All in

We have made it past a pretty important milestone chez Wells: T is done with his chemo treatments.  It's such a simple statement, but it means so much more to us.  It's the end of nausea, the end of overwhelming fatigue, the end of dreading what we know would happen every two weeks, and most importantly, the end of the damnable cancer.  He'll have a CT scan at the end of April, and he'll also see the surgeon to determine when the surgery to reverse his ostomy will happen.  By the time the kids start summer break, I hope this is all behind us.

The thing is, it'll never really be done.  Of course, he'll have follow-up appointments and scans to determine that the cancer has not returned.  But the last ten months and the next few to come will always be with us.  We'll never go to an appointment without a modicum of fear or worry.  It will forever be the year of cancer when we look back at this point in our lives.

When T was diagnosed, I remember wondering how this would change us as a couple and as a family.  I was so afraid of what we would become.  In a small sense, it was far more difficult than I ever anticipated.  Seeing T in the hospital, knowing how terribly ill the chemo made him, and wanting to just take it all away was almost more than I could handle.  In a larger sense, it went so much smoother than I ever thought possible because of all the help we received.  I was lucky enough to have the kind of help that made it fairly easy to stick to a daily routine and a "normal" life for the kids.  I can't think of many events, major or minor, that we missed out on because there were always people around to ensure that we were where we needed to be when we needed to be there.  The way my family and our friends made themselves utterly and completely available to us was truly a thing of selfless beauty and love.  Because of everyone who helped, nothing changed for the worse.  We were still a family, and better yet, my kids had and continue to have amazing examples of what it truly means to be a friend.

As far as changing us as a couple, I think the cancer has made us appreciate each other more.  I can only speak for myself, but at the end of the day, I'm happy to curl up and watch a show or read a book at home, anything just to be near T.  I'm still totally annoyed when he doesn't change the toilet paper roll or puts his dirty dishes near the dishwasher instead of in it, but I'm more willing to overlook the little stuff.

That whole "in sickness and in health" line in a wedding ceremony tends to get lost sometimes, but it's one of the most important parts there is.  T wasn't allowed to give up his fight, and I wasn't either.  His fight was obviously more important, but I fought to keep everything else in our lives together.  I think we'll both carry those war wounds around for the rest of our lives.  It is said that time heals all wounds, but I don't think that's necessarily true.  Time allows the wounds to scab over and begin to heal; however, time also creates scars, lengthens them, and raises them to the surface, making them impossible to forget.  Maybe that's not the worst thing in the world though, remembering.  Even though it's not a time I ever want to repeat, it's worth remembering that life gets tough, but we are tougher.  Maybe we have changed; however, we're together, and nothing else really matters.

Moments

It is one of those perfect fall days: sunny but crisp.  Someone in the neighborhood is burning leaves, and the slightly acrid smell in the air is comforting.  The kids are outside after dinner, and their screams of laughter echo throughout the gloaming.  Those are some of the happiest sounds I have ever heard, and I'm trying to imprint them into my memory.

My mom and I visited a friend a couple of days ago.  We met the year I was student teaching at a small Catholic high school in Indianapolis.  I ended up teaching at that same school for four years, and our friendship grew and cemented.  We're sort of an odd couple: there is a big age difference, we don't have a great deal in common at the core, and we have lead extremely different lives.  And yet, of all the amazing people I met those four years, he is the one I see the most often, the one who has been most consistent in my ever-changing world.

Jim isn't the friend who will bring a pint of ice cream and a DVD when I'm feeling sad.  Quite the contrary.  When I had to move out of my house in Indianapolis rather abruptly because my first husband decided that being married to me wasn't his thing, Jim brought boxes and helped me pack.  I remember crying while I packed my broken life, and he kept telling me to quit crying because it wasn't helping me get anything done.  "Oh, stop it.  You're fine and this is all going to be fine.  Now, where do you want all these books?  You know you have way too many books, don't you?"  And he was right.  Well, one can never have too many books, of course, but I was fine after that mind-numbing heartbreak.  I AM fine.

