Tribute to my Wife

Tribute to Wife, Kym
I first "met" Kym some time around the year 2000.
She was a Californian, born and grew up in San Diego, I was a Kiwi, born and bred here in New Zealand.
I was a tutor, for a graphics program, in a Yahoo group, and she was one of my students. Kym was a very talented artist, but until then had only painted, on canvas. I used to teach the total newbies. And although most people would just follow the tutorials exactly, but Kym always added her own flair to anything she did.
It was my job to help out students to do each tutorial, then check everyone's tutorial and send feedback to each student privately, giving them pointers, or just commenting on their work.
But since Kym always sent in outstanding work, after first two or three lessons I started emailing her asking privately about her very obvious artistic eye.
After a couple of weeks, Telecom had some special that you could ring America and speak up to 6 hours, for something like eight dollars. So I asked if I could ring her, and that first conversation we spoke for the whole six hours. I loved her accent (was't too much like a yank), and she loved my Kiwi one. It was during that first conversation, in fact the first 15 minutes of that conversation, that she worked out that I was dyslexic.
Back in those days, emails that I wrote, hardly ever had words that were over five letters long, because I couldn't spell the words I needed. I would go to all sorts of lenghts to not let people know I was a dummy. But like I said, once Kym heard me speaking, she knew that I spoke clearly, and that my vocabulary was in fact extensive.
Once the call it ended, about two days later, I received an email from her, when she explained what dyslexia was, and sent me a link, to a website about dyslexia, and in particular a list of symptoms of dyslexia, there was a list of about 50 things, and I had 47 of them. LOL
Kym made my dyslexia a challenge, and started searching the Internet for things that could help me, she found a little program that would read the words on a webpage, or any digital file. It had a funny robotic voice, and of course it's pronunciation of some words was humorous.
She also found me a really neat program that I still use now. It was dictionary, thesaurus type program, and although dictionaries aren't a lot of good if you can't spell the word, I could copy and paste words into it, words are found on webpages and it would tell me the meaning of the word, I found that really helpful, I've never been able to understand the pronunciation characters in a dictionary, but that little dictionary has a feature to pronounce words. And of course this thesaurus was really good.
She found me lots of programs over the years, she even got an illegal copy of mircosoft office, and help me said it up so it would auto correct many of my spelling mistakes. I learnt to use all the programs really quickly, I am clever like that, I never use a help file, never found a very helpful, but can nut out how programs work, with ease. I used to download programs for the one month trial, learn to use them, and not bother with the many more because I had no need for them, I just used like a challenge. Photoshop was the most fun, still love that program.
We quickly became great friends, and would spend hours and hours and hours chatting on MSN live chat, which was sort of like Skype is now, except you didn't have videos, so it was just chatting back and forth using a headset, often times the connection on MSN was better than talking on the telephone. It wasn't the lag the telephone often had.
Back in those days, I was crippled by back pain, and spent my life in a single bed, that bed was straddled by a kitchen table, which had my computer monitor on, while I laid flat and bed, with the keyboard propped on a pillow on my stomach, and the mouse I used on a book that laid beside me.  I was never able to learn touch typing, and even to this day I need to see the letters on the keys when I type.
Anyway, back to Kym, she was looking after her mother at the time, who had some kind of heart disease, so she couldn't talk to me while her mother was awake, but as soon as her mother went to sleep, she would come on the computer, about 6 o'clock my time. And we would speak until midnight, Kym would often go to sleep, with headphones on, so I would listen to her sleep, and carry on with what I was doing. I knew long before I ever met her that she didn't snore LOL.  Sometimes I would just keep talking, and I hear Kym wake up, and she go off-line, and get a couple of hours sleep... in a bed.
Kyms Aunt, was planning a trip to Australia, but changed it to New Zealand and asked Kym to come along with her. Kym and I knew before that we were destined to be together, so Kym stayed behind, after their 2 week holiday and Akaroa and Christchurch.
We first met in real life on valentines day 2002, we always considered 14 February, our anniversary.  I'll never forget waiting at the Christchurch airport, and finally seeing aunty and Kym come down the escalator, the laughter, the tears of joy, the hugs, more laughter or tears.

