Since we last spoke, I turned 27 and my dog got diagnosed with cancer. I'll update you on all of that when I steal my husband's computer from him. Today I wanted to share this incredible article my new friend Kate wrote. I'm not sure how I came to read Kate's blog, but each post leaves me with chills, and usually tears. One day soon I'm going to take that 3 hour drive to DC and meet her in person.
In the meantime, please, my friends, meet Kate:
Bunk Beds and Backpacks
We were
married when I was twenty six, and we held hands in a church in Arizona while I
hoped the day would go off without incident.
Now I am thirty, and I hold his feet in my hands as I slather them in
peppermint oil and massage, hoping he will rest.
"I
was thinking on Saturday we could go look for bunk beds in the morning," I
say as I sit on our bed, trying to create nightly "rituals"--as
suggested by our holistic health practitioner--because we don't sleep.
"Sure,"
my husband says, reclined against the pillows, "we can do that."
A
birthday gift for our soon-to-be-two-year-old, a big boy bed like his big
brother. But then I imagine their room
without a crib, just two boys, no more babies.
I start to cry.
I begin
to tell him that I want another baby, even though he already knows and even
though I already know what he'll say.
He's not interested in having more children, and it kills me every time
he says it. He's too tired as it is, he
will tell me, we can finally travel, the kids are finally old enough. If we have another baby, we are back to
square one, back to sleepless nights and non-stop nursing and no time for
anything that we love.
And sure
enough, he says all of these things.
"But
they grow up," I tell him, "they're not babies forever--look how fast
it happens," I motion to their room on the other side of our wall, the
room that holds two towheaded boys. They
are enough, but sometimes, I tell my husband, I long to hold a baby, to know
that we will have a house full of noise and toys and balls and dirty clothes
for a long, long time. That we will have
millions of grand babies and great grand babies.
I can't be left alone, I think to myself.
"I
won't try to change your mind," I say, rolling onto my back, lying next to
him. "I wouldn't want you end up
blaming me if something happens."
If something happens.
He sighs
so deeply that seems to unleash something in him. He clears his throat, and I can tell, without
looking, that he is holding back tears.
"There
is nothing I want more in this world than to have a house full of kids with
you," he confesses. "But I
don't know what our life will be like, I don't know if I'll be here in five
years, or even two years, and just like you don't want to held to blame, I
don't want to leave you with a big family if I can't be here to help you. What if I get really sick again, and you're
taking care of a newborn? I can't do
that to you."
He refers
to his diagnosis--stage III melanoma--with a fifty percent survival rate after
five years. He is a year into his
clinical trial, yet for some reason only recently has this statistic begun to
haunt him. It haunts him to the point of
sleeplessness, to mental anguish. It
haunts him so relentlessly that he has started to change--he is not the same
man I married four years ago. So I
massage his feet with peppermint oil, hoping it'll bring him back to me.
I am
crying now, big tears rolling down my face, because I understand him,
understand the truth that is finally escaping his lips, and my heart breaks for
it.
"But
for me it's different," I confess, "because I want more little versions of you, just in case." Like an insurance policy, I think, a safety
net, I want to surround myself with more little people that are just like him--if something happens.
We lie
together, crying slow-rolling tears down exhausted cheeks, silently
understanding and silently struggling.
I roll
towards him, wiping my tears on his shoulder and neck, burying myself in his
smell. "I'm so sorry," I
whisper. I'm so sorry we have to live
like this, I'm so sorry that all of our decisions are based on the probability
of life versus death, that his cancer won't come back, that he will win. I think these things, but don't say them
aloud.
"I
just want to give you everything you want," he whispers back, "I'm so
sorry I can't."
Eventually,
we fall into a sleep so deep it obliterates all possibilities of dreams.
Two days
later I am seated in a coffee shop, watching ice skaters glide in circles on a
DC ice rink though a big picture window.
I try to write, but my mind is blurry from lack of sleep and throbbing
emotion, and so instead, I call my mother, because I know she will pick up, and
I know she will listen.