We travelled together, had meals together, had drinks together, laughed together.  Every time I moved, which was oddly quite often, he came to help put my new places into working order.  He became friends with my whole family, my new (much better) husband, and eventually my children.  He even visited my parents in Valpo when I was still living in Lexington.  We didn't see each other as often as we used to, but we talked on the phone and were always in each other's thoughts.

The phone rang a few months ago as I was making dinner.  The kids were asking for the umpteenth time what I was making, T was in the living room chatting with his parents, and I was frazzled.  Normally I ignore the phone when I'm busy, but I glanced at the caller ID.  I saw the name and number of a friend of Jim's and I went cold.  She told me that there had been an accident, and Jim was in the hospital with what the doctors thought was a stroke.  The next few weeks were agonizing as I made call after call to try to get information.  After a month in the hospital and one measly week in a rehab center, he ended up at his niece's house a little south of Indianapolis.

My mom and I made the trek to see him, and I carried the warning in my head that he was suffering from expressive aphasia.  Logically I knew that he would be different, but the tiny Pollyanna in my head assured me that Those People were wrong.  Physically, he didn't seem much different although he was unshaven, a sight that I had never seen in twenty years.  He knew who we were straightaway and gave us both hugs, but I could immediately see the effects of the stroke.  He claimed he didn't know we were coming to visit, that people had been lying to him.  He couldn't easily find his words, he went off on tangents that we couldn't understand, and he just looked...old.  There were some things that seemed decently fresh in his mind, things about 1995 when a bunch of us starting teaching and hanging out together every free moment outside of school.  He somewhat remembered travelling with me and how much fun we have always had together.  He didn't remember where he was staying or why my mom was there or even his own beloved cat.  Every once in a while, there were glimpses of my old, very funny, very smart friend, but they were few and far between. I tried to stay sunny and happy and positive, but inside, my heart was breaking.

I had a lot of time to think on the three hour drive home.  My mom and I went over and over the conversations, trying to dissect them and find the old Jim.  It all made me tired.  I mean, bone-tired-weary-to-the-core-curl-up-in-bed-on-a-rainy-day-taking-care-of-a-sick-kid-in-the-middle-of-the-night kind of tired.  It's impossible for me not to worry about my friend.  I know he is getting good care with people who truly care about him in every way, but that doesn't stop me from draining my own emotional reserves on his behalf.

And I want this to all mean something.  That's why I am trying so hard to embrace the small things in life and enjoy living as much as I can.  That's why I want to memorize the sounds of the kids' laughter and their weird comments and their beautiful smiles.  Jim obviously isn't gone from this mortal coil, but he's not completely here, either.  So I'm trying to embrace life and enjoy every moment.  Trying.  But that's so much easier said than done sometimes.  I can't always find the joy in every given moment. When I am in the middle of telling Lottie to focus on her homework for the twentieth time while Dallas drones on and on about dinosaurs and the clock is telling me that I should have started dinner already and both kids are hungry but not for what I'm cooking and the phone is ringing and my eye is twitching,  I can't channel my inner-Zen and think about how much I will miss this all when the kids are grown and gone.  Instead, I try to get through the minute by minute drama so I can eventually snuggle with freshly shampooed heads and find a sweet spot of time when no one is fighting or crying or arguing or pouting or hungry or hurt or angry or tired. And I think about Jim and think I should really work hard at finding those great moments because the future is so uncertain and fragile, but I know Jim would think that was a bunch of schmaltzy hooey and tell me to just keep on keepin' on.

So I'm raising my kids the best way I know how; I'm constantly thinking about T's upcoming surgery; I am pretending that the surgery isn't happening; I'm having dreams that end with me waking confused and bleary; I'm attempting to oversee a new deck project at our house; I'm reading books; I'm being a friend, a daughter, a mother, a sister; I'm smiling when I can and crying when I can't; I'm drinking too much coffee; I'm riding my bike; I'm trying not to think too much; I'm over-thinking everything; I want to be left alone; I want to be surrounded by friends; I'm taking one breath at a time.  I'm going to keep going because that's what Jim is doing, and that's what I can do, too.  For now, that's enough.