Feelings, oh-oh-oh Feelings

Maddie, Riley, and I went out to dinner last night with my mom, my stepdad, my dad, and my in-laws (who were in town for the weekend). Maddie and Riley were coloring on their kids' menus with restaurant-provided crayons while we waited to order. Maddie tends to press very hard when she draws, and she snapped one crayon in half with the pressure. She selected another crayon and kept drawing. It, too, snapped in half.

This was too much. She turned to my mom, heaved a big sigh, and said, "Moo, I'm very frustrated right now. I'm just very frustrated." And she clearly was. I got one of Riley's crayons (he's not much for drawing) and passed it to her, explaining that the crayons would be less likely to snap in half if she would not press so hard. She understood, and that was that.

What a change from even just a few months ago, when an incident like that could have—and would have—sent her right over the edge. But what impressed me more than just her control of her emotions was her ability to express herself, to articulate that she was frustrated. Not mad. Not angry. Not sad. Frustrated. She got it just right. I know a lot of adults (sometimes myself included) who can't pinpoint what they are feeling, and, even if they can, who don't necessarily feel safe talking about it.

Being a parent has awakened in me a range of emotions—good and bad—that I didn't know lived within me. I've had to learn how to manage these feelings, which can sometimes be a challenge, especially when there's no other adult around. Because I want Maddie and Riley to understand that it's OK to experience and express a wide range of emotions and because they are usually the only ones around to witness my ups and downs, I've tried to be very open about explaining what I'm feeling. I say things like, "I'm getting very angry," or "I feel sad today," or "Those words really upset me" a lot. In the past month or so, I've started to hear Maddie and Riley express those sentiments, too. "Maddie, I'm angry with you!" I'll hear Riley intone. "Mama, I'm a little sad. I miss my crib. It's hard to be a big girl," Maddie sniffled the other night.

I find that I tend to either give Maddie and Riley too much credit—expecting them to be able to do things that are beyond the capacity of a three year old—or not to give them enough credit, and emotional intelligence falls into the latter category. It was not until Maddie expressed her frustration last night at dinner that I understood what a good grasp she and Riley have on what they are feeling and just how capable they are of expressing that. It makes me so happy, and I want to do everything I can to encourage it. I guess the best way to do it is to keep having feelings myself and to keep telling the two of them what those feelings are. Thankfully, that feels very natural to me.

**********************
The in-laws came, the in-laws went. We actually had a very nice visit. In some ways it felt too short (gasp!). Maddie and Riley were thrilled to have them around, and, in the end, that's what matters.

They brought the kids some new toys and clothes, which is always fun for one and all. One of the things they brought Maddie was a little Dora doll, the kind whose eyes close when she lays down. Poor Maddie was holding the doll in one arm like a baby, using her free hand to prop open Dora's sleeping eyes. She got more and more agitated as time went on and Dora's eyes just wouldn't stay open. "But Mama!" she said, tearing up, "I just want my Dora to look at me!" Something about it was so poignant, this desire for her dolly to look at her, and Maddie's need to be able to meet that gaze as part of her caretaking of her lovey. Thankfully, a little superglue will take care of Dora's eyes. Hopefully Maddie won't feel as frustrated by sleepless babies as I sometimes do.

*************************
Maddie and Riley start preschool a week from tomorrow. The students at Reed started their classes today. Over the past week, students have been arriving at school for orientation or returning as upperclassmen.* They look so young to me, and it's true that I'm twenty years older than most incoming students. As I prepare to send Maddie and Riley off for the beginning of their formal education, I can't help but wonder what kind of college they will choose to attend, if any. What will their passions be in life? What will their friends be like? I'm not yet sentimental about them leaving behind their babyhood, although I'm sure someday I will be. Right now, I'm excited on their behalf about the possibilities that lie ahead. Preschool. Next week! Maddie hopes to learn "lots of things that are not naughty." Riley is exited that someone who works at the zoo might come talk to the kids about what that's like as a job. Oh, and he hopes to learn how to read and write. Both of them love to review their teachers' names and the names of the other kids in their class. I think this is going to be good for both of them.

So many new beginnings. So many possibilities. There has been a lot of change in my life over the past few years, not all of it good and much of it quite difficult. The changes we've gone through of late have felt much more optimistic and positive. That in and of itself is a change for the better.

*Anyone have an alternative to "upperclassmen" so as to avoid the "men"? "Freshmen" can easily be "first-year students," but there's no quick fix (that I know of) for "upperclassmen." This comes up a fair amount at work. Solutions appreciated.

One Who Knew Him

I had the pleasure tonight of having dinner with one of John's oldest friends, a guy who John met when the two of them were pre-teens and with whom John remained close until he died. This guy, Mike—no reason not to give his name—has always been one of my favorites of John's friends, one of those people who I imagine I would have been friends with in high school, too. As Mike pointed out, he's a lot like John, so why wouldn't we get along? So true.

