possible causes....

my daughter, brooke, reminded me today that i get depressed this time of year every year....around may 17. may 17, 1985 was the day my dear husband (her step father) , gerald, dropped dead from a blood clot in his heart. you would think i would remember that, but over the years, everything blends together....all the shock, pain and sorrow have become a part of me, nothing i could or would attribute to a single day.


gerald was working for scripps institute, a scientist, protein crystallographer, working to resolve a better, longer lived insulin for diabetics. an insulin with a protein attached would last much longer in the human system. i don't know if his theory of insulin with a protein attached was found to work and carried to completion or not. last i heard one of his colleagues in back in london was working to complete it.

the moment he died, he apparently was walking with a test tube in his hand, taking it to the microscope when suddenly, he just collapsed to the floor. instantly dead.
day after day, for months before,
he had complained of a pain in his calf .....and the day before his death he had turned to say to me, " that's funny, my leg doesn't hurt today." his autopsy showed, yes, it was a massive clot from his leg that traveled to his heart where there was a bit of occlusion in one ventricle. i forget exactly which ventricle now.
our son was only 13 months old and brooke nearly 8.
what followed were many years of heavy, hardship and weary existence for me, all the while trying to keep it together for my kids... i was swimming upstream all the time.

the shock of it, the sadness and the shear agony of losing my husband so young caused my hair to fall out and made me susceptible to panic attacks and other nervous disorders.
it took time, years, to stand steady again.
but, i still suffer some. forever, i suppose.
funny as this sounds, it is good to be reminded why i may be suffering right now of depression. at least NOW i don't feel so helpless about it. at least now, i can think where it may have come from.
and, i know, this, too, shall pass.