[Crimson Ghost]

This will be long, involved, and personal.
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After 23 years, The Wife and I are moving.

We have been hired to be caretakers of a property owned by my new lodge, and it'll be free rent and utilities included.
After the last five or so years, we need something good to happen.

Let me explain.

First, my father (a Jehovah's Witness) disowned me because I refused to rescind my Masonic membership.
Two years go by, and my father dies. I found out when I read the obit in the paper.

The same year, The Wife undergoes a total hysterectomy.
December 27.
Merry Fucking Christmas.
She's afflicted with endometriosis that has attached to the bladder and covered the ovaries, and can't stand upright without being in agony.
She also had four cysts in her uterus, each the size of a tennis ball, and one in each of the ovaries, the size of plums.
They excised a dime-sized piece of her bladder, and she is catheterized for three months.

The following year, my mother-in-law takes ill, and begins the slow decline.
At the same time that she is on her deathbed, I end up with a staph infection in my shoulder.

Because we're dealing with her mother dying, I don't tell her about the dull pain in my shoulder, and it slowly gets worse.
It gets to the point where moving my arm is painful, and I began losing sensation in the arm.
Finally, I go to the hospital, and the doctor tells me that if I had decided to go back to sleep that morning, I probably would not have woken up. I was about 2 hours away from going into severe sepsis, according to the ER doctor.
I was not only in danger of losing my arm, I was close to dying, and didn't know it.
When I was admitted, I had a blood glucose count of 574, an A1C of 9.1, and blood pressure of 195/120.
The doc says that I should be taken IMMEDIATELY to an OR, but there isn't one open.
The doctor has me sign a release, and begins operating right in the ER.
Of course, The Wife blows her stack, and starts screaming "Why didn't you get checked earlier? Are you fucking stupid?"
"Well, dear, your mother is dying, and when I mentioned not feeling well, you told me I was upset that no one was paying attention to me."
A little reality check there, as I try to stay in the background as much as possible. And she knows that. Later she admitted that she knew that if I wanted to go to the hospital, something was wrong.

During my little vacation, I call the secretary of what was my lodge and tell him why I won't be around for a few days.
His response? "Yeah, so? What do I care?"
Well.
That really pissed me off.
My first meeting back, I get "You don't look sick. You just wanted to slack off."
I decide to join a different lodge.
When a request for information from Lodge B gets to Lodge A, I get bitched at by the shitbag who is the head of Lodge A.
"WHAT THE FUCK? I didn't give you my permission to join another lodge! Who the fuck do you think you are?"

Meanwhile, all the meds that I'm on at that time are causing me to black out, I can barely breathe, and I can't even form a sentence because I'm so out of it.
Four insulin shots of thirty units a day, two thousand mgs. of Metformin three times a day (Let me tell you, Metformin WILL clear out your intestines. I was afraid to cough.)
High blood pressure meds that if I blinked too hard, I'd pass out.
I tell my doctor about all this and she says "That's just the way your life will be now, so get used to it."
After nine months, I declare 'Fuck this action!' and stop the meds all together.

A new year rolls around, and the bullshit at Lodge A reaches a breaking point.
I get accused of things that there is no possible way I could have been involved in. When I prove this beyond reasonable doubt, I am told "Well someone has to take the blame, so it will be you."
Fuck that.
I demand a dimit. This removes me from Lodge A, the lodge that I was made a Freemason in.
Most members will tell you that leaving your mother lodge is a drastic move.
I get cursed at during the meeting, in front of an open Bible.
As I leave the building, one of the past masters (whom I never got along with anyway) says "At least we got rid of that troublemaker." (He has since died of Stage 4 esophageal cancer. Couldn't have happened to a better person.)

I go home and say to myself "Well, it can't get worse."

I should have known better.

Early last year, The Wife gets a call from her doctor.
When the doctor calls you, it's never good.
Early stage breast cancer.
She loses it.
For two weeks, she does nothing but lay in bed and cry.
We go to a consultation, and it gets worse.
"Due to the history of fibroid cysts in your breasts, and the high probability of cancer forming in them, we are suggesting a bi-lateral mastectomy."

Great.
Wonderful.
Marvelous.

She has the procedure, and the plastic surgeon puts in the expanders at the same time. Operation one.
She develops a staph infection, so the doc removes the one expander and replaces it. Operation two.
Anther infection. Remove the new expander. Operation three.
An infection in the other expander. That gets removed. Operation four.
Plastic surgeon removes the excess skin and subcutaneous fat. Operation five.
All this happens in three months.
Last summer was spent in the hospital.

Finally, The wife comes home, and I do everything I can for her. Cook, housework, laundry...
She likes being doted on, but insists on trying to do for herself.
Little by little, she gets stronger.

I hear thru the grapevine that the shitbags from my old lodge are running around to other lodges, saying "Oh, they're faking her getting cancer. They just want the attention."
I inform one of them that if I hear those words come out of his mouth, I will break his neck.
"You better not! I'll report you to the Grand Lodge!"
"Look, you Mister Potatohead looking fuck - If I hear you or one of your little cocksucking friends says anything about my wife, I will hold YOU personally responsible. If Fuckface says it, YOU catch an asswhipping. I don't give a good Goddamn who's around. Think I'm lying? Try me."

Potatohead finally sees her at a reception.
At this time, she does not have the prosthetics yet, and if you knew her before the surgery, you'd definitely notice that she's flat.
Potatohead turns right around and avoids us for the night.

My new lodge, and the other six lodges in the district, all contact The Wife to offer support, either by email, text, card, call, ect...

So, that brings us up to the beginning of 2016.

The caretaker for the property has, for the past three or so years, been slacking off on his duties. He quit/got fired last month, so...

The Wife and I were selected to be asked if we'd be interested in the job.
"Oh, hell yeah!"
We've been throwing out stuff, selling stuff, giving stuff away...

I'm pleased. Since I stopped all the meds, I've dropped 100 pounds, my breathing has improved, my blood sugar has returned to a normal level.
The Wife is happy with the way she looks now, her energy is returning, and she's losing weight, not as fast as she'd like, but it's coming off.

To top it all off, one of the members gave us his old car.
A 1999 Crown Vic LX.

Things are starting to look up.
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tl;dr