Contentment

I've been in Mexico since last Friday afternoon. I'm headed home today. I went on the same trip last year. I'm lucky enough to have a friend who owns a townhouse on Baja, and she is generous enough to invite a small group of us to come down and stay here for a kid-free rest/recharge/getaway. We had so much fun last year that we decided to make it an annual thing, and lo, here we are again.

Last year, I really felt like I *needed* this trip. I was in the midst of finalizing the purchase of my house (we went in April last year) and work was stressful (that hasn't changed). I'd never had a true vacation from parenting; I'd had nights here and there and longer stretches away from the kids, but always when I needed to be attending to my real life. Being down here in Mexico is a true escape. The weather is perfect, and there is nothing to do but read, eat, sleep, walk along the beach, chat, sit by the pool . . . in short, there is nothing to do but be on vacation, and it is glorious.

I realize how privileged I am go get this experience. Many people don't have the resources I do to be able to afford the plane ticket down, the kinds of job where they can get away (or a job at all), a way to make arrangements for their kids to be taken care of in their absence, a free place to stay even if everything else fell into place. I am very lucky.

I think about this a lot. I think about how grateful I am for what I have in my life, and I think about how much of it is luck and how much of it is what I've made. Much has been handed to me along to the way, to be sure. I grew up solidly middle class and had access to educational opportunities that not everyone gets. You can't choose the family you're born into, and I got a good one. I grew up somewhere safe, in a place where children were valued and encouraged and where there was time and space for me to be supported in the things I wanted to do and learn, even if those were things that didn't really resonate with my parents. As an adult, I had help paying for my first house, and I've had help making downpayments on cars and such. I've had emotional support from family and friends.

There's been bad luck, too. My parents divorced when I was five. We moved quite a bit when I was little. My dad is a recovering alcoholic who went through treatment when I was in college. My spouse died.

All of these things are things I can't control, and are things that have fundamentally shaped my life. So much of the framework seems like a crapshoot to me: your family of origin, the big events that you can see coming, plan for, or avoid. But what of the choices I have made? The hard work I have done? The papers I wrote in college, the years I spent in the Peace Corps, the jobs I applied for, the hours I spent practicing the oboe, the friendships I have nurtured, the children I have whose creation I actively pursued, the house I looked for and bought?

In the end, it doesn't matter. I like to think that I've taken the opportunities that have come to me in my life and I've made the most of them, most of the time. When John got his diagnosis and during the years of his illness and death, my mindset shifted and I had an extremely difficult time feeling grateful for what I had and finding the good in my life. I felt victimized for a few years, and while I recognized the support I was receiving and the goodness that was there (the twins, my friends and family, my job, etc.) there was an undercurrent of thanklessness that I look back on with distaste and embarrassment.

It's been almost five years since John died. I don't think there's anything magical about that date or that amount of time passing or that I'm supposed to feel one way or another now that five years have gone by. But the decidedly nonlinear trajectory of grief has had an upward trend for me and I like where I am at this moment, both this specific moment and this general point in my life. The sun is shining, I went running this morning and drank a cappuccino on the beach, I'm rested and have that delightful feeling of being ready to reconnect with reality after a nice break. Maddie and Riley are healthy and thriving, our home is just right for us, we have the best au pair in the world, I have an amazing and fantastic boyfriend (I hate that word, ack), and a stable job.

I'm just gloating, really. I should stop. I'll stop. It's nice to be happy.

Life. No fast lane.

I've been wanting to write lately, but feeling blocked by the usual: too much to catch up on, not sure where to start, only egocentric and nongeneralizable things to say. That feeling of wanting to write, though, is quantitatively different than the feeling I've had for most of my two months of silence. Most of that time, through the holidays and into the new year, I felt a pretty deep desire to partially hibernate from the digital world. I've been less active on Facebook, again silent (after a brief period of activity) on Twitter, making an effort to leave the computer untouched in the evenings at home. I'm as aware of and conflicted about my online presence and the ramifications of "screen time" as any thinking adult in Our Moderne Times, and I think my hiatus of sorts is a manifestation of the leery side of my digital identity.

A parallel, if equally esoteric and equally unoriginal, analysis is that happiness has rendered me mute. Blogging has historically been for me a way to work things out, a means to find a way to handle the negative, see a problem from a different perspective, reason my way out of a challenge. In the space I'm in now, blogging to share that I'm here, I'm happy, I'm doing stuff, feels self-indulgent and dull. I understand how to frame a post about a problem. It's not clear to me how to frame a post that's an update or an observation. I'm not the person who can in that Seinfeldian way make nothing into something.

I've written this post before, though, and I keep coming back to write it again because I do miss the frequent practice of writing. I'd like to try to find the point of interest in the mundane, or at least find a way to make it seem as though the broader point of interest is there because life is not actually mundane for me, it just seems to me that my life has become mundane as observed by others.

I offer for now, the cop-out, a bulleted list of the past couple of months of happenings, things that have been all manner of things to me—interesting, exciting, scary, fun, productive, creative, sad, happy. All those things that make a life:

• Best Christmas to date with Maddie and Riley, including instructions to Santa to have the reindeer enter through the back door.
• A cat! We have a cat! His name is Hubble, he's six years old, he's black with yellow eyes, and he adores Maddie.
• Trees! We have trees! We had a pear tree and an apple tree planted in our front yard. Someday, we'll even have pears and apples.
• Work. I have the same job. It has ups and downs. Lately, it has more downs than ups. I can't really say more.
• My birthday! I turned 40. I had a huge, crazy party that was ridiculously fun. So far, 40 is freakin' awesome. I think my use of the phrase "freakin' awesome" is an indicator of my advancing age.
• The beach. I went to the beach for a couple of kid-free nights. Fires, reading, hiking, eating, games, pajamas, amazing.
• Las Vegas. I went to Las Vegas for a few kid-free nights. Cirque du Soleil, Red Rock Canyon, Hoover Dam, jogging on the strip, zip-lining, hot-tubbing, amazing.
• Joshua Bell. I saw him in concert again. He's the real deal. Perfect seats, unreal performance.
• Running. I've been running up a storm. I've got my sights on a half marathon at the end of May, and maybe even one as soon as mid-April.
• Skiing. The kids are in ski lessons for the second year in a row. We're one weekend into four Saturdays of this. Riley is more enthusiastic than Maddie, but both had fun last weekend and seem ready for more tomorrow.
• Piano. Maddie and Riley are four weeks into their first round of piano lessons. No one seems overly wowed by playing the piano, but I'm glad they are getting the exposure.
• Harry Potter. M&R are officially obsessed with Harry Potter. We're halfway through book three. It's a real joy to read them books that I love and find they they love them, too.
• My Kindle. I got a Kindle for Christmas. Much to my surprise, I am completely devoted to it. I [heart] my Kindle.
• Mexico. I'm gearing up for a trip to Mexico, a repeat of the trip I took to Mexico around this time last year. CANNOT WAIT.
• Au pair. Having an au pair is the best thing I've ever done for our family. It's a huge gift to me, and a huge gift to Maddie and Riley. Anyone who is interested in getting an au pair, I'd be happy to tell you what it is about the experience that's so fantastically great. Life-changing, truly.
• Our house. I continue to love our house and feel fine about being a homeowner again. We are all capable of change.
  