Right from the first day, Kym started doing acupressure and massage on my back, and got me up and moving around, I was slow, and the pain was still there a lot, but not nearly as bad as it had been. We began going for walks, firstly just a few steps, and adding one step each time we walked.
I lived in Invercargill, so after dropping Aunty at the airport, Kym and I drove back to Invercargill. We both had digital cameras, and Kym was so blown away with the scenery New Zealand, so we arrived home with memory cards full, of photos were taken on our two megapixel cameras.
The first day, Kym saw the set up, I used to use a computer, she decided she would go out and buy me a La-Z-Boy chair, so I could sit reclined, rather than laying in bed.
We had to share a computer for about two months before her one arrived from the states. We didn't really use the computer very much, we didn't need to, we were together.
We took an awful lot of photos, in those first7 weeks she was here, we travelled day trips all-around Southland, taking photos.
Then on April 1 disaster struck, my computer had a virus, I didn't know about, I turned my computer on, or went to turn it on, on April Fools' Day, and there was nothing there, the harddrive was totally wiped.
We were gutted, I didn't know how to reformate in those days, so we dropped the computer off at the computer fixit place, they confirmed everything was gone.
We went home in shock, leaving the computer to be refornatted. Drinking a coffee, and having a cigarette or 6, wondering how it happened, and me crying over all those photos gone. I looked outside at the sky, it was a beautiful photo taking day, so I said "stuff it, lets go get some new photos. "
We went out to small beach cove called Cosy Nook, arrived later that day, and got a few photos, then I could see the sunset, was going to be gorgeous, so we filled our cameras memory cards.
We picked up the reformatted computer, on the way home, got home and downloaded the photos, they were some of the prettiest photos I've ever taken before or since. I don't have any those photos or many photos that we took over the coming years, at one stage did a rough count, we had upwards of 65,000 photos, of various parts of the South Island of New Zealand.  We only ever kept the best ones, so goodness knows how many hundreds of thousands of photos we took together.
Time moved on, and the time that Kym could stay in New Zealand, legally, was almost at an end. She started the immigration process, but there was a stumbling block, although Kym was over 50 then, she had been naughty, okay done some really bad things when she was young, and spent time in prison, and of course immigration wanted a police/FBI record.
After a lot of buggering around, Kyms file from the FBI and police arrived, I only checked the 1st couple of pages, I knew about what was there, and didn't bother to read the other 50 or so pages, it was obvious she was never going to be allowed to stay here permanently. So we spent the evening tearing up and burning all these pages, and she stayed here illegally the next eight or nine years. So much for, you do the crime, and you do the time, and get to live life again.
We moved to Christchurch, a couple of weeks after that, I had taught Kym to hand code websites, which means build websites without using a program.
And she being a graphic artist now, started to build the odd website.
As I said before, we had a lot of very nice photos of New Zealand, so I built a website displaying, the photos, which became a stock photo bank.  We had 40 photographers from around the world, and about 60,000 photos at the end, we didn't have a lot of sales, we just didn't have the money for advertising.



We had the stock photo bank, for about five years, I was always a people person, and Kym kept adding to the website.
As we could, we kept going on photo trips, and taking more photos.
Then, I started having seizures, and an MRI scan showed that I was developing some mysterious illness, which was showing as tiny white mushrooms growing on the top of my brain stem, and my brain was developing mysterious dead spots, not big spots only about the size of a pinhead, but there were a lot of them, and hell of a lot, so not wanting to tell anyone, we just said i had a heart attack, and we closed the stock photo bank, and concentrated on building websites.
Another couple of years past, and Kym's cousin back in San Diego became very ill, and Kym decided she would go back and take care of him, she was to go back and find an apartment and I was to sell up everything we had in Tauranga, follow in a couple of months.
I arrived in the USA a couple of months, before Pres Obama was elected for the first time. Kym married me, the first week I was there. Yet I don't remember the date, as I said, our anniversary was always Valentine's Day February 14.
I was, quite a hit in the states, everybody loved my accent, and my bubbly, honest if not naive, delightful personality and I think every job interview went to, we got the contract to build their website, and would do the website, and I would make that website, very easy findable and Google. A skill called Search Engine Optimisation SEO.
Most places would advertise search engine results, on the first page of Google, I would offer, and could deliver, the first 9/10 results on page 1 of Google.
After about 2 years, we grew canabis, just because I wanted to, because it was legal there. That was a lot of fun, little did I know that it would be the beginning of the end of my pain, the first time. I was going to a chiropractor, who encouraged me to smoke cannabis, or use it before the appointment, to relax my back so he could adjusted easily. I never liked smoking it, but used to add it to food etc.

