It’s hard to know that you will be the one putting up the Christmas tree alone next year. It’s hard to look at that slim fit body and know that just beneath the surface, cancer reigns. Every thought of the coming holidays, the 25th anniversary, the babies, birthdays, April Fools day, elicits a sigh and a profound “Aw shit.”
We are all smart and sensible. We know that life is finite. We just don’t believe it day to day. Facing the fixity raises personal and selfish thoughts. Lane is fine. He is resolved to whatever is. My resolution slips day by day; hour by hour. I know he is dying. I just don’t believe it. I know the hospice folk are going in and oput of our house. I just don’t want to believe it. I know I can live alone, I just don’t know how.
On the days, in the hours that I can stay in the moment, I can function; I can appreciate; I can breathe. In other hours, the air is sucked out of the room and the very vacuum it creates pulls tears unbidden from my eyes.
I never expected to be left behind. I never anticipated helping Lane into the next phase of being. I thought, if anything, we’d go down together in a plane crash or a wreck on 805—news at eleven.
I want to see the positive in this experience. I want the story to end with a happily ever after. I want to dance at the grandgirls’ weddings and I want to dance with their Papa. It hurts to be left behind. It hurts to know that soon the whole money, mortgage, spend, save continuum will be my burden. I am afraid. I hate to be afraid.