That list does not include one item that seems worthy of more than a bullet point, although I do not know how to talk about it. I am still dating the same guy. It's totally great. He's totally great. Greatness! The only negative about our relationship is that we don't see each other nearly enough. We're working on that, but it's a long, slow process. We both have jobs, we both have kids, and we don't want to force things where it comes to the family blending process. But we're starting to test those waters and look for ways to spend family time—not just dating time—together. It's a very easy, affirming relationship we have. There are no hidden agendas or crazy emotional upheavals. We're two very busy adults with a lot of logistical complications and the willingness to talk about stuff and figure it out as best we can. We just wish we had the chance to do that more.

I realize that my description of our relationship sounds rather passionless, and that's what I mean about not knowing how to talk about it. The easiest way to explain it is that he makes me feel the way I felt when I was with John. Maybe that seems creepy or weird, which is why I hesitate to describe it that way, but it's true. I said to him (Must come up with nickname! Will go with T for now.) the other day that I could remember so clearly how I felt when John and I moved in together. I felt like I'd won the lottery; I was so excited to go home every day and find John! There! In our apartment! EVERY DAY!!! That thrill never wore off. I get the same thrill now, just not daily. More like twice a week in a good week. But I'll take the thrill when I can get it.

So that is the briefest of views into life right now. It's Friday night, I'm going to head home for a movie and quesadillas with the kids, then pack up an epic amount of stuff to take up the mountain for skiing tomorrow. May the rest of you be enjoying such unremarkable times.

"Let's go out for Korean next Wednesday."

That's what he suggested.

I'd been talking about Korean food a lot since my return from visiting John's family. One of my favorite things about taking the kids to Michigan is eating lots and lots of Korean food, both home-cooked and in restaurants. John was the Korean chef in our house and I never picked up his skills, so I use our time with the in-laws to get my fill.

And so, either tired of or inspired by my gochujang-laced sighs and daydreaming, the suggestion was made and it was decided. Next Wednesday, what is settling in to be our usual mid-week date night, we'd go out for Korean food. Who was I to argue? Most people I know--myself included--need more Korean food in their lives, and his interest in trying new restaurants and new cuisines is one of the many things I find endearing and appealing about him.

What I neglected to note is that tomorrow, the appointed day for the Korean food outing, is John's birthday. My Korean chef would be 39 tomorrow. And now it happens that I will find myself eating Korean food with another man, one who reminds me in many wonderful and meaningful ways of John.

In fact, in the important ways he could not be more like John. He is the embodiment of kindness. He is thoughtful and generous. He brings out in me the things I like most about myself, and being around him encourages me to be the person I want to be.

He's not Korean, not by a mile. Not by a million miles. But there's a bittersweet, unintended symbolism to the fact that he'll have his introduction to Korean cuisine tomorrow. And even better, that tomorrow, as the banchan arrive, I can explain to him the significance of the day and he will appreciate it and value it and understand it.

***************************

John's birthday has since his death been one of the hardest days of the year for me. Much harder than the day of his death. The day of his death seems more of a celebration to me, the end of a struggle whose time had come, even if was not welcome. His birthday, though, marks the days he didn't get to have. Birthdays are for thinking about the year that has passed and the year that's to come, reflections that in this case are hollow.

I'm not very New Age-y or metaphysical, but coincidences around dates and events don't seem entirely random to me, either. I feel John with me this year in comforting ways. I was shopping over the weekend and one of the stores I was in was giving away Charms Sweet & Sour lollipops, a favorite of John's before he had cancer and a help during his treatments as they kept the nausea at bay. I would buy those things by the case and stash them in his briefcase, coat pockets, and car so that he'd have them at hand if he felt queasy. I don't think I'd had one since he was sick, and then there one was, days before his birthday. Last Friday, I learned that a neighborhood friend shares John's birthday. Then I made the realization about the Korean food date. I don't take any of these things as a sign of any type, per se, but as . . . something.

I ate my lollipop today, I'll eat Korean food tomorrow. Maddie and Riley asked about baking John a cake, but he didn't really like cake, so we're not going to do that. I'm going to take Maddie and Riley to school, go running, go to work late. He valued time; I will give some to our children, take some for myself.

Happy 39th, Goose.

And then almost a month goes by.

It's no use, really, to try to update on a month's worth of activities, so I'm just going to jump right in with what's on my mind now. I continue to stew in my contentment and moments of discontentment (those continue to be mostly work-related). But the satisfaction of being where I am seems to be here to stay, and it's most welcome.

One of the last times I posted, I mused about my lifelong lack of long-term commitments. That theme has continued to be on my mind during my radio silence. As someone who married late-ish, then as someone whose spouse died, I've given my fair share of thought to the long-term commitment that is marriage. I have deep admiration for those who sustain a life-long partnership, to be sure, but also the realist's understanding that some of that longevity is circumstantial; if you meet someone later in life, biology prevents you from reaching the milestones that are within the realm of possibility for those who marry at a younger age. Wonderful partnerships meet untimely demises. Other marriages end more by choice or necessity. I proceed with caution in revering those with long marriages/partnerships as somehow inherently more worthy or generally better than those who have shorter partnerships, but understand all the while that to make any relationship work over years and years takes work and commitment and dedication.

It took me a long time to be ready to be in a long-term partnership, and I felt ever the more wronged by having that readiness mocked by the universe when John got his terminal diagnosis. Since John's death, my lack of long-term commitments has continued to grow, and I speak her not only of dating but of life choices in general. I moved out of our condo less than a year after John died, moved to Oregon months after that initial move, and have changed jobs twice in the 4.5 years since he died.

Making the commitment that John and I made to each other was the last time I felt the kind of settled contentment that I've been feeling over the past months. It's no surprise, I don't think, that the experience of John's death made me skittish. But here I am, 4.5 years later, getting it back again. Feeling settled enough to buy the house was certainly huge, and continues to be huge, and welcome, and wonderful. And my job is a commitment in a way, too; it's not perfect, but it's a long-haul kind of job that work every day to have peace with, and I make work decisions with the idea that I'll be there for the long haul, not with one foot out the door.