Then, and May 2011, we were driving home from the chiropractor and I just said to Kym how my back was feeling so much better, and how I should be going to see him less often.
We stopped at the traffic lights, and will rear-ended by a woman who was talking on her cellphone.
Our car was a write off, her insurance company settled with us, three days later, and seven days after that, a blood clot I'd received and my neck from the accident, broke loose and went up to my brain, and I had a stroke.
The stroke effected my personality drastically, I went from a mild-mannered yet fun loving woman, to an angry, verbally abusive bitch.
A month, after the stroke, I knew that I would not be able to work for a long time, so I got an extension on my credit card, and booked a flight home to New Zealand. It was way too expensive to die in the states.
Kym and I stayed friends for about nine months after I came home, then one day she stopped talking to me.  The last message I ever got, was a couple of days before Valentine's Day. We would have been a couple for 11 years.
It may have be silly of me, but I always expected we get back together one day. But it wasn't to happen. About eight months later, I heard that she developed cancer, then about a year later, I heard she had finished chemo and was doing very well.

Time past, and I was pleased she had moved on, but sad she wouldn't talk to me, actually I was gutted she wouldn't take to me. About 18 months later, out of the blue, about three weeks ago,  Kyms new girlfriend contacted me, and asked me to pray for Kym. She was very ill and had developed several brain tumours. I'm not the praying type. but I sent her a lot of good thoughs.

Over the next week, this woman wrote to me three or four times, telling me how Kym was pretty much a vegetable, she didn't recognise anybody, couldn't speak, but would sometimes smile. It broke my heart, think of Kym like that, we had ups and downs, and the end was messy, but no one deserves that.
I rang Kym's aunt, a week ago today, a Thursday, and she thinking I knew Kym had died a couple of days before, mentioned something about Kym's funeral,  I was gutted, and couldn't speak so ended the call. Kym died, oh Kym, I wish we had at least been friends at the end...

17/7/2014.
I was to travel to Auckland, to be a guest speaker, on a radio show called The Nutters Club and Sunday Night. I cried for a day, and on Friday night made a deal with myself, that I would stop crying until after I got home on Monday, then I would do my grieving.
I have been tearful a couple of times, since been home, her ghost visits when I close my eyes.

3rd April 2015. So many tears in the past 10 months, I think of Kym so so many times a day, often dream of her, I miss her so badly. I know it was years we never spoke before she died, but I always thought, that one day, one day she would forgive me, for whatever it was I did, sometimes i want to know what it was, most of the time, I know it would just be something else to haunt me. .... now of course thats not possible.

Thank you Kym, because of you, I no longer believe I'm dumb, I have seen so many beautiful things in my own country, I've learned so many computer skills, I'm writing at last, and one day, I will publish my story, our story, and now my story of what happened after you. I saw the Grand Canyon, I got to grow marijuana legally, I discovered how to make Marijuana pain gone cream, I took some pretty awesome photos over the years. Best of all I met your Aunt and Lee, I have gotten to know Kasey, very recently, she is a lovely woman isn't she. She has a job where she wears a Tux to work, she said one day she will take a photo of herself, so I can have a look for you. I have seen so many beautiful things through your eyes, Kym, things that would never have looked so lovely, looking at them without you there.
Kasey looking at the photos I have on facebook, Liking and commenting on some, I have got to remember some of the lovely times you and I had.

Adios Kym, I really did love you, I just didn't know how to show you, and was just too screwed up to believe I was lovable.


Anytime you see a reference to this song, or Kym, if I am playing it on youtube, its me feeling this was about you Old Girl