"Why
are you at Starbucks at nine o'clock at night?" she asks me from her vacation
in Florida, knowing I would usually be at home in my pajamas, sitting with a
hot mug of tea and my husband by my side.
Tonight, however, I am frozen and tired and cannot wait another second
for my breakdown.
Surrounded
by strangers working silently on laptops, with ear buds and the buzz of
caffeine to drown me out, I begin to detail the latest emotional trauma in a
slew of disturbances over the last fifteen months. I tell her about babies, about statistics
that she already knows, about my husband's thoughts of his own death. I sob as I divulge my deepest fears,
shivering uncontrollably--though from cold or from fear I can't decipher.
She is
silent for just a moment before she speaks.
"You
are both making this decision out of fear," she tells me, "You are
afraid he's going to die, and so you want a baby. He's afraid he's going to die, and so he
doesn't want a baby. But both of you are
using fear as your motivator. That's no
way to make a decision--especially one like this."
I watch
an ice skater spin in circles in the center of the ice, faster and faster,
until she almost loses control. She
stops herself just in time, then skates away.
With a
brown paper napkin, I dab mascara stains off my face. I glance around to see if anyone was witness
to my breakdown. If they were, they
don't show it.
"Thanks,
mom," I tell her, "I should go home now."
I find my
husband at the computer.
"Did
you talk to him?" I ask. My stint
at the coffee shop was an effort to grant him the privacy of a phone call in
our tiny DC townhouse--so he could discuss things like dying without his wife
around.
"I
did," he gives me a half smile and a shrug. Then he begins.
***
"Mmmmm,"
I say, glancing up from my computer, "smells good." My husband shrugs and modestly tells me he
hopes it turns out as he stirs the fragrant curry he's making for dinner. I put the kettle on, then lean against the
counter, waiting. It has been a week
since our baby breakdown.
"We've
talked so much about having another baby, but have we come to a
resolution?" I watch him.
"Will you ever feel comfortable enough with the statistics to move
forward?"
He leans
back, a dish towel thrown over his shoulder and hands in his pockets, thinking.
"You
know, my friend told me it gets easier the further away you get from it,"
my husband says as I pour boiling water into my cup. His cancer friend, his mentor, who is fifteen
years from his diagnosis, was the phone call my husband made earlier in the
week as I watched ice skaters through blurry eyes in a coffee shop. "You have to live your life like you
would without cancer," he told my husband.
"You can't let it run your life.
And it will get easier, you're still right in the thick of this."
But the
further we get from this, the older I get, I think to myself.
He shifts
his weight and I notice the dark circles under his eyes, his disheveled
hair--reminders of a surprise visit from the side effects of his treatment and
his weekend spent in bed, forgoing our ski trip because he was too ill to travel. Another example of the utter lack of control
he has over his--our--life.
"To
be honest, I crave a little bit of stability right now," he tells me, his
blue eyes misting. He's right, we have
moved three times in the last eighteen months, and we can't find things like
birth certificates and passports.
"I
still haven't unpacked the backpack from Argentina," he laughs. The backpack, storing his medical records
from the hospital in Buenos Aires that biopsied his cancer-filled lymph nodes,
that delivered the news that would change our lives, sits in a closet in our
basement--a metaphor for how we've dealt with this disease. For the last year, we worked through the
physical trauma of this illness--cutting out the cancer, infusing medication
into his body to prevent a recurrence, dealing with infections and subsequent
hospitalizations until he was finally healthy--and now, at the year anniversary
of his clinical trial, we are just starting to sift through the emotional
wreckage.
I watch
him as he moves back to the stove, absentmindedly stirring the curry. Another baby, perhaps, but right now, he
needs someone to help him unload the backpack.
This wasn't what I expected when I married my husband on a 115 degree
day in the desert four years ago. But it's
what I promised.
"Let's
go get that backpack," I say.
Chills, right? Go read all Kate's post now: http://effthec.com/
And forgive me for being a horrible blogger. I needed a little break. XOXO!