I'm getting there with the dating, too. I have a loooooong history—a lifetime, really, minus John—of dating Perfectly Fine but Wrong for Me people. To put a finer point on it, before John I dated either Smart, but Emotionally Unavailable or Dumb, but SO NICE! Then there was John who was smart, emotionally available, and nice: I finally got it all. Then he died, and since he died I have really dated Just for Fun. Which has been, uh, mostly fun. But I have found that Fun also gets Unfulfilling pretty quickly, so I've also dated Briefly. I've made nods at finding something real in the Fun, but nothing has been a natural fit to be sure.

But now I'm in this situation that is Fun, but also Real. Or that could be Real. This is a genuine person, not a career-focused guy who's about to move overseas or a bitter, recently divorced guy or a consultant in town short-term. No, this is a guy who like me saw the untimely demise of his partnership (although under different circumstances) and who understands how that feels, but also focuses on putting one foot in front of the other. He's ridiculously smart, incredibly generous, and funny to boot. Things are just meandering along in a lovely and happy way, slowly and sweetly. We are spending more and more time together, and talking about what that means, and musing about meeting kids. It's really great.

It's in fact great enough that I have been loathe to blog about it or talk about it much. I felt the same way about buying the house. I selfishly wanted all that goodness for me. Plus, I have that jinx-y feeling that comes from talking too much about a good thing and somehow thus causing it to implode. But it's what's on my mind lately, a lot. So I've said what I feel like I can say right now and hopefully it wasn't enough to hex it.

But just in case, I'll end by changing the subject. Halloween was awesome! Maddie was a Pegasus unicorn (thank you, eBay), Riley was a Jedi knight, and I was Princess Leia. Kindergarten has settled down and both kids seem quite content. Both of them are really into art projects now, Riley preferring to work in 3D and Maddie with a love of coloring/writing/drawing. We're going to Michigan on Saturday for our traditional Thanksgiving trip to see John's family; I always approach that with mixed emotions, but I'm always glad we go. We've been to the beach a bunch lately, and there's nothing but good about that. And then almost a month goes by, and we're still boringly happy and living our life or normalcy and about that, I have no complaints.

Struggling

John's dad has said of John's birth, "He had a hard time to come out." It hardly seems like a memorable quote, those ordinary words, so slightly syntactically off. But something about the expression on his Dad's face, his eyes squeezed shut, his head shaking slightly no from side to side, his hands squeezed into fists at his sides, made the difficulty of John's 10-pound, large-headed entry into the world so real. John and I used to say that to each other when we were dealing with something difficult, "This is a hard time to get through," "I'm having a hard time to deal with this," and so on. I wish John were here today so that I could say it to him, so that he could help me with my hard time, because I am, indeed, having a hard time of it right now.

I make no excuses for my hard time. Plenty of other people out there are having harder times, or would at least like a change of pace in the difficulties they are experiencing. I have my health, I have Maddie and Riley, I have a gorgeous new house, and I have a great job. I have lots of friends, I don't struggle financially, and the sun is shining.

Things are just hard lately. Work is overwhelming. There are projects and people and changes, to the point that it is hard for me to focus when I'm there and it invades my brainspace when I'm not.

It affects my parenting. I don't feel like my best self. Maddie and Riley continue to not sleep enough; they have dark circles and crabby attitudes and whiny voices. Melatonin has been a mixed bag; it seems to help Maddie go to sleep, which is good, but it has no effect on how late they do (or don't) sleep. I'm tired, too. We're all tired, and we take our crabby attitudes out on each other with our whiny voices.

Riley is engaged in an experiment called Truth versus Lie. More accurately, it's called Lie All the Time about Totally Dumb Stuff. Some of it is funny, like when he talks as though he's an expert on some totally random subject, but all of it is disturbing on some level. It's crazy frustrating to me to say, "Riley, did you dry your hands on a towel?" get the reply, "Of course, Mama," then look up and see that his dripping-wet hands by his sides. To my knowledge, he hasn't lied to me about anything big, but I feel like I can't trust his answer on anything, and it's an awful feeling. I've tried to talk to him about it, but he's unable or unwilling to articulate why he is doing this, and I'm flummoxed as to what it's all about. Attention-seeking? Maddie does tend to dominate my time, by sheer force of will. Normal, five-year-old experimentation and button-pushing? Maybe. Something else entirely? Could be, or a combo. It's exacerbated by the fact that my reaction to it appears to be out of line with what is happening, insomuch as it makes me fly off the handle and completely lose my cool.

Meanwhile, Maddie is very clingy and demanding with me. Despite the fact that, to my knowledge, I have never given her reason to doubt that I will return from anywhere I have been, she is obsessed with the idea that I might leave or not return. After she went to bed the other night, I took a bag of trash out to the can outside our back fence; when I got back inside (after an absence of under a minute, with the door left open) she was downstairs, panicked, looking for me. She'd heard me unlock the door and thought I was leaving her and Riley alone. She can't get enough of me; Riley, too, to a certain extent. After spending their whole lives in daycare and/or school, they both in the past month or so beg me to stay home every day.

I don't think it's any coincidence that all of this behavior coincides with our trip to family camp almost a month ago. We spent a week up on Orcas Island in the San Juans, doing nothing but spend time together. We slept in a sweet little cabin, ate meals in the dining hall, went to the beach every day, played games on the lawn, did crafts, stayed up late for campfire, and took naps every afternoon. We'd never in our lives had time like that together before. No work, no chores, no obligations. The night we got home from camp was miserable; I had a migraine, we were all super-tired, and on some level, we all knew that the next day was back to the endless logistical machine of life that seems to allow us little time to enjoy each others' company.

As a person, it can be hard for me to be in the moment; I'm always thinking about the chores that need to be done, what's coming next, what appointments need to be made, what food needs to be cooked, how I can prepare for what the next day will bring. Being a single parent exacerbates this tendency as I'm, for the most part, the only one who can take care of these things. Don't get me wrong: Zulma, family, and friends help out a lot. But the logistics of life fall to me, and Maddie and Riley get the short end of the stick. I'm constantly multitasking and trying to make chores fun. While this is not inherently bad, it does mean that I rarely feel like I give the twins my full attention, and often the attention I do allocate to them is not my best self.

