When Rowdyneko leaves for a cruise, her family tries not to disturb her.

Transcript

I try and plan to go on a cruise every year, just because I have to. I have to get away. But even that’s hard. I mean I don’t even know. It’ll, that’ll be easier if he’s in long-term care because I will know he’s cared for. The past few years, I have to put patchwork together; my kids have to take time off work or they have to—well one of my sons is a teacher, he can’t take time off work, but my other son can adjust his shifts […] or my husband’s family comes out from Quebec or something. But you put together this patchwork and hope it will work and you leave.

[…] And I am fairly good at, I’ve learned that through work, I am fairly good at compartmentalizing it. Once I leave I can usually leave it mostly. In fact we… I mean, we joke, and this is a very dark joke and I’ll say it and you can edit it out if you think it’s too dark, but my kids we always say—this was the year before last I went to Alaska with a friend for 2 weeks on a cruise and my husband was pretty sick before I left, although he was not in hospital although he went in hospital shortly after I left, which I never knew because nobody told me—and they just said to me, “Mom, if something happens, we’ll put him on ice until you get home. Just go.” What can you do? And it’s true, and as it happened he almost died while I was gone, but they didn’t phone me. I mean in fact, I got an e-mail from my son who was here when they had the ambulance call when he almost died, and he said, “Oh, everything’s fine.”And he said that because his brother told him he couldn’t say anything. So you have to, you have to live things that way and figure out how you’re going to make things work.

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