365

I have made it one year without you.  A year we should have had together.  I live in a new place, and I'm in a new relationship.

I worry that people have forgotten, but it turns out they haven't.

The trauma of the end has faded, and now I'm just left with sadness and the dichotomy of missing the life we had while liking my new one quite a lot.

On the Road

I had this idea you see... this idea that I would go on the road.  That if I left my life and my friends for a time that perhaps there would be a deepness to my grief that had eluded me.  I thought that if I put myself in the hardest situation I could imagine, that I would be tested and broken and would come out the other side stronger.

You need to understand that there were days when my son was small that I wouldn't go to the grocery store because it seemed too much of a bother.  That leaving the house was too much to cope with.

And now I have no house.  I have my car.  I take my son wherever we want to go.

I feel sometimes that the road is my friend, that it is this metaphor for my journey.  That the long difficult stretches force me to be alone with my grief and my sadness and my loss.

Some days it all feels very much that way.  But sometimes it feels like I'm just running away from what needs to be done.

He never could have imagined the me that exists now.  Even though I think he tried to.  He would have been impressed.  He loved me, but sometimes he thought I was frail emotionally.  He always said how impossible it would have been for our situations to be reversed.  I secretly thought the same thing, but we both had to face the impossible truth.  That our life together was ending, that we would have to leave our love for each other behind and move on.  His job was difficult, but mine was mine, so it seemed more difficult.

I regret feeling that way.  In the end, I think dying was hard for him.  I think he was scared, and he wasn't ready, and I felt so at a loss for how to help him or comfort him.  He was in more pain than I wanted him to face.  He had everything stripped from him.  There was no real goodbye.  It was all so horrible and unsatisfying.  In the weeks that followed, I walked around terrified of my own death.  Even as I accept it as inevitable, I am still sort of terrified.  He wasn't ready.  He wanted to go to Disneyland.  He wanted to go to the movies at eat popcorn.  He wanted to hold his son.  He wanted to enjoy sex again.  He wanted to eat a meal.  He wanted to laugh with friends.  All such reasonable, small things, and none of them were possible. I was more prepared when I was oblivious.  Now I am informed, and the truth has forever changed me.

Certain Strength

There is a certain strength and confidence that I have now.  I know I can endure great pain.  I know I can do things that are hard.  I may be damaged, but I know I can watch someone I love die and hold them and wish them well while I do it.  I know I can laugh after crying.

I try to let the moment that defines me be the one where I looked at our bed, the one where he had died, and thought "I'll bet if I don't sleep here tonight, I'll never sleep here again.  And I really like this bed."  Because that was the me I wanted to be.  Alone but brave.  Practical and romantic.  A keeper of the past but a believer in the future.  I knew if I could spend that night, that first fucking night, in the same bed where we had spent our last, and where I had watched him draw his last breath, that I would be all right.  That I would be as strong as I ever needed to be.

There are times when it all seems such a blur.  Such a movie of a horrible thing that happened to nice people who couldn't have deserved it but must have, as that's how movies work.  But I also felt it all with a clarity that was a gift.  He was so strong and brave that I didn't notice how hard he was working to breathe.  We were both trying to hard to be normal that we overlooked how very abnormal we were.  I have no regrets, but I do sometimes wonder if I could have done it better.  He would have scolded me for that though.

My grief is not beautiful, but it is real.  It isn't what I thought it would be.  My strength is beautiful.  It surprises me, and I am proud of it.

I think it was a year ago

I think it was a year ago that I stood in our kitchen, watching our son crawl back and forth like a pinball.  I think it was a year ago that I believed everything was OK because you didn't call me when you heard from the doctor.

When you said I would know how worried to be by when you talked to me, I thought you meant you would call me right away if it was cancer and you would wait until later to update me if it was nothing.

In the future, I will ask people to just call me either way.  Lesson learned.

You probably thought I didn't remember.  If I were to argue with you about it today you would cite it as a prime example of my "not listening."  For two communication studies majors, we sure had a hard time communicating.

And just like that, Christmas was sort of over.

I can't even remember what I gave you for Christmas last year.  I have no idea what your main present was. It must have really sucked.

But I loved you on Christmas, and every other day.  And I have to believe that was enough.  And that I heard the important things, and you forgave me for "not listening" to the rest.

I don't know how people deal with cancer for years and years and years.  I guess the same way that people deal with loss for years and years and years.

I guess all things get a little easier with time and practice.  Even this.