This is not me beating myself up. This is simply an acknowledgment of our imperfect reality. And, to a certain extent, my wish that I could shift to an alternate, if equally imperfect, reality. I'm at a point where I wish I could be home more. As the kids start full-time school, I wish I could be the one who dropped them off and picked them up each day. I love the thought of taking them to their lessons and sports practices, of having more than 20 minutes to cook dinner together on the nights we don't have something else scheduled, of just getting more breathing room than the two hours at night and the two hours in the morning. I don't doubt that part of the reason they get up so early is that they want to spend more time with me. It saddens me that they crave that time even though I'm not much fun at that hour, despite my best efforts.

It's just a hard time to get through. We all seem to be unhappy with our current arrangement, but I haven't taken the space to see how I can try to fix it. My hairdresser said to me last night, after acknowledging similar struggles with her kids, that her mom has called this age the "I hate you, don't leave me" age. Yes, they can be sweet as pie, but they also seem to simultaneously not want you to go anywhere, but want to use you as their outlet for negativity. The literature would say that this is because they feel safe. Great. Age appropriate, perhaps. Combined with other forces, likely. It's just a hard time, a hard time.

Spring

Seven years or so ago, no make that eight, it was spring 2003 and John and I had just started dating. We spent a sunny Sunday morning into afternoon into evening at the home of mutual friends, out on their deck, celebrating another friend's PhD, drinking mimosas and then mojitos and then wine, eating an endless array of snacks, enjoying the sun in short sleeves, unwilling to admit that we were actually a little chilly, simply happy and totally carefree.

I remember letting go that day of anything about which I felt even a shred of responsibility. I remember making a decision to just enjoy that day, which is now associated with with a pure definition of happiness for me. It was the kind of day you can't create if you try, a day that just happens and for which you give grateful thanks.

Today could be that day again. The weather is the same as is my willingness to let go of responsibility. But I'm at work, not on a friend's deck, and I have kids to go home to. Maybe we'll go get ice cream or read an extra story; such is the form of joyful abandon of responsibility these days. Oh, how times change, but the simplicity of such happiness stays the same.

Four Years

John died four years ago today.

This is the first year that his deathiversary snuck up on me. I have been preoccupied with other things (buying a house! work! general life!), and it was not until yesterday at church that I remembered. Last year, I shared the three year anniversary during joys and sorrows at our church service; I was a weepy, emotional mess, but there was no better place to be in such a state. As I sat in church yesterday, it came back to me, and I realized that today was The Day.

By this morning, I'd forgotten again, and it was not until I had to write the date on a paper at work that it came back to me. It felt good, in a way, to be caught unawares, like some sign of "progress," whatever that's supposed to mean. I wrote about it on Facebook, asking for people to share memories of John. And as the memories rolled in, so did my emotions. People had the sweetest, funniest things to share. It's not just 20/20 hindsight that casts John in such a flattering light; he was a truly great guy who was loved by many.

I was pretty useless at work today, weepy a few times and forgetful and unfocused otherwise. Frankly, for the past few weeks, I've been in a similar state. Not so much the weepy, but the forgetful. I have forgotten a bunch of things lately: birthday parties and gatherings with friends and bill payments and meetings at work. I'm generally a much more forgetful human as a parent and since John's death, but the past weeks have been particularly acute. Coincidence? Likely not.

Upon arriving home, I ended up yelling at Maddie and Riley, really yelling, about something mostly trivial. I hadn't yelled at them in a long time. It felt horrible, yet freeing. That rage still lives in me about John's death: rage that he's gone, rage about how he went, rage about the injustice of life, rage about not having something I want. It's totally inappropriate to take that out on Maddie and Riley; I know that, and I berate myself mightily for it. Afterwards, when the rage had died down, we talked about it, and we all cried a bit, me more than them.

I miss John when I don't expect to. In general, I miss him more now that our life is, relatively speaking, so steady and even keel. I'm content with my life. I'm sure things would not be perfect if John were here. But he'd be here, and I miss him, and when I imagine what it would be like, it's happy.

Past

I'm in the past a lot these days. Some people I know through the Internet—I like to think of them as friends; I hope they feel the same way—have ill spouses who are approaching end of life, and reading about their experiences and thoughts takes me back with startling clarity to the last few months of John's.

I'm not going to look back on what I wrote then; I have a feeling that I was overly optimistic and measured in my tone. But I have been honest with these women who are staring down the barrel of the gun, albeit a gun pointed at someone other than themselves. And so I shall be honest here.

I remember the day—the very day!—that I understood that John's death was on the horizon. It turns out the horizon was further away than I thought; he died four months after this day I recall. But it was on that day, the day I knew John was done fighting (and I say that with no judgment about his decision) and the day he had truly accepted what was to come, that my emotions changed, too. It was on that day that I started to fervently wish that he would just die right then.

Yes, I thought that. It sounds awful, but I did. And I then went on to be at times full of rage that it took him four long months to go.

Of course I wanted him to live longer, but not when he was a shell: exhausted, ravaged by disease and medication and side effects, uncomfortable, restless, unhappy, disengaged from life. He was done, and I was done.

There's not a lot of room in the culture I grew up in to accept death, especially a death not your own. I used to get so mad at people who put pressure on John to fight harder, fight longer, not to "give up." And yet, what I said to John back then was, "I love you. I need you. Stay with us." Yes, part of me felt that way. But the bigger part of me said that because I felt I was supposed to.

I wish I had had the courage to say this instead: "I love you. It's OK. I'll be OK. We'll be OK. You can go now." Because by the time I did say that, I'm not sure John could even hear me.

Overshare

I still share too much, sometimes. I started learning about not sharing so much when I first started in Al-Anon, where wise women helped me learn how to say no. "All you have to say is no," they said. "You don't have to explain why, or sound guilty, or talk about how you wish you could say yes, or apologize. Just say 'No, that won't work for me.'" I'm still not very good at saying no, but the idea that I don't owe the whole world an explanation of every decision I make was liberating and instructive.*

When John died, I had much to learn about a specific kind of oversharing. I've written about that here before, about the need to explain where Maddie and Riley's dad is even when no one has asked, about elaborating on my single status when no such elaboration is needed. When I keep things to a Need to Know basis, I'm more comfortable as are most people to whom I'm talking. I don't mean close friends here, but just the people one encounters in everyday life: the checker at the grocery store, the librarian, the customer service agent on the phone.

It's that kind of oversharing about John that I still sometimes can't avoid. I want so much for everyone—even those people with whom I intersect in only the most incidental of ways—to know that I had a partnership once, with a person who was a devoted father, an individual full of ideals and character, good grace and humor, and love, so much love. I don't feel unworthy on my own, or less than, it's not that. It's just that it was such a pleasure for everyone he encountered to know John, and such a pleasure for me to have him in my life. I miss sharing that with everyone I know, and even with the those I don't.

