Wanted to write that sentence differently. More like I'm in the middle of my long goodbye, but that feels a little too optimistic at the moment.
This week has held lots of bad news. Well, it's felt like bad news. Huz and I have both felt crushed in different ways, and are walking around bruised and battered to some extent. I would have guessed that one becomes more resilient to difficult news as time goes on after being diagnosed with a Stage IV cancer, but somehow it has worked in the opposite way, with my heart feeling less resilient, and less able to be upbeat.
My combo of 'VanillaBean' and Xeloda has stopped working. It's been very good to me and provided absolute bonus time after a bleak 2014. I do have to remember that. Remember to be grateful and so glad for drugs that gave me life for 6 months. And when I think of all we have packed into that time. Oh my God. Thank you.
The part of this news that is devastating is that I have now chewed through my second line chemo. The more I read about the implications of this, the harder it is to digest this news.
I just really can't work out if I'm a 'glass half full' or a 'glass half empty' gal. Maybe I swing between the two. Whatever the case, my mind is almost always on the idea that this is one of the last chemo options that will actually work. Third line chemo is a bit hit or miss, although this relatively new drug, Halaven has had some good results, so this is a good thing.
You littles are shielded from much of this news. Huz and I have processed this mostly after you three have been tucked in for the night, and we sit half watching TV and talking on the couch with sparkling cider or a coffee, and we talk. I cry. Lots. More than you may think is possible. Huz doesn't cry. His eyes don't leak water like mine do. Whatever.
Yesterday as we were driving home from church you asked me Brave about why I am tired at the moment. I couldn't not say. I just couldn't. We wonder if you boys have forgotten how sick I am because I really have been doing well for months now. But to go in and burst that sweet childhood bubble again. Goes absolutely against the grain. Hate it. Hate it. Hate it.
So I explained again about how the medicine I'm on works until the cancer gets smarter, and now the cancer is getting smarter so I have to change chemo. There was a short silence, and then you said that really the right thing to do would be to keep using the same chemo because then we would never run out of chemo if we needed it.
Oh Brave. What could I say. I wish you were my doctor.
And it's the pragmatic way you talk about my cancer Brave that undoes me. Makes me wonder if we have been 'real' enough with you littles. Makes me wonder what you wonder. Makes me wonder if you ever lie in your bed with fears tucked in next to you without me knowing.
And the other two listened. I think True said something along the lines of, 'yeah, that's what I was going to say too'...But then you say that about lots of things right now True, it's just your thing.
And then there's little Soul, sitting between the two of you with snuffles and snot and holding some little booklet you had coloured in your Sunday School class. And I know you don't get it, can't get it. And will that be easier in the end? Easier not to have any lead up, easier to be the youngest with a different filter on the whole 'mummy's sick' reality.
And today our pastor at church spoke about a lens, about the filter through which we see life. It's critical what lens we have, and this analogy is so rich, I'm mulling it over today still, hoping with all my hope that we have gifted our littles with a lens with which to see how present and kind and here-in-the-now is our God. It's what got me through the car ride conversation. The conversation that feels so surreal and so much like 'this just has to be somebody else's life and not my own' kind of conversation.
And Huz took our new pup and Brave outside for some man time. Some kind of de-brief on that car ride conversation. And he came back pretty broken, (Huz that is) I'm not sure over the content or how real it all becomes when we talk to you littles about it all.
Yuck. Not the stuff of a relaxed Sunday afternoon. Not at all what I want for my littles to think over, to be unsettled by, to keep deepening their understanding of. My childhood was so very innocent and sheltered and rich in playing and fun and being loved and living simply.
It's so different for my boys, and it's only just begun. I mean, I'm still here.
And so the long goodbye goes on.
And the long goodbye has afforded me many many luxuries (if I can call them that). The luxury of crying over coffee with my sisters, reminiscing over our beautiful shared childhood, the luxury of watching one last time those Super8 films that my Dad poured all of his love for me into. The luxury of having my parents care for me with all the love and protection and joy that can be mustered in the light of it all. The luxury of letter writing, legacy leaving, gift giving, snuggled talks with my littles. The luxury of a marital bond articulated and celebrated and mulled over and reminisced over and cried over together. The luxury of a million scillion hours laying in my feathered bed praying for my loves and wondering how Grace will meet them when I am gone, hurling loud and fierce prayers into the ear of God on their behalf and wanting badly for these prayers to mean something beyond the now.
The luxury that many many people would have wanted and chosen for themselves if only they could have instead of being suddenly ripped from their lives as happens for many in death.
In some ways there is a desperation for the hard to be over. For my suffering to be done. For the pill swallowing and pain to be finished. For the endless heating of heat packs to have had its day. This is cushioned by the joy there is in the long goodbye. It's joy disguised. It's grace disguised.
 |
| Home grown apples from my lovely friend M! SO delicious. Thank you! |
No comments:
Post a Comment