I thought I was doing so well

I thought I was doing so well.  But today I was weak and wanted to call his phone, wanted to hear his voice on the message, wanted to remember him as a real person with a voice and a desire and a brain.  Instead I heard "this account has not set up their voicemail."  30 min on the phone with a sympathetic but unhelpful AT&T confirmed my fears.  For some reason his voicemail had been reset.  For some reason his message was gone forever.  For some reason.  It is such a small thing, I shouldn't have broken down crying.  I hadn't even called the number in 7 or 8 weeks.  But the fact that I couldn't, that even this last vestige of fantasy had been stolen from me before I was ready, it just pushed me over an edge.

I guess this means I can give up his phone account now, save myself $50 a month that I didn't need to be spending.

Am I ready to let go of his phone line?  Am I ready for someone else to have his number?  Of course not.  But I wasn't ready for any of this.

I go along and I do so well, and I look at myself and think "I sure am doing well!"  But that's because I skim past the injustice of it.  I ignore the unfairness.  I luxuriate so much in the silver linings that it's as if there is no cloud at all.  A cloud is just water vapor.  A cloud is just passing through.  Silver stays. Silver can be melted down and fashioned into something else.

I can't say this is unfair, because life and death are never fair.  I can't shout at God because I just don't believe there is this grand order to things.  I didn't do anything wrong.  Keith didn't really do anything wrong (I specifically avoid the small things that perhaps could have maybe made some small difference).  We had good luck and then we had bad luck.  I will never be the same now that he is gone, but I'm mostly the same person I've always been.  This sucks, but spending months or years just swimming in the suckiness of it seems so wrong.

I try to remember

I try to remember my life a year ago, when I had no idea.  I try to remember when I knew this would be my life.  I try to count how many days passed between the knowing and the acceptance.  I try to remember the bad times, because they are just as important.  I try to remember the nondescript times, because those are the ones that will quickly be lost.

A few weeks before he died, I was looking at some of our pictures from our first summer, our Prague summer.  I realized that the details had already faded.  I cried.  "I will lose these days without you. What will I do without you to help me remember?"  I was looking at the first picture ever taken of us.  I thought a different picture was our first one, but it turns out I'd been wrong.  The little numbers on the back proved that this photo in my hands was our first.  We had never thought about it that way because Keith's eyes were closed, so it was never printed or framed.  Keith went through the pictures with me "Don't you remember..."? he said.  And he told me, again, the stories of those days.  Of the hikes and the chickens.  But already I've forgotten.  Even as I tried to concentrate, I was forgetting.  I try to remember hundreds of ordinary days.  But they are already gone.

When did I know?  I can't even remember that.  I didn't know when I stood in the kitchen and he told me it was cancer.  I didn't know as the clock ticked towards 2012 and for the first time in my life I tried to drag the minutes backward, tried to undo the ticking. I think it was when we watched a doctor look at a PET scan and say "oh no." But maybe it wasn't until I sat on a couch and Keith told me that the Oncologist had been blunt. "This is what will get you."

Gone

K died today at 12:30.  At our last appointment, the doctor told us we were losing.  That we had weeks.  We could have done some chemo right then, but the hope was that if we stopped Tarceva, his liver might bounce back a little by the end of the long weekend.  Friday and Saturday he felt better.  We worked on taking leave from work and spent time together.  Sunday our friend came over and did video interviews with him, so that our son could feel like K was a real person.  After that, we were going to lie down for a nap.  K changed his shirt, and I noticed his belly was purple.  I hemmed and hawed, but decided to take him to the ER.  While we were there, he became altered, would fall asleep in the middle of a word.  They wanted to admit him but he said no, and I took him home.  Monday was a holiday and I suffered through it, terrified he would die at any moment and me with no one to call.  I also was mad that he hadn't gotten around to writing me or our son a letter. I kept trying to get him to write one.  He got more and more upset.

Tuesday morning I told him our appointment had been moved to earlier.  I took him to the cancer center and begged for someone to see him.  I thought maybe someone he trusted could give him guidance.  Paula, his nurse, suggested we go to the ER, she said high ammonia levels were causing the confusion, and that could be treated.  I never got him back though.  He remained lost to me, and angry with me.  Although he did kiss me on the forehead in a gesture laden with sweetness and what I assume was goodbye.

I want to forget those last few days at home with hospice.  I want to forget his moans of pain.  I want to forget holding him while he died because I didn't think he should be alone.  I want to forget the several nights I asked for his death to come more quickly.  I want to forget the horrible things he said to me when he was confused and thought he was fine.  I want to forget that I practically begged him to hurry up and die so that I wouldn't have to watch anymore. I want to forget that he wasn't ready, and that his heart kept beating long minutes after he took his last breath.  Please can I forget?

Where are you?  I miss you.  Please come back.