I was on the phone yesterday with a mortgage broker. He was really nice, and we soon discovered that we are both parents of twins. We did the twin-parent bonding thing. Then he asked me bunch of really personal questions because that's what people do when they need to get all up in your credit. I mentioned that I had some money available in the form of a life insurance policy that I could liquidate. He asked me the cash value of my policy. Instead of simply telling him how much was left in the account that I got when John died, I said, "Oh, the policy isn't on me! It's on my husband. It was on my husband. Then he died!"

TOTALLY AWKWARD.

We quickly moved on to a discussion of the other places I stash my vast sums of spare cash, and the moment was gone, but yeesh.

As I reflect on this particular moment of oversharing, however, it's clear to me that this was not one of those times when I wanted, needed to tell a stranger that I had once had a partner. This was a moment of fear and vulnerability. I'm thinking of buying a house. This is scary business! It's a huge decision and a life change, one that I was not sure I ever wanted to make again. And while it feels right to be strongly considering the option and I have all my ducks in a row and I'm perfectly capable of doing this on my own, it's still scary.

On an emotional level, I miss John. On a practical level, I miss shared risk. I am lucky to have many good friends (including one who acts as my stand-in spouse when I need one; I'm looking at you, Erk) and a supportive family who are happy to discuss things with me, help me work through things, make pro and con lists with me, and gently tell me when I might need to consider another point of view. But at the end of the day, they are not there to enjoy the daily ups and downs that are the result of that decision making process. There's a simplicity and ease to always getting my way in life's big decisions, but all the responsibility can also feel like a burden.

This is not to minimize unpartnered life or glorify marriage. It's just to say that my marriage was good to me. My partner was good for me.

*The conundrum of then writing about that on a blog—home of more oversharing than any other form of communication—is not lost on me.

Snapshot

I was gloating a little bit inside when the gate agent invited families with small children or anyone else who needed a little more time to board to go ahead and get on the plane. I was unencumbered, kid-free, able to loiter around the gate area, admire the desert hills through the plate-glass walls, soak up warm, soothing air that blew through the open doors. I saw the gaunt man in the wheelchair get pushed through the doors onto the tarmac, and I felt a pang of sadness, even pity, as I quickly looked away and resumed my daydreams.

I don't think I noticed that gaunt man and the companion who had been pushing his wheelchair—a woman who at a glance appeared to be at least fifteen years his junior—right across the aisle from me as I settled into my seat. I fished my book (that smug, overachieving fourth book in as many days!) out of my bag before shoving it under the seat with my foot. The cloudless sky, the cactus-speckled landscape, the heat through the window, the glow of vacation, the anticipation of heading home, the headiness of sanctioned self-absorption, such are the things that were on my mind.

Sometime during the ascent into that bright blue sky, though, I caught the hint of a gesture out of the corner of my eye. I brought into focus the caress of a hand across a bony back, then the look on her face a mix of compassion, fear, and knowledge of something still present yet already lost. He was dying, I'm sure of it, of cancer or some other ravage, his body mostly gone. He had a different, equally familiar look on his face, the look of one who knew this was his last vacation, of determination to make it appropriately great, to enjoy it despite it all, but an acknowledgment that mind can only triumph over matter for so long. He slouched forward over his tray table, eating one of the very same protein bars John used to eat, without gusto, just the way John ate them. He was probably no older than she after all, just that much nearer to death. Her hand was still on his back.

Did she feel the way I did when I was on that vacation? Did she feel resentful of the caretaking? Guilty about having moments of sheer joyful fun when her spouse couldn't? Tired of pretending that it was all OK? Unbearably sad that her life as she knew it was literally crumbling before her, the progressive decay visible to the naked eye? Did they talk of funeral arrangements over dinner? Did she just want it all to be over, to move on to the inevitable if painful catharsis of Next?

Because I took that vacation, and that's what I felt. Those are the things I did. I took that vacation four years ago, and most of the time, I forget that I even had those feelings, did those things. But it took only that one caress to bring it all right back.

It's not a vacation, that vacation. Under certain circumstances, it's better than no vacation. But when four years later, you take a real vacation you realize just how deeply you can deceive yourself when you have no other choice. It truly did feel like a vacation at the time, but I can see now that it was not. It was the best we could do, and I have no regrets. There's just not much best in death.

Compassion

I'm flummoxed when I encounter homeless people. I was raised with the idea that money given to the homeless is just wasted on booze and drugs, or that somehow people need to earn money, not get by on handouts. My parents do not have hearts of stone, nor did they ever explicitly say such things to me, but somehow I managed to become a young adult who felt saddened by the plight of those who had nowhere else to go yet stymied by their seeming inability to better their situation.

My thinking on this has progressed. Now, I'm mostly simply sympathetic. I mean, who wants to ask people for money and food to survive? But I'm not here to preach about how we should all be more charitable or engage in debate about giving money to panhandlers. Homelessness is a complex issue, and people can make their own decisions about what they can or can't do to help. I'm here to tell a story about compassion and parenting and about the kind of people I want to raise Maddie and Riley to be.

I took Maddie to the grocery store with me on Sunday afternoon. Riley stayed home with my dad, so it was just me and the Mads. I really enjoy the times I get to spend with either Maddie or Riley one-on-one; it's a rarity, and something I should be more mindful about making happen. As Maddie and I walked down the sidewalk to the store's entrance, I saw a man sitting out front, makeshift cardboard sign reading, "Homeless and hungry, anything helps" propped against his knees. "That man doesn't have a home," said Maddie, in the matter-of-fact way of a four year old. We've seen enough people with such signs and she's asked enough questions that she knows what's going on.

We went in the store and did our shopping. The guy was still there on the way out. "Would you like to give that man some money, Maddie?" I asked, on a whim. She lit up. "Oh! Yes! Then he could eat something!" I handed her a dollar and she took it right over.

"Here you go," she said, extending the money.
"Thank you, little one," the man kindly said in return, with a huge smile.
"I hope it helps a little," I added, somewhat lamely.
"It sure does. Take care of your beautiful family," he said.

And with that, we were off. Maddie clearly felt like she had changed the world. She talked about how next time, we could just buy him some food while we were in the store and give him that instead. Or how maybe some of the people who don't have a place to live could come stay at our house, or how we could give them some of our sheets and blankets.

I don't have an answer to the problem of homelessness, but I can say that it made both me and Maddie feel good to make one small gesture of compassion. I don't care if that guy spent that dollar on an apple or on cheap beer: he's doing the best he can, sitting there in the rain with his sign, and if that dollar helps, I'm glad to have given it. And I'm glad for Maddie to see that little acts of kindness matter, and for me to be reminded of this, too.

