Fear, Birthdays, Boats: It's Emotional Potpourri!

Tucked away in an actual scrapbook, and squirreled away here in my digital files, there's a picture that I love and hate in somewhat equal measure. I literally can barely stand to look at it. But the time as come, as the walrus said, to talk of many things, and thus I'm sharing the photo that sparks fear and tears and anger in me even as I well up over the happy little peek into the past that it affords. Behold:

My husband, Nick, turned 39 on April 19, 2013. The little tykes (and they WERE little, weren't they? Our sweet girl had just turned 6 and our little guy was barely four) and I celebrated by making him mint chocolate cupcakes, complete with the appropriate minty oreos on top. And we sang "Happy Birthday" and they helped him blow out the candles. I wonder what he wished for, way back then. I wonder if the kids had thought to wish for anything. I was just happy that I had completed the cupcakes, because I was also working full time (finals were just around the corner!) and president of the PTO (our annual fundraiser was only two weeks away) and had a couple of other irons in the fire, as people our age usually do. Nick was just finishing his MBA, which he'd been getting in his "free" time after working long weeks and, often, weekends (the IT business doesn't take weekends off). M was in first grade, and F was finishing his first year of full day Montessori preschool. 

Exactly one week later, I was diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer. And the bottom fell out of our lives, and the cover blew off, and we went from tiny crises that we had manufactured ourselves (missed deadlines, arguments, disagreements with colleagues - you know the drill) to one enormous crisis that, honestly, hasn't ended. And I should be grateful for that, frankly. But there are days that I am not grateful.

Nope. There are days when I am just plain sad, and absolutely weary, and I look at this picture and the tears just well out of my eyes, as if this picture were some sort of horrible magnet of pain. Because look at that photo!  So genuine. So focused. So happy.  Living right there in the moment, about to eat cupcakes and making wishes for a fun year ahead, maybe a family vacation. Maybe M wished she'd lose another tooth (she loves to lose teeth) and F - well, he was thinking deeply about it, but he's our philosopher child, so that makes perfect sense. He might have just been focusing on blowing out a candle on his own. Who knows? And my husband. My brilliant, beautiful, funny, generous, kind, and amazing husband, who I write about so rarely not because he doesn't matter but because he matters so damn much that I literally can't imagine getting through a day without him. He's probably wishing for a nice night together as grown-ups and all of the fun grown-up things that all alone grown-ups get to do. 

But what he got instead at 39 was a complex, enormous, unbelievably horrendous disaster of epic proportions. A wife with a life-threatening illness, who underwent several complex surgeries and has become, in essence, another child to take care of, to nurture, to help and to hold and to encourage - and he never once - NOT ONCE - complains, or asks for relief, or gets angry or hysterical or withdrawn. What a horrible thing I've done to him. To his birthday wishes, whatever they were. To his forties. To the rest of, let's face it, his life. 

And my sweet, innocent, hopeful, helpful, funny children - they had to learn about cancer at 4 and 6. And now they're 8 and 10 and they know - all they've ever known - is that Mom is sick, Mom needs more sleep, Mom can't go skiing because her lungs can't take it, Mom won't be able to be a volunteer on that class trip because she has a doctor's appointment, an emergency trip to the clinic, really low oxygen, not enough energy. All of those things we did when they were little children - we walked 3-4 miles a day, every day, pointing out trees and birds and dogs and butterflies, and visiting parks and construction sites and the fairy tree near our home and restaurants, and I carried them and rocked them and sang to them and held them and I was strong, I was so strong and well and I intended to be that woman for my children, one who was strong and confident and complete and loving - they don't remember that mom. That mom I meant to be, I dreamed of becoming, I worked to make a reality. No. They only know a broken mom, a mom who sometimes gets sad and has to leave the table, who rarely makes dinner and who doesn't go running around parks and never taught them the splits or a backbend or all the other yoga tricks I easily did on a regular basis before cancer and all of its complications came. They've learned to feel a little sorry for mom, to be honest, and - again, to be honest - that's one of the worst fucking things in the world, to realize that your kids feel sorry for you. 

And so yes, I know I should be grateful that here I am, almost four full years after the statistics told me to tidy up my affairs and my first oncologist said "We'll do what we can," with the most hopeless sigh in the world - such a hopeless sound that I beat my feet right out of there and ran into the arms of my current medical team, because they gave me - they give me - hope. And I'm up and moving and able to write and think and read and love, and feel weary and hopeless and irritable (and serene and loving and high-spirited and hopeful, as it comes). I am grateful for all of these things, and for so much more. For the prayers and the dinners and the offers of assistance and the little care packages that appear just when I really need one and for my family and Nick's family and the adults who have watched and loved and looked after our children as if they were their own during emergencies that I never ever planned to have to reckon with. I AM grateful. But some days - some days I'm just sick with dread and God, I am so weary. Four years of giving myself pep talks and keeping things as low-key as possible for our children and smiling blandly at people who say, "I just don't know how you do it" (same way you get out of bed, lady - except some days I only get out of bed to take a bubble bath and get back in bed, because I have no life and everyone is at school and work) or (my personal favorite) "You're okay now, though, right?" - well, it gets to a girl after a while. And I want so badly, with every single fiber of my being, to go back to this picture and turn the page and find instead that I didn't have cancer, that our lives just continued on their merry ways, and my career and my relationships and my capabilities and our family just all were able to blossom and grow the way I expected they would, the way we all somehow think we deserve. And I would do everything right this time and never yell at my children or flounce off in a huff or make snarky remarks or be too aggressive. And it would all be perfect and good and I promise, I'd make the most of it. Every day.

And then of course, I sit here and reread what I've just written and I'm automatically ashamed, because I still have time, however long it is (and none of us can know), and so many others have died - almost THIRTY MILLION people worldwide have died of cancer since my diagnosis! - due to this terrible disease while I'm still alive and generally hardy and hale and all of those good things. And then I wonder how much of this agonizing and wondering and wishing isn't so much about me being forced to deal with cancer specifically but more about human nature generally. We always think, "if only," don't we? We always say, "If I had...then I'd be...." Because we know we're imperfect, and not nearly as full of grace as we had hoped, and we get frustrated and sad and scared. All of us. The reality, of course, is that the "if onlys" and the "if I hads" - they don't really matter all that much. Because those are untouchable fantasies, for the most part, and we live in the bright, blinding light of reality, where we can burn ourselves in too many ways to contemplate today.

Anyway. My point is this. In the end, we have to make a choice. And we have to keep making it, each and every day. We have to decide whether we're going to steer our little boats with verve and audacity, into the fearsome unknown - or if we're going to join the balance of humanity and (with apologies to Fitzgerald) beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. 

Cancer chrystallizes this choice, but it's the same choice we all must make, isn't it?  Most days, I choose to sail my little boat.  But sometimes - some days, like maybe today - some days, I get caught in a tidepool or a strange little eddy and become so exhausted at the even the prospect of trying to escape it that my boat isn't going anywhere at all.  I have to just lie down on the dock and soak up the sun and hope it charges me up enough to at least get onboard and consider casting off tomorrow. That's allowed, I think. Isn't it?

If you need me, I'll be out on my dock, napping in the sun. Probably with that photo clutched to my chest and leaking a little about the eyeses. But I'll be there. I'll be there, lying on the somewhat splintered, definitely warm, satisfyingly woody dock. Listening for the gulls or trailing my fingers into the cool, green water, searching for a fish. I'll be there, feeding the ducks and maybe daydreaming a little bit of the woman I thought I would be.