I was busy today cleaning up the front yard. It's been neglected all summer due to my broken wrist and then arm and things just got thrown against the shrubs. I now have no excuse for this and started throwing out stuff this morning, then taking some storage boxes to the U-Haul storage that Kevin opened before he passed.
I hadn't been diligently putting things in storage for the past year. When I finally got to the U-Haul storage today, I was surprised how little was in there. I have a lot of work to do to get that unit full of my belongings.
When I got back home at around 5pm and went to check Facebook, I learned that the husband of a former co-worker of mine, Yvonne N, reported that her husband Weston Ochse, also a former co-worker of mine, had died. She posted four days ago that he was on a ventilator. He was only 58. That's too young. She usually posts photos of her dogs or meals she prepares and adds funny captions. She referred to Weston as "the Husband." He was always her faithful sidekick. She didn't post much about his health issues until now.
"Wes is gone" is all she wrote.
Weston had a rough last year. He caught covid in January, then needed ankle surgery, then caught MRSA, faced renal-liver failure, but it was pneumonia that took him in the end.
"I don't know how I'm going to go on without him" Yvonne added, and it was those words that hit me. I felt the same way about Kevin.
Yvonne and Weston were married 21 years. It was the second marriage for both. Weston has a daughter Alex from a previous relationship. She's now 30. Both Yvonne and Weston were successful writers (Weston was working on his 41st book) and both were dog lovers and adopted Great Danes from rescues around the country. They enjoyed cooking, attending writer's conferences and book fairs, and the Southwest.
I didn't know Weston that well, but he was also a 20-year veteran and a combat veteran. Both he and Yvonne are successful writers of horror, fantasy and sci-fi, genres I do not like. However, both were articulate and talented writers.
It was Yvonne I spoke more with at work. She is more approachable with her passionate narrative about her dogs, When I saw a recent photo of him from October that he posted on his Patreon site, I did not recognize him. He had lost a lot of weight and looked 20 years older, with that greyish skin people get when organ failure is near its end. It reminded me of how Kevin looked in his final month.
So it was with this sad news that I, too, got sad again about Kevin. Seeing the fast change in Weston from early this past summer to now is quite shocking.
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