John was always the first person to open his wallet in these situations, and his generosity changed my thinking a lot. I am not often clear about what specific things John would have done as a parent, or about how I can honor his presence in Maddie and Riley's lives. This is one area where my footing feels sure.

Three Years

Three years ago today, John died.

My sister-in-law is visiting this weekend. It's nice to have her here on a this significant date, although, as always for me, the day itself is only as significant as I choose to make it. Should I choose to use the calendar's reckoning as a reason to reflect on the passage of time, so be it. Otherwise, it's simply another day to miss John. So far, I've focused on enjoying the company of family and friends, the challenge and resulting peace of sharing my sorrow with the congregation at church, and gorging myself on an Edible Arrangement from a particularly thoughtful and much-missed member of my Boston tribe (thanks, CV).

There has been much healing in the past three years, but the most significant thing I've learned is that the grief is never over. It ebbs and flows, but it never goes away. I'll always miss John. Not to miss him would be to forget him, a terrible and impossible alternative. So I live with the grief and I try to learn from it, and today I think about John a little more. Love always to you, Goose.

Seven Years

Seven years ago today, John and I went on our first date.

Seven years.

We had a warp-speed life together. We moved in together four months after our first date, then got engaged four months after that. Our wedding was another eight months later. Then one more month and we got John's diagnosis, followed by two-and-a-half years of utter insanity.

17 months + 2.5 years = 4 years, just about.

4 years is just over 10 percent of my life.

I could keep crunching numbers, but they all mean the same thing: it wasn't enough time. It could never have been enough time.

The way I miss John is becoming more and more abstract. It's now usually about the general feeling of how it felt to share a life and less about him specifically. I say this without judgment, just as an observation; with the passing of time, it only makes sense that the specifics would fade while the general feeling of happiness I had during our time together would endure. I do still try to call him on the phone on occasion. Old habits die hard. He was one of the only people in the world I didn't mind talking with on the phone.

Seven years. Funny how that's starting to sound about right. Even given all that's happened, I can wrap my mind around it all fitting into seven years. Today, I can think about our first date and feel happy. I can remember the promise that evening held. I can understand how full life can be. And I can be content, if wistfully so, with the life I have now.

Easier, but Not Easy

Last Sunday, I took Maddie and Riley to a birthday party for the four-year-old daughter of some friends. It was a totally low-key affair: kids running around at a park, snacks spread out on a picnic table, candles stuck in a donut, a book exchange in lieu of presents.

We had fun. Maddie and Riley worked the snack table, conquered the slide, showed off their big-kid swing skills, and generally made merry. We overstayed our welcome by about 15 minutes, thus descending into TFE (Total Fucking Exhaustion) and making for a tantrummy exit, but otherwise, it was a lovely morning.

And yet. When I got home, I felt awful. I had a headache. I wanted to cry. I did cry. I was angry and bitter and generally glum. It was not pretty.

For about two years after John died—so until fairly recently, in fact—I avoided events like kids' birthday parties and other weekend outings with couples + kids. Playdates with a mom or dad friend and their kid or kids? Great. But events with couples out in full force, balancing the load that is childcare + socializing: no thanks. Inevitably, at those events, I would spend all my time chasing after Maddie and Riley, none of my time relaxing, and a lot of my time feeling jealous and resentful of the couples who took turns visiting and being on kid duty. It just wasn't worth it, so mostly I found reasons not to go.

At some point, the tide turned. I felt more settled in my role as a single mom, I was more at peace with John's death, and Maddie and Riley were more independent. The kids enjoyed parties more, thus I enjoyed parties more. Spending time with couples was no longer a searing reminder of what I didn't have, but a fun time to connect with friends and have more hands on deck.

I was thus blindsided by the feelings that were stirred up by last weekend's party. I'd been excited about going and we all had fun. But as has happened to me many times over the past two and a half years, grief got the best of me. I should know by now that I don't "get over" certain grief-related feelings. They ebb and flow. They fade into the background for a time. They abate, then resurface.

I think what brought the feelings of jealousy and inadequacy to the forefront for me last weekend was a set of emotions that I've struggled with since moving back to Portland. I'm in this place, with these people, doing things that John and I planned to do together. I feel a sense of calm and fulfillment leading the life I have been wanting to live and had planned on living, but man-oh-man do I wish I were doing it with John. As I build my new life here, I am surrounded more and more often by people who didn't know John at all or knew him only incidentally, and this is another twist of the knife. The pain deepens when such people are friends I know John would have so enjoyed, couples or individuals who would have understood and appreciated John's humor. The parents of last weekend's birthday girl are just those type of folks, and as much as I am enjoying getting to spend more time with them and build a social life that includes their company, it pains me that they were deprived of knowing John.

Throughout the party, the birthday girl's father was achingly kind to me, introducing me to other guests, helping me coax Riley back to happy after he tripped over a tree root, carrying around jackets and coffees and assorted other kid stuff for me. Gary is a genuinely caring person, so this was not out of the norm for him, but every time he helped me, every bit of his kindness reminded me of John's kindness and John's caring nature. The whole event made made me miss John all the more.

I'm headed to the beach this weekend with my family: my mom, my stepdad, my dad, the kids (of course). This, too, will be one of those bittersweet times, so wonderful to have my family around, so hard not to have John there. Thanks to the passage of time, I'm almost certain the joy will outweigh the sorrow. But wow, I'm surprised by how much the welcome act of being happy can make me miss him.

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.

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?

What She Said

I keep reading posts from other bloggers that take the words right out of my mouth. 

My fellow widow Supa Dupa Fresh posted a couple of weeks ago on when she got rid of what of her late husband's belongings. I have to say, at this point, almost two years out, I retain little of John's stuff. I have some items of clothing (his wedding suit, a favorite leather jacket, his cashmere top coat) that I save thinking that Riley might wear them someday. Or not. I don't want to pressure him, but I keep them just in case. I have John's comic book collection—he was a semi-serious collector with some pieces that are rather valuable. A friend was kind enough to catalog all the books for me, and I figure someday Maddie or Riley might want to add to the collection or just learn about collecting things as a hobby. I have some of John's books. Of course, I have his wedding ring and a few other personal effects. Most other stuff, though, is long gone. 

