He's Gone

In what seems like an instant, he is gone.  Like a magic act, he's disappeared from my life.  Many pieces of him remain--clothes, glasses, tools, golf clubs, that damn motorcycle that won't sell. But the heart and spirit of him are gone.  What's left is just stuff.  Stuff that I wish wasn't here because it just reminds me of him.
I knew it wouldn't be easy, but I didn't really understand the depths of the pain involved in losing someone.  My whole body hurts. I want to scream and cry but I don't.  I go about the business of living.  I go to work, come home exhausted. I feel bad because I was inadequate to anyone I've known that's lost someone close to them. I try to suppress the rage that I feel about his last days of life--how unfair that someone so strong should die so weak. I try not to hate all the bastards that abandoned us.  The "friends" and family that disappeared because it was too hard for THEM. 
Fuck you.
I try not to resent the entire world--moving on as if nothing happened.  As if he didn't matter.
He did matter.  He shaped my entire adult life.  Now it's an open chasm.
During the last round of immmunotherapy treatment (read: lots of drugs), I dreamed that we were  dust ghosts, like humans made of paper mache'.  And walking along, he just went POOF and disappeared.  I try to forget that in my dream I followed suit just a little further down the path.

Dry and cracked

It occurred to me that this is an apt portrayal of my existence right now.  The landscape is pretty barren; everything is dry around me.  But I'm still here and still green--thanks to sunshine that keeps peeking through and the occasional refreshing shower. I'm thankful every day for my blessings--every ray and every drop.  

Life Goes On

Do I have any readers left? Thought I'd better post an update before I forgot my password.  My apologies for disappearing for months at a time...seems like just yesterday I was sitting at this computer attempting to explain the upheaval of being in a dual-cancer home.

So much has happened; don't really know where to start.  I'll revert to my business mode of bullet points for the sake of brevity.

• Mid October thru mid November I spent in-patient at the NIH (National Institutes of Health), the first participant in a new immunotherapy clinical trial--a protocol for a specific genetic mutation from HPV related cancers.  I fully intended to document the process here, because it's really quite fascinating and because I really believe that immunotherapy is the future of cancer treatment. But the reality of the experience was that I felt so crappy for so long that I couldn't even stand to look at a computer screen, let alone try to relay the experience in a positive light.  Suffice to say that when I finally returned home and recovered, I literally felt like I had died and come back to life. That being said, the tough road is one I would gladly travel down again because it gave me HOPE!  And although subsequent scans have determined that the wonderous new T cells within me weren't quite enough to cure me and won't save me from the fate of this disease, I have no regrets.  I feel better than I have in a long time and because of that (my) cancer is not always front and center in my consciousness.
• My nephew and his wife lost their precious little boy during the holidays.  Cancer robs another family of their loving circle; hopes and dreams die an agonizing death when a child dies. The grief that these young parents are dealing with is heartbreaking, and has rocked my faith in the grace of a heavenly entity.
• Days, weeks and months have gone by and I stand as a bystander watching my husband go from a robust male to a shadow of what he used to be.  It's painful to watch and as much as I try to be an advocate, it's frustratingly fruitless.  I have come to realize I still love him very much; I'm scared of what life will be like without him, and I wish that we had done more to be the perfect mates to each other earlier in our many years together.

Each of these deserve much more attention, and I have so much more narrative circling in my head on all of these topics.  Yet each of them is so painful that its like slowly ripping off a bandaid to write about them.  So I'll avoid that for now, and wish you all peace and beauty in your world.