Mike was in town on business, and my mom and stepdad were kind enough to watch Maddie and Riley so that I could enjoy a proper evening out. Great food, great company, great city, it was . . . great. I can be totally straight with Mike, and our conversation covered everything from memories about John to my relationship with my inlaws to my (nonexistent) love life to his concert pianist (!) girlfriend to what we're watching on Netflix.

We hit some emotionally intense moments along the way, some of which brought up some old anger and hurt for me. It was good to feel that again as some of those feelings have been dormant for quite a while. What really got me, though, was talking about how there is a relatively large group of people in my life who never knew John. I had good friends in Boston who I didn't meet until after John died. I have new friends here who never met him, and even some of my high school and college friends with whom I've reconnected never had the chance to know him.

John died too soon. He made me a better person. Some of my friends would have so appreciated his humor. Others, his compassion. Still others, things I can't begin to imagine. So sad, for him, for all of us, in ways we can never truly know.

Ebb, Flow

Conventional wisdom says that one should refrain from making any major life changes for a year after the death of a spouse. No moving, no new jobs, no getting remarried. I followed this advice, more or less. I did change jobs, but I'd been actively seeking a new position before John died, so it felt like the completion of a task already begun, not an attempt to run from the circumstances of my widowhood. In any case, as the newly-single mother of two very young children, making radical changes was significantly more difficult than just slogging through the known, so for the most part, I stayed the course.

It was about 18 months after John's death that I dated Mr. Coffee, and it was 20 months in that I put my condo on the market and moved in with CV. I'm glad I waited to date, and I'm glad I waited to move. I had fun dating, although I haven't dated since and really haven't wanted to. The time I spent with Mr. Coffee marked the start of a lot of changes in my life, and for whatever reason served to push me into a realization that I was angry, unhappy, and not nearly as far along in the grief process as I had thought. All of those realizations were very much to the good, and pushed me towards the decision to put the condo on the market, a decision that has always felt totally right to me, but that would not have felt right a moment sooner than it was made.

The move cross-country and the current job fell in my lap, in a way, but also not a moment too soon and not a moment too late, at least as far as my mental state is concerned, and, frankly, as far as the twins are concerned developmentally. They handled the move with grace and aplomb, and we've had this summer to get settled and gear up for their first fall as back-to-schoolers (although I guess that makes them simply "to-schoolers"). Preschool begins the day after Labor Day, three full days a week of Spanish immersion in a Montessori-influenced setting. I'm excited, they seem excited. We're also making forays into the world of classes; Maddie and Riley will both take short sessons (six weeks) of soccer and ballet starting in October. The classes are 30 minutes each, and seem like a good chance to have fun in a low-pressure, community center setting. In principle, I'm adamently against kids being overscheduled and adamently for kids having a lot of free time to explore their own interests, but by the same token, both Maddie and Riley have expressed interest in trying out some new things, so I figure we'll get our feet wet.

Maddie and Riley use words like "ponder" and "tuck" now. Maddie will definatly declare that she's not talking to me right now when I do something to wrong her. Riley is potty trained, a basically painless process that ended up taking about three weeks and tapping of my maternal reserves. We read a crazy number of books and both kids are often found on the couch, paging through their favorite tome from the weekly trip to the library with the nanny.

I feel like all I've said since I've gotten back to Portland is that this is where we're supposed to be, and this post is just more of the same. After two-and-a-half years of feeling bitter and cheated and angry and sad and stalled out, life feels like it's on fast-forward now. I don't feel like I've changed or that I'm changing so much, exactly, but like I've settled into the right spot. Maddie and Riley seem to be taking off, and I am more able to enjoy watching them and helping them along. I still get stressed out and irritated, but most of the time I'm happy. It's a nice. Makes for dull blogging, but it's nice.

Anniversary the Fifth

It is here. It is today. I feel remarkably ambivalent, although a bit short-tempered, but that might have more to do with not getting enough sleep this week than with the charged nature of the day.

My mom and stepdad are keeping Maddie and Riley tonight, which gives me a nice break. I think I'll go for a run, take a long, hot bath (probably with Diego bubbles since I don't think I have any grown-up ones), and then eat yummy snackies and drink wine and maybe watch a movie or something. I guess it all sounds a bit melancholy, but as my wise dad pointed out to me last weekend, I don't get a whole lot of time to be truly alone and to just spend time with my thoughts. I know I'm not alone in that; I think we could all use the gift of time to just be. And so I shall take this gift on this day that is such a strange combination of sublime and wretched, and it will be what it will be.

*******************
I've had a question on my mind for the last five years, and I'm going to see if any of you readers can answer it. The question is this: Did he know?

