Almost Normal

For the past four weeks things have seemed almost normal. November, December, and January felt as if we were in a nose dive heading straight for earth. Then something happened, in the canyon we leveled off parallel to earth but very very close, gliding, wondering when the fuel will run out, while we try to appreciate the view. Sunday I finished a scrapbook layout, something I haven't done since the week before August 20, 2012.  Melanoma man made dinner. The sun came out after a week of rain and running the pump in our back yard to keep the water from coming in the house. I went for a walk on the beach with my Stephen minister, Kathy.

I ran into a friend at church last Wednesday night. She has been asking if she could bring dinner for the last 3 months and every time I have said no. This week I said "YES." I put it on the calendar and Melanoma Man asked me: "Is this because of the cancer?" Well yes it is. So there.

Saturday I met a friend and we went to have manicures and pedicures. Well that's not normal for me, that's new normal.  I made Mother's Day cards for my two moms, birth and adoptive. Melanoma Man and I sat on the sofa and talked about a workshop for caregivers he attended  on Saturday. Admittedly he said I should have attended. I'll get the book.

I saw the new quarter sized black lesion on his right leg, trying to take in as much detail as I could, comparing it with the images in my brain of his past keratoacanthomas, melanomas, basal cell carcinomas, squamous cell carcinomas. This one appears to be a breed I haven't seen before. There is no reference for it in my brain. The blackness, along with another black patch worry me. I try to avert my eyes and Carry On as if I have seen nothing. His next appointment at Moffitt is next week. They will figure it out. I don't have to. Images of all the dressings I've changed, stitches I've removed, waiting rooms I've waited in flit across the screen. I try to turn it off. Be here now. Be here now. Four weeks at a time between cancer center visits, I tell myself: "Don't waste this time."  As if I can grieve ahead in advance of bad news.

This morning I wake up and remember our wedding day, fifteen years ago today, just down the street in what was then my parent's home. We packed a whole lot of living into these years.

Leaving is Messy-written in 2012

It was this past Friday that she left this world. I was her nurse for the last 5 years and I hardly knew her. Many days I think I did a shabby job of it. “It,”  being convincing, coaxing, encouraging her to live, convincing her to swallow the same pills day after day after day. She could only do it for at most a month in the time I knew her and that was a stretch. She was always sure that she didn’t want to die. She was never sure what it takes to live. With each swallowed pill an implied confession: “I have AIDS, I have AIDS, I have AIDS.” A confession she could not tolerate for days in succession. And it was not even her confession to make. It was the confession of her mother, who left her eighteen and a half years ago. It was something handed down from one generation to the next.

She had the biggest beautiful doe eyes and a raspy voice when she chose to speak. More often than not, she opted not to speak. She stopped calling for a month. I later found out that I had hurt her feelings when I told her “YOU are disappearing before my eyes.” My apology was delivered to her by her sister, since she would not speak to me.

Last July I realized that it was already over. Her words clung to life, but her inactions predicted an early death. They never matched, ever, the words and actions. It was tricky, new caregivers, usually a new hospice nurse or social worker would call me elated, excited: “You’ll never believe this. She doesn’t want to die! She wants to take the pills.” 

And I would tell them that she never wanted to die, she always wanted to live. Look in her closet, just open the door I asked. And when the caregivers finally did, bottle upon bottle of life saving prescriptions tumbled from her closet. “See, it’s not me. I’m not the one holding her back.”

I had to change. I wanted to stick by her, even if it was messy. I remembered my father’s Mayo Clinic doctors abandoning him and any memory of him once they saw their treatments fail. Her last week I did not visit daily. I just couldn’t muster it. On the last day I was there. I whispered in her ear “You are loved.” I wanted to tell her that the angels were coming, but I didn’t want to scare her. She didn’t know about the angels yet. But now she does.