The First Blog Post

Hello, and welcome.

2007 was a very bad year for my family. It's April 2008, and it's really starting to hit me. So I've decided to start blogging...put some of my thoughts out on the web...hoping it'll help.

I just don't know how to start. I want to give a little background and such...

My name is Ed King. I was born in 1965, and that makes me 42 right now. My wife Jenny was also born in 1965...and we both have lived in Michigan all our lives. We've been together for 21 years...dated for 8 and married for 13.

We never tried to have kids...and we didn't really try to avoid it...and we found ourselves in or late 30's thinking that it was going to be in the cards for us. Until that fateful day when Jenny told me that we had a 'glitch' (as I was about to by airline tickets to Hilton Head!). In June 2004 we "welcomed" Chloe Elizabeth to our family. Chloe's 3 now...turning 4 in a few months. She really is a joy, but we didn't realize what a gift from Heaven she was really going to be.

The short story is that our family has lost 4 family members in the last 2 years.

My wife Jenny's dad Ed Waldron passed away in September 2005 at the age of 72. He had a tumor in his spine that was thought to be lung cancer.

Jenny's mother Peg had suffered from long-untreated high blood pressure. She developed kidney disease. Following a burst divirticulitis, Peggy suffered mulitple organ failure and passed away in August 2007.

Late in 2005, Jenny's 43 year old sister Darcy was diagnosed with Lung Cancer. She fought her way through chemo, radiation, and other treatments. She passed away in September 2007. Darcy was married and had a 16 year old daughter.

Darcy's illness really took it's toll on Peggy, along with missing Ed. Peggy was fairly depressed, and we asked her one time if there was anything she really enjoyed...and she said Chloe just brightened her day. As tough as it was to lose her, we feel it's fortunate that Peggy went before her daughter Darcy...I just don't think we're supposed to bury our children.

Jenny had lost half her family in 2 years. She has two older brothers - Eddie and Craig.

As tough as that was, I remember thinking that...with Jenny's family being 10 years older than mine...that the Kings should have another 10 years or so before we started dealing with such grief.

We had a relatively uneventful October, and we were starting to try to figure out what to do for Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving was Peggy's holiday...her family from Upper Michigan would always come down and stay at the Waldron house.

Then my mother went into the hospital in November. Mom had suffered with various things through her life. The last year she had a cough/cold thing that just kept coming back on her. Her doctor "diagnosed" her with COPD and IPF...a pair of lung disorders. They wanted to do a biopsy on her lung the year before, but the procedure scared her.

Well, she went into the hospital with pneumonia on Sunday, November 11th. They moved her into an isolation room while the tested her for TB. Mom passed away early Thursday morning. The doctors were all shocked, they did not understand what happened. My father and I choose not to have an autopsy done. The doctors speculate that she had a heart attack or a blood clot. There are lots of questions...but I don't think it really matters. My mom was 63.


I have a lot of things to say about my mom, and I'll get to them in later posts. Losing so much of Jenny's family I think helped a little when my mom went. But right now it just seems like all the color has gone out of life. I recently realized that I just don't want to leave the house right now. I'm on like 20 mg of fluoxetine (it's like zoloft), but I think I need to get in for some extra help.

My goal is to post more...tell everyone what my mom meant to me...how much we miss Jenny's dad and mom...how horrified we are that Darcy's not around anymore. I'm going to try to get pictures up.