The one rather strange thing I keep holding on to is his toothbrush. John and I actually shared a toothbrush, a fact I'm sure many people will find totally disgusting and even more will find to simply be TMI. We had a Sonicare and we both just used the same head on it, out of sheer laziness and the fact that neither of us found that disgusting. We also each had a non-electric toothbrush for times when two minutes of Sonic cleaning seemed like too much of an investment. It's that manual toothbrush of his that I've kept for close to two years now. It's just a standard-issue, post-dental cleaning toothbrush, magenta and white. I don't use it as it was already seriously worn when John died. At the condo, I kept John's toothbrush, my toothbrush, and the kids' toothbrushes in a toothbrush holder designed for a family of four. I would often think about throwing John's out, then decide against it. Then I moved it to CV's. At her house, though, while the cup is still in use, it made more sense to put the three kids' brushes plus mine in the cup since it's the four of us sharing the bathroom. And still I did not throw John's toothbrush away. I just moved it to the medicine cabinet. I'm not sure what my attachment to it is, but it's not harming anything by sitting in the medicine cabinet, so I just leave it there. Maybe next time we move, I'll be ready to let it go.

**************************

The process of stumbling upon a new blog is usually untraceable for me. I click through from here, there, and everywhere and am usually unable to figure out how I got from A to B to C. It's through one of those mysterious voyages through cyberspace that I ended up at Dr. Smak's blog.

She lost a son, not a husband. A four-year-old son, to brain cancer. Recently. Just a month ago. Her writing is unbelievably honest and true, and she takes emotions I wasn't even aware I  had and expresses them with crystal clarity.

Of the many, many things that spoke to me on her blog (which I read beginning to end, without pause, when I should have been working yesterday), there were two that stood out. First, this, on grieving her son's loss, taken from the post A Gathering Storm:

I also found that as a parent, I had a huge sense of relief. I no longer was the parent of a child with cancer. I no longer had to walk the minefield of that life, scanning the horizon for infections, cancer, learning disabilities, emotional scarring. Next time a kid in my house pukes, that's all it will be: puke. Not cancer.

Sub wife for parent, and I feel the same. I've written about my sense of relief at John's death before. It's a feeling mostly unacknowledged in public in regards to the death of someone who has suffered a long illness. Dr. Smak makes me feel less alone, less of an ogre, for having the feeling and talking about it, and I thank her for that.

Her post also talks of a sense of relief at her son's relapse, a relapse that meant his diagnosis was terminal. She writes, "My anxiety level regarding if, when, how he would relapse had been so great, so constant, so unrelenting that to not have to worry about the relapse anymore was liberating. I could just focus on him, on what was next to come, without wondering. [. . .] I no longer had to worry [i]f I would make a bad decision, or one that I would regret."

In my experience, knowing anything is better than not knowing. There are a couple of (comparatively minor) fronts on which I've been in limbo in my life over the past few weeks, and the stress it creates is overwhelming. I become irritable and cranky. I can't sleep. It's awful.

A terminal diagnosis is awful, too. John's diagnosis was terminal from the get-go, but it was a diagnosis. After the waiting around with the testing and the "maybe it's this, no, maybe it's that"-ing, a diagnosis, even an awful, incomprehensible one, brought it's own strange relief. It represented knowledge, a starting point from which to build a plan and to get ready—as if anyone really can—for what was to come.

I don't think John's parents ever accepted his diagnosis as terminal and I think that's one of the reasons they struggled so much with his treatment. They constantly wanted second, third, fourth opinions and talked of flying here and there to see this person and that person. They wanted John to take herbs, eat special food, maybe even get coffee enemas. John did much of that, although not the jet-setting or the enemas. 

Having some kind of acceptance around the finality of the hand John had been dealt, he and I had a somewhat different approach. We wanted to balance an aggressive treatment with a normal life. We trusted John's oncologist and we had done our own research; none of the superstars at other hospitals would have been able to offer anything other than what John got at our local (world-class) medical facility, and by staying where we were, treatment came at the cost of $5.00 copays per visit. Beyond the traditional chemo/radiation routes? John was open to all kinds of "alternative" therapies, but not if they interfered with his daily life and routine. I think many of the alternative treatments he did helped him. But I also think accepting the diagnosis gave me, and John, too, a bizarre sense of peace with not feeling like we had to do everything. We knew there was ultimately nothing we could do to prevent his death. We never had to worry that we hadn't tried hard enough, that we hadn't seen the right doctor, that we hadn't found the right treatment. That freedom from responsibility brought relief, too, and is one of the things that allowed us to go forward with life on our terms.

I don't think we fought any less hard or gave up, although perhaps it sounds that way. It's difficult to express, the feelings of relief and peace and acceptance that surround a terminal diagnosis. There's some strange gift of being given time to say goodbye, time to start the grieving process, time to put the proverbial affairs in order. It's a gift I hope to never receive again, a gift I cannot and would not give. But that is how I chose to take that knowledge and finality, as a wretched, stingy, cheap and tawdry gift, at face value.

I've rambled on too long to cover the other point that hit home for me in Dr. Smak's blog, the idea of living through an ordeal like this as a push towards activism. Next time.

Visitors

My in-laws—all of them—get here today for a weekend visit.

When John was alive, he and I rarely argued. Oh, sure, we'd snip at each other at the end of a bad day, and I know I had personal habits that annoyed him just as he had his that annoyed me. But down-and-dirty, knock-'em-out fights? Pretty much never. It took until my kids were toddlers for me to find my yelling voice (as has been well documented here), and John was not one to raise his voice, either. Certainly we were far too civilized to hit or throw. So even on the rare occasions that we truly argued, it was a restrained affair, more along the silent treatment and sulking lines than anything.

Nothing could cause us to give each other the cold shoulder like the impending arrival of John's parents. The week before their arrival, I would inevitably be in a state of constant bitchiness. My relationship with my parents-in-law has always been so volatile, so charged, that the idea of their arrival would send me into a tailspin of latent stress. It was a pattern known as Low Expectations Yields High Results: I would decide ahead of time that their visit would be awful, pure torture, offensive and untenable, then be surprised each and every time that it was never, ever as bad as I thought it would be. The fact that the visits were ultimately relatively enjoyable is the good news. The bad news is that, despite numerous lessons from history, I could not stop expecting the worst and behaving like a brat because of the angst created by that expectation. 

And now? The cycle continues. I'd pushed the in-laws' visit to the back of my mind for a while. I've had so many other things on my plate between work and the move and all that it was easy to forget the visit was happening. But it's been on my mind this week, although I thought I was feeling pretty calm. But this morning, all of the worries that I had not even recognized were there turned me into a venom-spewing Medusa in the car on the way to daycare.

Ugh.

I felt horrible after I dropped the kids off. It was Riley who bore the brunt of my irritation, ostensibly because he wasn't listening to me, which is true. But my reaction was way off the mark and was just a way for me to release this in-law related frustration. I recognized it as that in the moment, but still wasn't able to rein myself in. All I can do now is try to do better next time.

