those final days, I wish I had been a better husband. I noted in that 2016 post that I wish I had done a better job helping her with her fitness goals. As of late, I've wondered about other things I could have done better on. Indoor volleyball season started up recently and I began to think about how I had tried to drag Amy into playing volleyball, though she really did not want to. It made me realize I was a bit selfish, though maybe not so self-absorbed, even back then. I was often trying to drag Amy into my activities like volleyball or even skiing a couple of times (actually, I think we literally went skiing two times),** and even video games, but did I do a good enough job of showing interest in Amy's activities in return?
Thinking about it, I had no problem going to her AIS-DSD conferences. I attended three of them with her, missing 2015 only because I had burned up too much of my vacation time going to the World Cup.* That said, I didn't take up all that much of an interest in Hawkeye football (though I will note I have objections to college football for ethical reasons). I begrudgingly went to Hope Lodge galas or fundraisers. I never once went to Zumba. Amy had wanted me to go occasionally; perhaps I should have done so just to make her happy? It was actually Amy, though, who had the interest in participating in triathlons. That was part of her fitness goals and something else I had no issue partaking in. I also had gone with her to yoga for sometime. I don't really remember why that stopped...I suppose I was just too busy with other activities that I decided to drop that. (Amy also seemed to go to yoga less often as well, which may be, in part, because she attended Zumba more frequently.)
In having to re-write that previous post, I've also realized we didn't watch a whole lot of movies, not even at home. Nor did we watch a lot of TV shows. I also wonder what shows or movies she may have been interested in that I disrupted. I know she had been a fan of The Office when we had started dating, but I don't recall her ever watching the show while we were married. Did I ruin that for her since it was a show I didn't watch?
In short, what I worry about is whether or not I disrupted Amy's life a bit and interfered with some of her interests thanks to my selfishness. I don't feel as though I really gave up any interests of mine, which leaves me felling a bit guilty of not treating Amy fairly. It is something I'll need to be watchful for in any future relationship I may have.
* I do not count soccer as something I drug Amy into. When we met, my own interest in soccer was rather small. I knew little about the sport beyond my experience in the Rockwell Collins league. While Amy had no interest in soccer at that time it was an interest we both grew to enjoy more during our relationship and I in no way feel I forced that upon her.
** Gardening was another activity I couldn't get Amy to take an interest in. I couldn't see how best to add this in to the main post, but I wanted to note this may have resulted in other small conflicts in our relationship. As I would often be occupied with gardening on weekends we had more or less free, that meant I had less time to help her clean up in the house. I know she was often bothered by the fact that she spent a disproportional amount of time on house work (if gardening isn't considered as house work).
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