The he in question is John's primary care doctor. A few weeks before our wedding, John went to see said doctor because of increasing trouble with fatigue and intestinal distress. John had not been feeling 100% for a long time—not surprising given that by the time his cancer was diagnosed he fell into a classification known as "nearly dead." But by the same token, John hadn't felt awful, either. When he went to see his primary care doctor, his two chief complaints were that he felt more tired than seemed reasonable and that he had transient, nonspecific episodies of gastrointestinal discomfort and distress. Given that John also had a horrifically stressful job, was in the throes of planning a wedding, and was interviewing for a new job to get him out of the horror that was his old job, it's frankly not surprising that the felt tired and nauseuous some of the time.

But off John went to see Dr. C. And, thankfully, Dr. C did not simply say, "Take some Prilosec and shut up." Instead, what he said was, "I want to run some tests. In the interim, take some Prilosec, which will hopefully take the edge off." I'm not sure exactly what tests Dr. C ran, but one of them was a routine blood workup. That may have been the only test.

The results of that workup came back while we were in Portland for the wedding. In fact, I think it was the day of our rehearsal dinner. The result was that John's liver function was high, really high. Somewhat alarmingly high. Dr. C told John that it was not hepatitis and that further tests would need to be done to determine what was going on. His advice was to take it easy on the booze at the wedding and get in touch when we got back to Massachusetts.

John and I were too busy at that point to do any Internet research, for which I am thankful. Because when we did find the time to do research, what we found was that there aren't that many reasons for liver function tests to come back so abnormally high. It takes a lot of damage for one's liver function to be seriously impaired. Hepatitis can do it, but we knew it wasn't that. There a handful of other diseases—for which John had no other symptom—and some drugs that can cause exceptionally poor liver function. And, of course, so can the presence of tumors in the liver, tumors that are likely metastases from an original cancer located elsewhere in the body.

I'm obviously not a doctor. But when I think back on that time, I feel like Dr. C must have known—by which I mean strongly suspected to the point of near-certainty—that John had cancer, and that it was likely a cancer that had metastasized, and thus was almost certainly terminal. That it was pancreatic cancer it seems less likely that he knew. But again, I'm not a doctor. In the end, none of it matters. When we got back from our wedding, John got an abdominal ultrasound, our lives spiraled out of control, and Dr. C transferred John's primary care to an oncologist whose compassion and skill was unparalleled.

I think about Dr. C every day, though. Soon after John started treatment, Dr. C moved away from Boston, and we never tracked him down. I have always wondered, though, how much he knew, how much he suspected. I'm grateful to so many people for the kindness they showed us during John's illness, probably no one more so than Dr. C. I'm grateful that he took John's nonspecific complaints so seriously. And, assuming that he had an inkling of what was to come for us, I'm especially grateful that he kept those worries to himself, that he managed to not lie, or even give us false hope, but state the facts in a way that protected us without compromising his integrity.

John and I shared virtually no married time together that was not tainted by terminal illness. But on the day of our wedding, for all we knew, we had years stretched out in front of us. I'm so thankful for that. Today, more than usual, I will think fondly of Dr. C and what he did for me, for John, for our marriage.

For any doctor-readers, do you think he knew? How much do you think he knew? What would you have done if you and found yourselves in his shoes?

Forgetting

My memories of John don't seem real anymore. That period in my life, from when John got his diagnosis to when he died, feels like a movie that I watched or a book that I read, something that touched me deeply but was not my life. I can talk about all those experiences with a detachment and perspective that feel eerie and unnatural. When I describe how difficult it was to deal with John's illness, or how charged the decision to have the twins was, it's as though I'm parroting words that someone else put in my mouth, giving voice to the experience of another.

My feelings and memories of John and his illness and death remind me of my early childhood memories. I have lots of memories from the ages of three or four that aren't real. Or maybe they are. Who knows? It's impossible for me to tease apart what is my own memory and what is a story that has been told to me so many times that I've made it a memory and what is a picture that I've seen that I've turned into a memory.

I feel like I've lost the real John. What I have left is the John that my mind can process and that my emotions can handle. I don't remember him as perfect and I have not put him on a pedestal. I just wish I could have him back for a day, feel his arms around me again, hear the sound of his voice, show him the little people Maddie and Riley have become. I can imagine how his arms would feel and his voice would sound. I know he'd be so proud of Maddie and Riley. But I can no longer remember how it felt to have him hold me, how his voice could make me weak, what he would say to express his pride.

Our fifth anniversary is August 14, 2009. I'm daunted by confronting that day here in Portland, in the place we intended to live, with a job I could have only dreamed of having, leading a life I could have never imagined in the city where we got married. I miss John so much, but so abstractly. In a way, it's a blessing. But today it feels mostly like a curse.