We do have a nice weekend planned. Tonight we'll all meet up for dinner. Tomorrow, I'm taking the kids to the hotel where everyone is staying to swim in the indoor heated pool in the morning, then in the afternoon, it should be nice enough to go to the park. Saturday night, after the kids are in bed, I'll sneak out for some down time with my sister-in-law. Sunday, those who want to will go to church and those who would rather relax in a Harvard Square coffee shop can do that. It makes my in-laws so happy to the see the kids, and vice versa. We'll have fun, if I can just let myself believe it to be so.

Memories

The mind works in mysterious ways. After yesterday's post, I had to go back and look at those last photos of John and me with the kids reading bedtime stories.

The pictures were actually taken on 8 April, three days before John died. And, much to my surprise, he's holding Riley. Our bedtime ritual with the twins was always that John gave Maddie a bottle while I breastfed Riley, they we read them stories and tucked them in. Because of that, Maddie spent more one-on-one time with John before he died, and I've often wondered if that's why she seems to have a stronger connection with him, more memories, a feel for who he was and what he meant to her.

Here is our first family photo, in the delivery room on 22 June 2006:


And here is our last, taken on 8 April 2007:

Bleeding

My cell phone rang at work yesterday, and the caller ID showed Maddie and Riley's daycare. My heart and stomach sank. Daycare doesn't call to tell you the kids ate a good snack or had fun playing in the snow. Daycare calls to tell you someone has a fever or someone is barfing or someone broke an arm.

This time, daycare was calling to say that Riley had woken up during his nap with a bloody nose. The staff had it all under control, and Riley did not seemed disturbed. He just wanted to go back to sleep. I'm sure the bleeding was caused by the terribly dry, cold air of New England winters. We run a humidifier full-tilt at home, and there's one at daycare, too, but even that's not always enough for those with sensitive, delicate baby skin. I asked if I should come pick Riley up, but the consensus was that there was no need.

I breathed a sigh of relief that everything was basically OK, but I was afraid. I'm no stranger to bloody noses. John got them a lot towards the end of his illness. By the last few months of his life, the chemo had so damaged his system that he couldn't produce enough platelets for his blood to clot effectively. He'd just bleed and bleed and bleed. And bleed. It was scary, and gross, but mostly just scary. Every time he'd get a nosebleed, I'd think, "This is it. This is the end." Ultimately, a nosebleed wasn't the end of it all, but when you are watching a substance that should be inside your sick husband's body gush out of it, a substance that sustains his life, it's hard not to feel like a nosebleed could be a harbinger of death.

Riley's nose bled a bit more during the night. "Mama! I have boogers!" he cried out. I cleaned him up and that was that. His nose wasn't even really bleeding, just dripping a tiny bit, which stopped as I wiped it away. Thankfully, there was no river of blood that couldn't be stopped, even with ice packs and pressure and every single one of our spare towels. There was no need to throw together a bag of stuff to take to the ER (a task I can accomplish in about 2 minutes, maximum), no need to call 911 for an ambulance (something neither John nor I ever thought to do when he needed urgent care).

Riley went right back to sleep. Not me. All I could think about was the last few months of John's life and how awful they were. Things I remember from those months, in no order whatsoever:

• The nosebleeds, oh, the nosebleeds.
  
• The frustration of John not getting treatment due to low platelet counts.
  
• Test results bringing bad news.
• Fear. Constant, oppressive fear.
  
• John sleeping.
  
• John vomiting.
  
• Me never sleeping.
  
• The hospital.
  
• Hearing John's beloved oncologist say to us, "I don't like to talk about how much time is left, but at this point you need to recognize that it's going to be weeks, not months, not years."
  
• Taking a nap with John in his hospital bed
  
• Lugging my breast pump to the hospital every day and pumping in John's room while my in-laws watched.
  
• The absurdity of registering for hospice
  
• Liters of belly-bloating fluid being drained from John's distended abdomen.
• Calling my mom from the lobby of the hospital and saying, "Mom, I need you. Now."
  
• Lugging Riley around on my hip as I prepared a dose of morphine for John.
  
• In his last few days of life, John's obsession with taking a shower.
  
• Arguing with my in-laws, and, ultimately sending them home so that John and I could have a few last days together.
  
• The day before he died, wanting John to die because I didn't think either of us could take one more day of him "living" the way he was.
  
• John's confusion, empty look, and inability to keep his eyes open.
  
• Anger that my husband was dying.
• Resentment that my husband couldn't help me more.
• Shame that I was angry and resentful and that I didn't feel particularly warm or loving towards anyone.

No one tells you that as a caretaker, you'll experience all kinds of emotions that will make you utterly ashamed. I was so often angry with John, angry that he was leaving me and the kids, angry that he couldn't help me more, angry that I had to take care of our kids and him. HE WAS DYING, and yet I managed to direct my bitterness about the situation towards him. No one tells you that along with the sadness of grief comes a loathsome sense of relief that the hypervigilence of being responsible for someone with a terminal illness is gone. When John died, cancer suddenly vanished from my life. As sad as I was to see John die, I was in equal measure relieved that no one living under our roof was being eaten away from the inside, dying far too early, suffering far too much.

Relief. It's embarrassing to admit that part of me felt flooded with relief the night John died. In part, I was relieved for him. John was so tired of being sick. But I was also relieved for me. I was so sick of dealing with sickness, of scheduling our lives around cancer. The oppressive weight a terminal illness brings into a home is something I cannot adequately describe, and something I do not miss.

I miss John, of course, but I don't miss the John of the last four months of his life. I miss the man I married, and the core of him was slowly sucked away during his illness, leaving a shell that, in personality, was almost not recognizable to me by the end. John pulled away from me at the end, and pulled away even more from Maddie and Riley. He almost couldn't stand to be around them because he couldn't bear to see what he was leaving. And yet. And yet! The night before he died, he got out of bed and, with the help of me and my father-in-law, shakily made his way to the living room where he held a bottle for Madeleine and snuggled her while I read some bedtime stories. I have pictures of that night; those are the last pictures of John alive, holding his daughter, sitting in our glider, Riley and me next to him. The next day, John was dead.

I still, every day, feel two conflicting emotions in equal measure. I feel profound sadness that John is not here to experience our life, and I feel profound relief that his suffering came to an end. One of the many things that makes grief so unbearably hard is that it stirs up emotions that you don't expect, emotions that you never thought could be experienced simultaneously, emotions that no one wants to talk about, emotions that are uncomfortable to feel.

No calls from daycare today. Hopefully the nosebleeds are over. I think I've had all the nosebleeds I can take.